Yesterday we had a short discussion here
Subject: [0.8] Campaign too difficult
So I wrote a mail to Thomas, looks like so:slpwnd wrote:The picking is actually introduced in the very first level (when the player has to pick up the mined resource from the burner mining drill). Maybe it is too early or it should be reinforced later in the campaing.ssilk wrote:The problem is, that a player doesn't learn how to pick up anything.
Making levels not to be overloaded and still teach the player something about the game is really hard
I think what you try is the wrong way.
Nobody would be ever able to survive on that planet if not trained before.
So let's step back. Level zero.
Character (it's his name) is on the way to his first (and last) mission: the vanguard of a big colonization ship. They should prepare the planet for the (meanwhile in orbit waiting) colony ship with 1 billion settlers.
Therefore he sits in the train to the training camp. When he arrives, the first thing he gets is the "suit", some super high tech, which enables him to build all the nice stuff. Then the trainer comes (remember this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 9821#p9821 ) and shows him all the training areas he needs. You can imagine this camp as a very big map departed by training zones. It's a bit like in Portal: If you enter a zone it resets to its initial state, you can try to achive a goal in that zone or leave the zone at every time. The zones are easy, but in many cases they reveal their full potential after digging much deeper. But to be able to go with the ship on the next morning (!), you need to solve minimum 1 test (of 20-30?). Good enough!
After solving the first test he will be forced to go, to make place for the other 399 vanguards, which also need a test today. And so he goes to the planet, is waked up after 600 years, 400 years too early, because a meteor destroyed half of the ice shield of the ship on the way, so this was a planet with "minimal, non intelligent life" and good enough for colonization in such case.
His job is to built ... forests. So we follow him, how he drives along forests. Not his own, natives! Then he is in the middle of a complete dessert and tries to plant trees into dry sand (no water yet) and goes back to the camp for lunch, when he saw, that all is lost. All rockets crashed due to some unknown enemy, the ship was also hit, the whole crew lost their lives the board computer took over and brought the ship to Lagrange point 4 (see wiki). Character is now the last on the planet and now the real hard live (and story) begins, when the board computer asked Character to make the whole thing alone. Then the last communication satellite is destroyed and Character is really, really, really alone. Night comes and the first biters make him see the danger.
The missions follow then. The advantage is now compared to the current, that everything the player needs is already explained. And if not, the player can replay the training zones. The suit gives him the ability to "dream back" into the training zones. So the player can nearly always come back.
You can remove many explanations, remove stupid training levels and make a much stronger learning curve. Instead you bring in content, make cool maps, reveal the secret how they killed all the people and destroyed the rockets (I've really no idea how), we found the "big boss" and brought him something important which changed his opinion and gave the menkind a last chance and in the end we are in the free game.
Thomas wrote back,
Well, of course I know that.slpwnd wrote:those are some very good ideas. The first (or zero) level on earth is an intriguing concept - the only danger I can see is not to "scare away" people with the complexity waiting for them ahead. But it does make sense and there is a lot of space for some story unfolding. The biggest problem is that it is a LOT of work. And I mean really a lot. I know that current demo is not glamorous but still took us ages (figure out the levels, rough playthrough, tweaking the details, testing on someone who hasn't seen it before, etc.). We have plenty of things on our plates at the moment (finish the trailer, stabilize 0.9, do the taxes administration, tweak the oil industry, work on sound integration, improve circuit networks, the multiplayer!, the list goes on for a while . If you could post what you have written below somewhere to ideas / suggestions so it doesn't get burried in my inbox only that would be nice. For now we will have to do with what we have.
The idea was to introduce a story framework, something, which is needed to enable parallelization of work. Of course: it must not be exactly this story. But something, which enables to create levels or "zones".
Because that is one huge, huge amount of work, to create nice maps, create a story, trigger events, make it playable...
My opinion: That can't be done by this team. Not yet.
So the logic is simple: If we want something like that, it must be done by us. We have the manpower to do this.
Besides many other problems this will bring (this story is too technically for me, why does it take 600 years, Character as name is too ridiculous, why does the mothership has an ice shield? Well the last one is already explained here: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ield#p8702 ) there are technical gaps, which needs to be done by the devs. Things like: how can we "reset" parts of the map, how to control the interaction between map parts, or turn parts of the map off, because too much CPU and too far away. How can we have more characters in the game, how can we create and control some conversation between them, depending on what the player does. How can we set up "targets" in an easy way? An "invisible tier," which enables complex wire logic, which makes creation of maps with logic much easier (of course not replaces LUA but makes level design much easier). Copy parts of a map into another within the map editor. And some dozen of things more. I stop here, because it won't lead into the wrong direction to fix up on the details.
Because in the end we have some competitions:
- which is the best story, which fits into the technical needs of splitting the campaign and the tutorial
- which is the best level/zone for that part of the story...
- best dialogs for that level, how will they bring the story forward?
- best graphics for special entities.
And so on...
I try to be realistic: I don't see that happen before summer. Even if this is wanted is not clear. There is the multiplayer thing, they need to go for the mass market. Many open questions.
But only now is the chance to begin such a thing. The right number of competent people.
So, to those who read till to the end: who would like that direction of development? Who would like just to begin, not knowing what will happen, or if the work was for the garbage?And what will the devs think about it?
