Tutorial idea

[TheLastProject]

Click here to go to the post with the latest map download!
LOW QUALITY VIDEO

I have noticed a lot of people do not understand the special movement of Red Eclipse, and I therefore want to ask about adding a tutorial to the game. When the game will be started for the first time, a screen will appear after entering your nickname, asking you if you would want to do the tutorial. Upon answering yes, the special tutorial map will be loaded. Below I have written my idea of how this would work.

--- Movement Introduction ---
Room: Small room with a door in front of you and right of you.
Text spoken: "Welcome to Red Eclipse. Red Eclipse is a free, both in monetary sense and free as in freedom, single and multiplayer first person shooter. You can quit the tutorial at any time by pressing the Escape key on your keyboard. If you have played a shooter game before and only want an explanation of the features that are exclusive to Red Eclipse, please go through the portal on your right. *short pause* In Red Eclipse, movement is done using the W, A, S and D keys. W causes you to move forward, A causes you to move to the left, S causes you to move backwards and D causes you to move to your right. Please practice around with this for a bit and continue through the door in front of you when you are ready."
Moving through the door in front of you lets you enter the next room and the door closes as soon as you've entered the room.
Moving through the door right of you teleports you to the "Advanced Movement training".

--- Basic Weapon Training ---
Room: Relatively small room with a stationary bot which respawns after being killed behind a relatively low fence you can easily shoot above. On the right of you is one copy of every weapon. In front of you is a door.
Text spoken: "Welcome to the basic weapon training. In Red Eclipse, players aim their weapon with the mouse. Moving the mouse in a certain direction causes your crosshair to do the same. Every weapon has two firing modes, the primary firing mode is used with the left mouse button and the secondary firing mode with the right mouse button. Please aim your crosshair on the bot and kill him by using either the primary or secondary firing mode."
- After the bot has been killed -
Text spoken: "Good job. If you want to practice with the firing modes of the other weapons available on Red Eclipse, please pick them up by walking towards them and pressing the E key. You can them switch by using the number keys on your keyboard or the scrolling wheel on your mouse. Please continue through the door if you are done practicing.

--- Advanced Movement Training ---
Room: A longer room with a relatively small gap which cannot be jumped over with a single jump but can be jumped over using the impulse system. If you die you get transported back to the beginning of the room. Behind the gap is a larger wall, which cannot be double jumped over.
Text spoken: "Welcome to the Advanced Movement Training. Red Eclipse features special parkour-like movement which allows you to reach places that would otherwise be inaccessible. To bridge this gap, please make use of the impulse system. To do so, walk towards the gap, press the spacebar key to jump and press it again mid-air to impulse forward."
- After the gap has been crossed -
Text spoken: "Good job. You may have noticed that the bar above the health bar went down for a bit. This is called the impulse bar. Every advanced movement uses a bit of impulse. Don't be afraid though, impulse regenerates pretty quickly. You can even speed up regeneration by holding the crouch key (default C or Left Shift). You're done with the very basic. However, Red Eclipse features a few more movement techniques, which can be accessed by pressing the Q key. To run over this wall, please walk towards it, look upwards and hold the Q key. You will now quickly climb up."
- After the wall has been climbed, it becomes clear there is another gap behind it, similar to the gap in the beginning of the room, only longer -
Text spoken: "Yet again, good job. You may notice that you've already crossed a gap before. That's cool, but this gap is too long to just impulse jump over. You will have to wallrun. To wallrun, walk next to the wall, slightly facing it and hold the Q key until you've crossed it."
- After the gap has been crossed -
Text spoken: "Well done, this concludes the basic parkour training. Please note that the Q key can also be used to kick opponents while moving towards them. We will now continue with the advanced movement training. If this training is too hard, you can go through the door on the right to leave the room. Otherwise, please go through the door in front of you."

