The Mana World Forums

Hello,

as some of you might know, I'm working on a tutorial. It's ready for testing and review now.
You can access a test server set up by djai here:

69.162.134.30 port 6901

Edit: client updates are working now
Please use the official client that can be downloaded here http://themanaworld.org/downloads.php, because that's what I based on the explanations about controls.

I'd like everyone interested to create a new account, play through the tutorial and give me feedback here.
Since there are some scripted monster spawns, I'm especially interested in possible conflicts that could occur if several people are doing it the same time.
But feel free to comment also on storyline and if things are missing that should be explained in a tutorial.

I plan to add the project to the official test repo after I got some feedback here, at the moment you can find it in my clone of the old mainline repositories:
https://gitorious.org/~jenalya/tmw-eath ... serverdata
https://gitorious.org/~jenalya/tmwdata/wip-clientdata

Most of the scripts are located in 042-1 and 042-2.
It would be great if some of you could review it and give feedback here.

Thank you!

Hmm, let's see.

I think that you have too much info-dumping in the dialog of the first character. People can absorb information best when they do something instead of just reading about it. It is also very boring to just read walls of text when you want to play the game.

I think it would be better to make the players progress through different rooms teaching them one skill in each of them, preferably only letting them progress after they applied it successfully. This pattern to design a tutorial has proven to be very popular in the past ten years for a reason. It is effective at teaching the player important skills while still giving the player a sense of progression and achievement.

Client updates are working now, so you can test without cloning the repository.

Crush, thanks for the feedback. I will see if can divide the informations in the first NPC into several parts.
I already tried to put some of the not-so-essential informations in answers to the menu that appears when you talk to the NPC again.

Testserver just got restarted with some updates.
I took out some things from the first NPC that aren't necessary at that point and did some changes to make it more interactive.

Also, the NPC called Malik can reset your progress in the tutorial, so you don't need to create a new char if you want to test things again.

Okay, a few things I noted as I played through the tutorial:

1) being presented with the rules like that as soon as you begin is ... annoying and unnecessary. What about a guard at the entrance to the main part of Tulimshar (or something... might require map changes) that tells you them?

2) Apparently Sorfina's granddaughter finds you naked in the road (?!).

3) Sorfina's dialogue explains the controls; it would work better (IMO) if she says "Why don't you try a few steps onto that carpet?" and then the controls are explained.

4) Sorfina says, "[...] or click at the button for your equipment in the bar at the upper right corner to open your inventory." What?

5) Walking and talking to NPCs is explained in the same step; what if Sorfina talks to you automatically when you reach the carpet, and then tells you how to talk to an NPC so you can open her chest and take out a shirt for yourself?

6) When I try to walk past Valon, I get warped back about five tiles.

7) Talking to Hasan from the top of the cliffs makes him say, "You cannot pass". He should only say this if you're trying to pass him.

Hasan says "Stop" when I reach the edge of the map, which is a few tiles past him; when I try to pass I get warped back five tiles, as with Valon. What if Hasan had a tough friend at the edge of the map, and he stops you passing on Hasan's orders? This would also explain why Hasan can still stop you passing when he's being attacked by a scorpion.

9) I think a special-purpose stationary scorpion with attacking for its idle animation would work well here; it could appear in front of Hasan and appear to attack him until you attacked it.

10) Arriving at the far North end of Tulimshar would be confusing if I didn't know where I was. It would be much better, I think, if a path led straight into central Tulimshar.

11) Is there more to the tutorial? If so, it's very unclear. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do once I get into Tulimshar.

12) There are quite a number of small grammatical errors. Can I go through and correct these, as well as change the dialogue slightly of a couple of people? Make the granddaughter sound a little more like a young girl, Hasan more like a tough bully, some things like that.

On the whole: I like it! I think the story's quite good, and throwing the scorpion at Hasan is a great idea, but a little poorly done (eg, the scorpion just wanders around).


EDIT: erk, eight-parenthesis turns into a smiley.

Enchilado, thanks about so many suggestions.

poison_ivy wrote: 1) being presented with the rules like that as soon as you begin is ... annoying and unnecessary. What about a guard at the entrance to the main part of Tulimshar (or something... might require map changes) that tells you them?

I agree that being confronted with the rules out of nowhere is a bit harsh. I took that part over from the way it is done in the game at the moment. I think it was made like that for a reason. If I put the rules at the end of the tutorial, would it make the tutorial area an outlaw area? I guess having the rules presented as the very first thing is to avoid people breaking the rules without knowing them.

poison_ivy wrote: 2) Apparently Sorfina's granddaughter finds you naked in the road (?!).

That was intended as an explanation why the player doesn't have any items. Is it better if I change it into something like "[...] with only you shirt left. I washed it for you because it was totally cruddy."?

poison_ivy wrote: 3) Sorfina's dialogue explains the controls; it would work better (IMO) if she says "Why don't you try a few steps onto that carpet?" and then the controls are explained.

Ah, you mean it isn't Sorfina talking about the controls, but only a message? That's possible, but if you come back to ask her questions, she explains them too - not sure how to adapt that part.

poison_ivy wrote: 4) Sorfina says, "[...] or click at the button for your equipment in the bar at the upper right corner to open your inventory." What?

I'll change the phrasing.

poison_ivy wrote: 5) Walking and talking to NPCs is explained in the same step; what if Sorfina talks to you automatically when you reach the carpet, and then tells you how to talk to an NPC so you can open her chest and take out a shirt for yourself?

I tried to make her talk to you again automatically when you reach the carpet with an extra npc placed on the carpet - but then you can just click on it to trigger the talking.

poison_ivy wrote: 6) When I try to walk past Valon, I get warped back about five tiles.
7) Talking to Hasan from the top of the cliffs makes him say, "You cannot pass". He should only say this if you're trying to pass him.

I'll change that.

poison_ivy wrote: Hasan says "Stop" when I reach the edge of the map, which is a few tiles past him; when I try to pass I get warped back five tiles, as with Valon. What if Hasan had a tough friend at the edge of the map, and he stops you passing on Hasan's orders? This would also explain why Hasan can still stop you passing when he's being attacked by a scorpion.

I'll think about that.

poison_ivy wrote: 9) I think a special-purpose stationary scorpion with attacking for its idle animation would work well here; it could appear in front of Hasan and appear to attack him until you attacked it.

I tried to avoid new monsters/items because of the rebalancing... But might be a good idea.

poison_ivy wrote: 10) Arriving at the far North end of Tulimshar would be confusing if I didn't know where I was. It would be much better, I think, if a path led straight into central Tulimshar.
11) Is there more to the tutorial? If so, it's very unclear. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do once I get into Tulimshar.

I already tought if Hasan could be so thankfully that he'll bring the player into main Tulimshar and warp the player to the bazaar.
There are some suggestions by the tutorial npcs what to do in main Tulimshar. Are those hints too inconsiderable?

poison_ivy wrote: 12) There are quite a number of small grammatical errors. Can I go through and correct these, as well as change the dialogue slightly of a couple of people? Make the granddaughter sound a little more like a young girl, Hasan more like a tough bully, some things like that.

I planned to ask you or another native speaker to do a spelling and grammar check after I put it into testing repository. (After that because I plan to melt lot's of commits together when putting it into the testing repo, also there will be some changes in dialogue until it's done. )

Thanks for all this feedback!

Testserver got updated with a lot of changes based on enchilado's and other testers feedback.

Testserver got restarted with some fixes from alastrim on issues in Hasans script that occured while testing yesterday.