Engine v.123, Scripts v.274, new tutorial
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 9:39 am |
The main thing in this patch is a new tutorial that should be much more useful than the previous deathrace-school. You can launch it from the Tutorials button in the lobby. Feedback welcomed  I noted a few bugs already from testing it myself..
I think some kind of wilderness scouting tutorial might be a good follow-up to this. There's also some other items that I'm pleased to have fixed, since they have been issues for a long time: 1. Camera animation fixed so it always ends at the correct position (previously it sometimes landed looking 180 degrees away from correct target) 2. Text corruption bug fixed! - this is one I'm really pleased about; it turns out it was a bug in the Torque game engine, not in graphics drivers. I noticed however that it's still happening in the over-car messages... I'll investigate. But if you see it still happening anywhere else, please let me know. There's nothing much more annoying than unreadxcfdxg tdfgd. Also I have improved the 'Follow Cam' so it should actually be quite useful now. I realised how important this was when watching my 8 yr-old son testing the new tutorial. He was fine with everything apart from camera control, and it got really confusing when his camera was pointed at the ground and he was trying to use WASD to see stuff. The 'Follow Cam' is now default - so will be great for newbies. You can unset it as default in Preferences. |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 9:43 am |
Bugs:
“The event server has already started so you cannot enter it” message comes up when entering tutorial The character in Barney’s car actually has a random name rather than being called Barney! tutorial doesn't stop when you exit it. text corruption still happening in over-car messages |
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*Bastille* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 9:50 am |
I think a 1 minute time limit might be good, so that you can have a good look around and read all the text. I noticed some of the text disappeared before I got to read it because I was looking at other things.
Oh, is there a button to change camera angle up and down ( I think its page up and pg down, maybe one of the directions I missed because I was typing in the lobby)? Move camera up and down I know, but not the angle, would save me touching the mouse. |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 10:42 am |
8 and 2 on the numpad should do it. Also 4 and 6 on the numpad rotate the camera. |
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ISHOULDCOCO Posted Dec 10, 2009, 12:09 pm |
Dude , you are using an eight year old for software testing.
Slave labour. I am calling the social work.................... 
COCO |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 12:15 pm |
It would only be slave labour if I actually paid him. Muhahahaha, etc. |
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ISHOULDCOCO Posted Dec 10, 2009, 12:28 pm |
feedback
We should see JD's message for longer - I could not read what he said - might worry newbs that they missed something Great map choice - great start cam postion with ramp in shot - very exciting Task 5 and 8 - the text spills over the dialog box and is hard to read after associating the machine gun with driver you might want to emphasis the assignment of the two by some means to reinforce it _ I just feel it is glossed over a bit too quick ( eg the key word everyone use assign is not even mentioned) just my view though exit message is gone too quickly, after busting barney COCO |
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FireFly Posted Dec 10, 2009, 12:29 pm |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:02 pm |
Which message? Many of them stay onscreen permanently until you complete a task
Do you have Large Fonts set? I don't think it's a problem otherwise, and since small fonts are default, I'm not overly concerned in that case.
thanks coco! |
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darthspanky Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:40 pm |
all right enouph of the technobable i just want to know 1 thing  whats thats 8 year old gangname we got some noobs to hunt for all the bad nerfs daddy caused muhahahahaha just please let it not be special circumstances i thought theyd be tuffer than that 
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ISHOULDCOCO Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:43 pm |
Intial message in lobby before event launches - was up for about 3 seconds ( I have bold and large fonts - yeah) thx COCO |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:51 pm |
gotcha, thanks
edit: actually that message only disappears because event-loading screen opens. I'll see if I can make it 'stick' when that happens.. |
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Barbu Posted Dec 10, 2009, 1:52 pm |
Hey, nice update there Sam! I just finished the tutorial and it may lack a thing or two. First, newbies should be initialized to the CTRL+G command and how it shows an approximate ghost if said car keep same speed etc. Even veteran doesn't always know about that neat feature. In the targeting part, I did not see any mention about the other targeting method, the right-click target one while in LOS and the right click one on the weapon but maybe say that the first method is considered the best. It's nice to see that you point the newest member at the more useful way of targeting! You should tell them about the fact that driver have a harder time hitting their target than designated gunner but for training purpose, the ganger you get should have the ''Deathracer'' spec. A little tutorial about the skill level and website utilities in the future could be something nice.