--- Advanced Movement Training - Part 2 ---
Room: This is a larger room with a door at the back. After a point is crossed the door will be open for a limited time, forcing the user to use what he has learned well.
Text spoken: "Okay, this is where it gets tough. You will have to go through the door in front of you before it closes. However, simply walking towards it won't do. To make it on time, you will have to make use of a move called the "powerslide". First walk forwards, jump, press and hold the crouch key before you hit the ground. As you do this, you will gain quite some momentum for a short time. Repeating this action will allow for quick movement at relatively low stamina costs. Use this to reach the door before it closes. To summarize: Walk, jump, hold crouch, repeat."
- After the door has been reached on time -
Text spoken: "Good job. There is only one move left for us to talk about, the powerjump. To do a powerjump, powerslide, aim towards the direction you want to powerjump and press spacebar before releasing the crouch key. Please try to jump onto the platform by using a power jump."
- After the platform has been reached -
Text spoken: "Well done. You have completed the tutorial and are one step ahead on those that haven't yet. Remember that special moves can often be chained to produce efficient ways of evading opponents or traveling across the map. Now get out there and show them how good you are."
A congratulations menu appears, showing two buttons. Button 1: "Okay, show me the server list"; Button 2: "I want to practice offline a bit more before jumping into an online match"

Of course, this is just a general idea and it's most likely too much work to quickly do before the release of version 1.2. I still think it would be worth looking into though, as a large amount of players are unaware of Red Eclipse's movement system, which is what makes the game so special. The tutorial could possibly also talk about gamemodes or even mutators, though I do not consider that necessary as most of them speak for themselves and are explained in the loading screen. I wouldn't mind making a relatively simple map for this myself (even though I'm sure others can do it better), but I would need someone else to do the vocals and I want to know if there is any support for this idea in the first place.

[inpersona64]

Let me be the first to say that this is a swell idea. Very few games have tutorials for noobs..er, I mean new players. And in fact it also helps them get a taste of this "new" game. Off the top of my head, the only games I can think of that have sort of a tutorial before you start playing are Team Fortress 2, Killzone 3, and Call of Duty 4 (listed in order of sequel number :P). And there are probably plenty of ways to create a tutorial for RE but I think your way works. Although, I was thinking that there could be an advanced weapon training stage, but doesn't actually have to be included in the tutorial since you only really need basic weapon training to play anyway. But now that I think of it, Advanced Weapon Training is probably what Campaign is for. I know that Warhawk (another game with tutorial) has about 6 tutorials but only 5 you have to complete before playing online. So the Advanced Weapons Tutorial (which may or may not be deemed unnecessary) could be the sixth but not in the main tutorial playthrough.

[qreeves]

If someone creates a map and needs something to be supported for it, I will generally add it. Until that point, I do so much already that a simple suggestion isn't enough to get me to do it; I wanna see that it is actually going to be used first :P

[TheLastProject]

If someone creates a map and needs something to be supported for it, I will generally add it. Until that point, I do so much already that a simple suggestion isn't enough to get me to do it; I wanna see that it is actually going to be used first :P

Of course, of course. You're already doing a great job quin, don't want to stress you too much :P I'll have an attempt at creating a simple map for it these days and will post it to give the community the possibility of giving comments regarding it before it will be used as a tutorial map. Or, of course, have their own attempt at making something that pretty much HAS to be better than my version :P

[TheLastProject]

I decided to update you guys, I have uploaded the map files in this post.

This will become a YouTube link of me going through the tutorial map as quickly as possible.

I still need to add lightning, spice the map up a lot, get some good vocals and get it to play decently. Besides that, I'll have to get quin (or someone else) to make me a mode called "Tutorial" which is basically Onslaught Time-trial without the timer, with pistol as starting weapon and with the ability to pick other weapons up. Besides that, it needs to show a dialogue allowing you to select what to do. My current idea is three options:
1. Play Online
2. Practice movement (put you into a time-trial testchamber room) <--- up for discussion
3. Back to main menu

If you want to try, I recommend you to try it on Onslaught Time-trial to test the map in general or Onslaught Deathmatch to be able to test the basic weapon training. I want to add vocals and, when possible, use a change quin has planned to show the instructions on-screen as well.

Again, this is only a first version, I still want to take a lot of time making it look better while retaining it's simple look but I wanted to give you guys a basic idea.

(P.S. The wind effect is a placeholder for instructional vocals. I am open to tips on how to make the map better.)

[TheLastProject]

Some texture adjustments and added lights. Looks so much better that even though it's not done yet I want to share it NOW.
Please disregard the previous version.

Again: If you want to try, I recommend you to try it on Onslaught Time-trial to test the map in general or Onslaught Deathmatch to be able to test the basic weapon training.

Video (low quality): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sAQyNG-MSU