Work on a Quick Start Guide for the F1 menu

[Bunnywabbit]

I'd like to share some of the reasoning behind the choices we are making.

It all begins with the keymap.
I don't know if you are aware of this, but we are currently STILL shipping a keymap that is beyond terrible.
Spacebar is fire missile. All the lateral thrust keys are on the numberpad (you know, that thing that many laptops don't have).
rename your inputmap1.mdl file and let steam download the current one for you and marvel at how something this singularly asinine could come to exist in this universe.

It really is that bad.

Now we have created a new default keymap that is decent. Some might even say good. Many voobs will hate it on principle, but it is still a pretty effective keymap.
Sidenote: Yes. I am aware Esc-G-C is a thing. But if the only reason we're unable to offer sensible defaults is because when it comes to making decisions, this community is about as useless as a bag of *#$@s to a horny cougar, then we certainly can't blame newbies for moving on.

So why you may ask are we still pushing the craptacular keymap to newbies? Why are we leading them to assume this game is horribly broken, or forcing them to ask around on discord until someone helps them set up a semi usable one?

Training missions.

Those things have been a hopeless ballast on this game since the day FAO came into existence.

It's not just that they're bad. Some of them are actually passable. But they are single player, not-very-well-scripted railroad-track missions in a freerange- multiplayer game. They are exactly the wrong thing for the game Allegiance is.
What's worse, because they are incredibly difficult to change, the training missions lock the developers into choices they want to revisit at a later date.
Such as the keymap. Or the interface. Or some aspects of gameplay that, it turns out, suck.
So why not do away with the training missions, you ask?
Ah. But what do we have to offer in their stead?

The Wiki?
Huge Shipping container full of information no newbie wants to eat their way through if they're just trying to find out whether or not they like this game.

Video's?
Kind of the same deal. Five-, ten-minute intro video's that will always take forever to get to the tidbit of info you are looking for, because it is impossible to predict what that may be. Again you are asking a newb to devote time to something he/she doesn't yet know is worth devoting the time to.

Chat? Discord?
Yes. Effective. If someone's on. But these are external to the game. And having to ask other players for information other games just provide right there in the interface, adds to a sense of brokenness that just scares people off. And rightly so.

The Help menu in it's current form?
No. Nonononono. Noooo. Terrible. Tiny window. Loads of text. Order of articles is completely out of whack. The crash course is buries five chapters in under a subheading. It attempts to be a wiki in a screen comparable to a 90's pda. Sorry for the people who worked on it but it is just conceptually wrong.

So what are we proposing?

First of all:
A reworking of the help pane along these lines.


This is the current Help menu content displayed in a alfa-state version of the new help interface. As you can see the buttons are not there yet.
There will be a permanent button below the screen that opens discord, and one that opens the wiki. A third will blit a picture of the current default keymap to the screen. If possible, pressing and holding the F1 key will take you directly to that keymap picture.


The Landing page will start you on the crash course directly. The crash course itself will take up between 5-10 slides.
The crash course will offer basic flight controls only.

There will be further gameplay topics in a chapters lower on the ladder. Each very short on words, big on pictures.

In fact, given the limitations of the current scripting language of the helppages, we're probably going to make every slide a picture anyway (this ties in with the currently ongoing discussion on whether to replace the ui language with another).

So in short:
- The problem is that we can't have a good keymap until we provide a substitute for the training missions.
- Making a Quick Guide on an updated F1 menu provides newbies with the basic info they need to decide whether they want to invest more time into learning to play this game. That is: basic flight controls. This guide should be 5-10 pages /slides long with as many pics and as few words as is possible.
- The f1 menu can also be used to provide a second, entry-level guide on actual gameplay. These can be a bit more high-content because we can assume the player's curiosity has been raised.
- The format and size of the slides in the google doc is pretty much how they're going to appear ingame. (Except for the previous and next arrows: we can't do links on images, only text, and that can only be done with a max of 25px per character so it may be something like '>>' because... well there are many reasons to move away from .mdl )

Now Spinoza and me are currently in an ongoing discussion about the exact format of this.
My approach to limit the scope of the Quickguide to flight controls only and concentrate on images. I just want the keymap issue taken care of, frankly.
Spinoza feels a more narrative approach is more feasable and he also tends to focus on a complete revision of the help menu. Which we will definitely need help with.