Minor tweak: maybe make a single bubble when the head speaks, not a objective one and the explanation one but like a single one with objective written in red, when JD says that the guy wake up etc. there is no dot after the ''he he'' and finally, the jump objective should be achieved when the player is on the other side of the ramp, not in the air. Ho and before I forget, could there be a way to completely control the camera with the numpad? 7 & 9 could be the rotation, 1 & 3 the sideways camera movement and 5 the ''find your selected car'' button. There, it was my two cents. =P Edit: And add a line about the ''purple'' (accuracy) below the weapon in the manage window. |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 2:14 pm |
Thanks Barbu!
In general I'm trying to avoid over-cluttering or over-complicating which is why multiple targeting methods, specialisms etc. might be best avoided.. people are easily confused 
But yes, other tutorials definitely might be good. |
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Barbu Posted Dec 10, 2009, 2:21 pm |
You're welcome! Yeah you are right on that, maybe we shouldn't tell so much information to new players. As you say too, an ''Advanced Tutorial'' could be perfect for all those additional information. End of my commentaries. =) |
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Digital Monk Posted Dec 10, 2009, 4:39 pm |
Re: new auto camera features
(This may sound gripey/whiney, but I don't actually mean it that way...) While I like that you now default to having auto-follow on (because I always used it) I actually preferred the previous auto-follow system. The way it used to work, I could get my view angle and distance set so that I could see a useful section of track and surrounding vehicles, and then the auto-follow just panned around as I moved. Occasionally I used Q and E to rotate the camera to keep up with my turning or to look ahead, but it was trivial. The new system constantly resets my height/zoom down so close to my car that I can't see whats coming up on the track or who's about to cause me grief. I've tried both relevant "Disable" options in the Preferences panel, individually and together, but they don't seem to change anything. My only option is to turn off auto-follow completely, which means I have to fiddle with 6 keys to keep my car in view instead of 2. What I'd really like is if you could separately enable/disable each of the three parts of auto-follow: position, rotation, height. I would probably use auto position and rotation, but purely manual height. I'd also prefer any auto camera movements to be purely deltas based on the deltas occurring with my vehicle. That would mean that I set up my view the way I like it, and then: 1. If my car moves 10 meters north, the camera will move 10 meters north. 2. If my car turns clockwise 15 degrees, the camera will rotate (around my car) 15 degrees clockwise (just to be clear, I'm suggesting the same kind of movement that Q would do, just auto-matched to the rotation that the car experienced) 3. If my car falls 1 meter down, the camera drops 1 meter down. That would mean that my view stayed the way I set it, while tracking my car around the field. Of course, I could change that view at any time, and future tracking would just go along matching the new view, because it's only tracking deltas, not absolutes. In #2, I'm only referring to compass rotations -- I don't want to tilt the camera when my car inevitably drives sideways up a cliff face
My 2 cents worth. In the short term, though, I'd really, Really, REALLY like to be able to get back the old style auto-follow, at least as an option. Thanks! DM (And, since I haven't said it anywhere else before, thank you immensely for providing Dark Wind -- I've been trying to find something like this for 20-ish years now.) |
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*Tinker* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 4:47 pm |
Ok great job Sam!
I love tutorials in games, it's soo super important to settle in calmly and breath and enjoy the (hopefully good) first experience. Now that being said i'm very critical, so here's my take 1. The first bubble (in lobby) disappears too fast, didn't read it all, yeah would be great if it stayed longer , and had a start button, or stayed while the event automatically loaded 2. it would be great if the task bubble would not disappear every few secs, (once you start going after the pick up) or is that because the counter counting down from 30 secs? which imo is way too fast, it should not count down at all, but due to event's not closing could it at least slow to 2 mins, provided that the player is told about the principal of the countdown at least. 3. in addition to telling the player the distance to the target, it would be great if it told you the direction (I found it quite stressful )
4. at the start when you are told to gain some speed, i found it stressful that i was constantly nagged and told to hurry, give it a few more turn in between warnings. 5. The part about clicking on the manage tab,... what's wrong with adding a "or press [M]" 6. The part about clicking the weapon than the target, then next turn re-clicking the weapon and re-clicking the target was complicated and a turn-off, and! next turn i was surprised that it didn't fire! (was not set to auto-fire) I can just imagine the hassle, stress and confusion this would bring upon a new player! plus having the manage window open for that just eats away at the screen real-estate. 7. Also just a few words I would swap to make it more understandable: 
Lastly there was a few bugs, 1. Wanted take the tutorial again and to take screen shots of the popups i missed but the event never loaded a second time, even after logging in/out, i had just the red "your event is loading" and the head, but no follow up, "like this is taking a little longer than expected, please be patient" EDIT: in the time it took me to write this, the head is still staring at me an nothing as changed. 2. maybe i hit space too fast but i hat a series of popups that looked like so: 
Lastly yeah great job, would go great with some nice hick voice overs, and great job, definitely think there needs to be a series of these tutorials getting more advanced, like car jacking 101 |
