With the campaign abandonded and Freeplay becoming the only "main" mode for Factorio, the question of how to help new players has come up. It is already planned to update the mini-tutorials before 1.0 (it says so in the FFF).
The devs have a lot on their plate ahead of them, between finishing the graphics, fleshing out the soundscape, and rewriting most of the GUIs, there is a lot to do. So why not offload some of that to the community?
My proposal is to start a mini-tutorials GitHub repo, where the devs and the community can collaborate on making new and fleshing out current mini-tutorials. This will (hopefully) result in a higher quality and higher quantity of mini-tutorials, covering all major concepts in the game.
Thoughts?
Involving the community in the creation of mini-tutorials
Involving the community in the creation of mini-tutorials
Don't forget, you're here forever.
Re: Involving the community in the creation of mini-tutorials
I find that idea to be interesting. Not sure how it should be done thought. I can see a few problems.
Problems I see with it:
At the moment there is no easy support for it outside passing blueprints to each other or downloading mods.
What kind of creations should be made?
The devs would need to playtest at least the finnished product. And create a support system for everything. I don´t know if it is more or less then what it would take to do it themselvs. The question is if their problem is the lack of good ideas, a lack of quality or a lack of something else.
What is it you need a tutorial for and what is it that is fun to figure out yourself? The basic controls and the basic usage of items. I guess is a good start. But how much should be in a tutorial and what should be on the forums? What is the basic controllers?
For example circuit, what tutorials should it be there? A walktrough of common use? A list of simple contraptions? Nothing at all?
Brainstorming:
I think the question a tutorial should answear is "what". What is it good for? Then have the players themself figure out where.
Should "How" also be answered or that might depend on what level you are on. How you reaserch might be needed to explain, I remember that I missed the first time that I had to start it myself. But not how to set up a Kovarex enrichment process. Even thought it might be harder the second part. But I see that as something you should explore, The first is one that you need for playing.
The community can create maps where something is lacking and ask the player to fix it.
+ Easy to make
- Can get really complex really fast.
- You are forced to try to figure out other peoples code.
- We can´t limit what is accessible. It is easier in tutorials when you don´t have access to everything from the start.
Problems I see with it:
At the moment there is no easy support for it outside passing blueprints to each other or downloading mods.
What kind of creations should be made?
The devs would need to playtest at least the finnished product. And create a support system for everything. I don´t know if it is more or less then what it would take to do it themselvs. The question is if their problem is the lack of good ideas, a lack of quality or a lack of something else.
What is it you need a tutorial for and what is it that is fun to figure out yourself? The basic controls and the basic usage of items. I guess is a good start. But how much should be in a tutorial and what should be on the forums? What is the basic controllers?
For example circuit, what tutorials should it be there? A walktrough of common use? A list of simple contraptions? Nothing at all?
Brainstorming:
I think the question a tutorial should answear is "what". What is it good for? Then have the players themself figure out where.
Should "How" also be answered or that might depend on what level you are on. How you reaserch might be needed to explain, I remember that I missed the first time that I had to start it myself. But not how to set up a Kovarex enrichment process. Even thought it might be harder the second part. But I see that as something you should explore, The first is one that you need for playing.
The community can create maps where something is lacking and ask the player to fix it.
+ Easy to make
- Can get really complex really fast.
- You are forced to try to figure out other peoples code.
- We can´t limit what is accessible. It is easier in tutorials when you don´t have access to everything from the start.
Re: Involving the community in the creation of mini-tutorials
Without any knowledge on the technical aspect of things , the idea is appealing.
I have seen more and more "soft-mod" in multiplayer being very popular, some sort of scenarios that you don't need to reload the game to play, some of them as example having a hidden indestructible silo you have to find.
On the same vein there could be puzzle with rails where some rails or signals are missing, or schedule condition are not set, most things would be built already, not minable not destructible, only a small set of pieces would be handled to the player, similar to the belt madness scenario, and you have the possibility to retry and check the error you've made fast.
Same for combinator, you'd need to place or remove a few wire to make the lamp turn from red to green, or open a gate with a timing for trains not to crash.
Or for robots, you'd have to place some chest or roboport only some location are available and you don't have enough to fill in all location to force a decision. Some of them would allow to achieve objective (or faster). You could also have the chest already placed but no request set-up. Or very simple level where you just have to place logistic robots in a roboport and construction robots in another roboports to win the level. ( player actknowledge the difference between logistic area and construction area, player actknowledge that some areas connect to form a bigger network ect).
It would be a mix of making the player use the different tools at least once and also showing a simple example of why they are in the game.
Crafting being prevented to reduce the amount of weird things that can happen.
The scripting part to describe the starting condition and win condition or any kind of prompt to give instructions if it could be handled by the editor would allow for easy access to every single player willing to attempt something, and if the mod portal could handle scenario, then it would allow easy horizontal interaction, people making scenarios and people playing them. There would be room from hyper-basic tutorial, to very hard challenges. A vote system may help sorting out the most appropriate/enjoyable form of design that are possible. Also the level of complexity that is relevant/possible.
Maybe the editor already allow what i describe and i don't know about it, a section on the forum "scenario" "editor" could help gather ressources on how to use it and be an appropriate place to learn about what other people are doing with it.
In any case, some small scenario, the kind of which you can do when you have an hour , would receive my attention, and i think would complement the game wether a GitHub or not.
I have seen more and more "soft-mod" in multiplayer being very popular, some sort of scenarios that you don't need to reload the game to play, some of them as example having a hidden indestructible silo you have to find.
On the same vein there could be puzzle with rails where some rails or signals are missing, or schedule condition are not set, most things would be built already, not minable not destructible, only a small set of pieces would be handled to the player, similar to the belt madness scenario, and you have the possibility to retry and check the error you've made fast.
Same for combinator, you'd need to place or remove a few wire to make the lamp turn from red to green, or open a gate with a timing for trains not to crash.
Or for robots, you'd have to place some chest or roboport only some location are available and you don't have enough to fill in all location to force a decision. Some of them would allow to achieve objective (or faster). You could also have the chest already placed but no request set-up. Or very simple level where you just have to place logistic robots in a roboport and construction robots in another roboports to win the level. ( player actknowledge the difference between logistic area and construction area, player actknowledge that some areas connect to form a bigger network ect).
It would be a mix of making the player use the different tools at least once and also showing a simple example of why they are in the game.
Crafting being prevented to reduce the amount of weird things that can happen.
The scripting part to describe the starting condition and win condition or any kind of prompt to give instructions if it could be handled by the editor would allow for easy access to every single player willing to attempt something, and if the mod portal could handle scenario, then it would allow easy horizontal interaction, people making scenarios and people playing them. There would be room from hyper-basic tutorial, to very hard challenges. A vote system may help sorting out the most appropriate/enjoyable form of design that are possible. Also the level of complexity that is relevant/possible.
Maybe the editor already allow what i describe and i don't know about it, a section on the forum "scenario" "editor" could help gather ressources on how to use it and be an appropriate place to learn about what other people are doing with it.
In any case, some small scenario, the kind of which you can do when you have an hour , would receive my attention, and i think would complement the game wether a GitHub or not.