You are welcome to weigh in.

[Spinoza]

QUOTE My approach to limit the scope of the Quickguide to flight controls only and concentrate on images. I just want the keymap issue taken care of, frankly.
Spinoza feels a more narrative approach is more feasable and he also tends to focus on a complete revision of the help menu. Which we will definitely need help with.[/quote]
This isn't exactly my position.

I do favour removing everything that isn't new or at least hiding it behind a warning.

I do believe in the absence of training missions a manual should be action oriented, meaning it should read:
"Press MB1, your gun will fire. Now press R, your gun will start reloading."
Rather than a descriptive manual:
"MB1 - fire weapon
R - Reload"

Anyway, the only way to see what works is to put it in game and have people try it and report back.

WE DO NOT HAVE RESOURCES FOR A RESEARCH BASED APPROACH!

We either test things live or we don't get anything done really.

Bunny and I see eye to eye on this.

[Bunnywabbit]

^^

What he said.

[raumvogel]

Fine and dandy.The fact is we should have had this conversation BEFORE the Steam release....

I asked to postpone the release and no one cared.

Now here it is 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night and we have 10 people sitting in noat.

IMO,not just the default keymap,but we shouldn't release until we have an auto command for the newbs to play.

[Bunnywabbit]

Before the release there wasn't anybody around to help. I wasn't, in any case.

[Spinoza]

QUOTE (raumvogel @ Oct 29 2017, 04:03 AM) Fine and dandy.The fact is we should have had this conversation BEFORE the Steam release....

I asked to postpone the release and no one cared.

Now here it is 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night and we have 10 people sitting in noat.

IMO,not just the default keymap,but we shouldn't release until we have an auto command for the newbs to play.

I agree the Steam release was premature.

But it was a very soft launch and IMHO no real harm was done. It's a shame we had a small influx of people who immediately left, but it's a tiny number compared to what we can get when we start advertising.

The noobs that left also taught us a few valuable lessons which would not have been easy to learn otherwise.

In short, we can do what we need to do and everything will be awesome.

If we do it.

And I do mean WE. I can't code, I can only do some art, etc.

[MagisterXF94]

QUOTE (raumvogel @ Oct 29 2017, 02:03 AM) Fine and dandy.The fact is we should have had this conversation BEFORE the Steam release....


IMO,not just the default keymap,but we shouldn't release until we have an auto command for the newbs to play.

I don't know how many times, you posted this exact sentence.

Auto command cannot be done.
Period.

[raumvogel]

QUOTE (Senor NoirSol @ Oct 29 2017, 10:53 AM) I don't know how many times, you posted this exact sentence.

Auto command cannot be done.
Period.

And I will continue to do so.I don't think we will ever get to the point where we have 2 even comms available 24/7.

Auto command CAN be done...they made a raum Core just as an example.

God knows what happened to it.

[Spinoza]

QUOTE (raumvogel @ Oct 29 2017, 08:28 PM) And I will continue to do so.I don't think we will ever get to the point where we have 2 even comms available 24/7.

Auto command CAN be done...they made a raum Core just as an example.

God knows what happened to it.

Forget "auto command".

one of the long term UI goals is to make commanding less painful.
There's a lot to do that would allow people to command like me who cannot handle the info overload right now.

Also, if we (they) implement LUA we could maybe program a half way "auto command"... a command menu for dummies that instead of choices has a "get the next tech" button.

This is all OT here, but I like you.

[Papsmear]

Almost anything is better than what we currently have.
Keep up the good work gents.