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4saken Posted Dec 10, 2009, 4:54 pm |
Aside from minor quibbles I would say the most important thing on the tutorial would be to have it to where you are assured to not miss any text. For instance you might have to either press a key to continue (confirming essentially that you read all the text), have a "back" button to be able to re-read, or have the text scroll down in some way (for instance when the new text comes up the old text scrolls down and is greyed out but still readable). | ||||||
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*Tinker* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 4:54 pm |
yup same, and for the camera follow same it's anoying |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:02 pm |
Guys, thanks for the detailed feedback
Monk - giving control of the separate parts of the 'follow cam' makes good sense, I'll do that (plus give the option of using the old-style method) |
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*Tinker* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:07 pm |
never saw that ever |
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Digital Monk Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:07 pm |
This one doesn't really affect me, but I've seen a couple of comments about how keys on the numeric keypad can adjust viewing angles and such. I primarily play DW on a netbook (kinda tight, but you can just manage to do it at 1024x600) that doesn't have a numeric keypad (very few notebooks do, either), or on my work (programming) machine, where I use a Kinesis Advantage countoured keyboard to avoid wrist strain -- which also doesn't have a numeric keypad.
For the way I play and the camera adjustments I do, I've never noticed the lack of the keypad (or even knew that there were commands assigned to it), and am quite happy with WASD/QE. I just wanted to toss this out there as a reminder that any function that is bound to the keypad needs to have some other way to be activated. (I've played some tactical RPGs that are very painful without a keypad, and even some that were completely unusable without a keypad, and I'd hate to see that happen to DW) |
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*sam* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:09 pm |
The keypad actions are for changing the camera-view's pitch/yaw, which is easiest to do with the mouse anyway.. so this isn't a problem. | ||||||
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Digital Monk Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:13 pm |
I don't think I've ever seen the text corruption over cars either. In the original post, you mentioned seeing something like xvlkhjx, and the only place I've ever seen that was when the profanity filter covered something up. Could that have anything to do with it? Speaking of filters , I like the profanity filter I've seen on some forum boards, where unacceptable words are replaced with more acceptable ones. Frequently, the result is funnier than the original text would have been. I won't mention the source words, but replacements were things like "loving", "gently caress", "poo poo", etc. So you'd get things like: "I say it's loving time to gently caress his poo poo up!"
Of course, it can be tricky to catch everything, and trickier to come up with replacements that will word well enough in all situations. But it's kinda cool when it does work
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Digital Monk Posted Dec 10, 2009, 5:14 pm |
Cool. Didn't think there was anything presently that was an issue. I know that the Mouselook + WASD thing is pretty cool when flying around a track during a recording to look at stuff. |
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Bytten Posted Dec 10, 2009, 7:23 pm |
Thought I'd have a go with this - great fun! And an excellent introduction to the game. This has been needed for some time.
I love the way you named the player's driver "Daniel Craig"... A few comments: (a) The first message didn't stay up long. It disappeared as soon as the event started loading - perhaps you could delay the tutorial startup by a minute or so. (b) The tutotial told me to press space to end the turn, but I'm using Tab. It might be worth checking for this and it might be worth mentioning the alternative in the preferences somewhere - though the tutorial makes no mention of the text box in the top either. Hmm. We don't want to overload the new player though... (c) Tutorial 15 states "It's a good way to pracice your skills..." - you might want to amend that to "practice"! |
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*Marc5iver* marcg@comcast.net Posted Dec 10, 2009, 8:13 pm |
Played through the tutorial a couple of time and much better than the previous driving school! Couple of things though:
1. As other have said, initial popup in lobby needs to stay longer 2. If you only do what the pop up tells you, you will have to wait the 8 minutes for the event to start. The Tutorial 2 popup stays up, even after selecting car and speed. Need this to jump to #3 or at least tell them to hit space (or tab) to start the event. Currently don’t get the message about hitting space to enter your move until Tutorial #6, which came at turn 32 for me. Tutorial #3 didn't show up until turn 4 and Tutorial #4 at turn 29. 3. Might be nice to set up a couple of sets of gates in front of the car and tell them to drive through them or something to give them an objective from the start. 4. Tutorial 4 talks about changing camera height, this can be done with “R” and “F” as well. 5. Might be good to give the option to “reset vehicle” by right clicking on car if the car gets trashed. Currently only option to resign. I didn’t trash my car to test if this happens though. 6. Need to mention option to “repeat fire”. By just selecting the pickup with the directions given does not set repeat fire. 7. Might be nice if the messages in the popup bubbles also showed up in the message box, so players can scroll back in case they missed or forgot something. 8. When I tried to load it a second time, got the message that it was loading, but it never did. Then lobby crashed. All in all much better tutorial!
Don't remember my charater's name, but it wasn't Daniel Craig, so this must vary. I just learned that you can hit "Esc" to exit event! Didn't know that, always used the dropdown box. Much easier! |
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Procyon Posted Dec 10, 2009, 8:41 pm |
Personally, I find the keyboard much easier than the mouse for just about everything. I think it would be a great value add to have non-numeric keypad alternate bindings for this. |
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*Wolfsbane* Posted Dec 10, 2009, 10:08 pm |
Just joined the tutorial, and one of the players (actually a new player - Ribbity) had his car stuck under the mountain - at least that's what I assume. Clicking to locate his car points the camera at empty terrain. | ||||||
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*sam* Posted Dec 11, 2009, 9:55 am |
There must be a bug somewhere there, because popup#2 should switch to #3 as soon as you have changed the speedo and steering wheel position. You're sure you did what you were told?
That is mentioned too. Possible confusing though? - here's the current wording: Click your gun icon once and then click his vehicle to submit the order to fire! Alternatively you can right-click your gun and choose to fire or repeat-fire |
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*Marc5iver* marcg@comcast.net Posted Dec 11, 2009, 10:27 am |
I went in and just tried it again and it worked the first time. After crashing my car and destroying the engine, I did confirm that you cannot reset, only resign, but the popup just stayed at the "you are 149 m away, you have to get closer". Might want to do something to handle resetting if they destroy the engine. I went back in a second time, and it did load up fine, but the popup was stuck on Tutorial 2 again. Even after 40 turns or so, it was still on #2. And since I was moving, I was doing what I was told.  Even tried raising and lowering speed and turning left and right.
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*sam* Posted Dec 11, 2009, 10:49 am |
yeah, I guess it needs to recognise a turtled car or blown-engine and do a reset..
Hmm, you don't have any hunch what might have been different when it worked and when it didn't? I'll do some more testing and see if I can figure it out.. thanks again.. |
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*Tinker* Posted Dec 11, 2009, 10:55 am |
Didn't see that, and i was paying attention, maybe it disappeared too fast? wouldn't it be simpler to tel them to right click the pick up and select repeat fire? |
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*sam* Posted Dec 11, 2009, 11:06 am |
Yeah, probably would be.. thanks
I probably need to make a note to Mac users about right click. The very concept of a right mouse button strikes fear into their hearts (bless 'em)
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Karz Master Posted Dec 11, 2009, 12:00 pm |
Hey Sam, great job I think Double Down is the perfect arena for the tutorial. Mayhaps you might want to add an option to let the player continue to play, instead of just dropping the server once the NPC demos? Maybe have an enemy spawn everytime the previous one demos, so newbs can continue playing for fun.
Other than that, I have to say, this is way better than the previous Driving School
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*sam* Posted Dec 11, 2009, 1:58 pm |
Good idea yeah.. Barney Morgan's buddies might come along to help.
One thing none of you would have seen is that new players get $ rewards: $1000 for performing the jump and $2000 for defeating Barney. |
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*Grograt* gary.r.horder@gmail.com Posted Dec 11, 2009, 2:01 pm |
Pah i remember when a portion of chips cost a half penny, we never got free money back in the day pah  very nice addition sam, i must try this myself ( worried i might fail though )
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Bytten Posted Dec 11, 2009, 5:25 pm |
I didn't see it either, though I *do* remember one text balloon was accidentally clicked away. I have no idea what that one said, but it was around the point I was targeting Barney.
Damn! I could have been $3000 better off! :-) I'm new, honest... |
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*Marc5iver* marcg@comcast.net Posted Dec 11, 2009, 5:27 pm |
Not a clue. I didn't do anything different that I know of. Just selected car and waited. Sorry |
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*Wolfsbane* Posted Dec 20, 2009, 6:40 pm |
Just had the text corrupted across the whole lobby except the server messages. |