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[blue sam3]

I was flicking through the devlists, and found this:

Core19, TUTORIALS, (Future): Set up small tutorial files that you can load up. These would have text instructions and little activities for you to do so you can learn how to play more easily.

As I read it, I thought to myself "Toady doesn't need to do much of that beyond the final polishing. We can do most of it ourselves."

In essence, we can just embark in suitably easy locations, get fortresses up to the stage/situation where they can start on whatever we're teaching them, then write a tutorial from there on how to do it. Then, whenever Toady gets around to implementing the tutorial, he can just include our tutorial fortresses and use the text we write.

Suggested tutorials:

- Embarking (obviously, just needs the text and possibly a pre-generated, reasonably easy world with at least one spot that's easy to find)
- Starting up (find the site, embark, then write from there)
- Industries (just have a fortress ready to start on that industry, with plenty of the raw materials available):

• Wood
• Stone
• Farming

- Ghills

• Fishing
• Meat (inc. tanning/bone industry?)
• Metal
• Beekeeping
• Soap
• Glass
• Ceramics
• Gems
• Textiles

- Healthcare (injure some people, save and start writing. Might need a few different saves so it doesn't get overwhelming)
- Military (Setting up squads, orders, etc.)
- Nobles (Keeping them happy, different types, possibly save just before you get the baron promotion offer)
- Trade (Save with a caravan about to arrive and plenty of goods available to trade, or earlier and cover what to use for trades)
- Caverns (Uses, dangers, management)
- Engineering (power, mechanisms, traps)
- Water & Magma manipulation
- Fortress design (A bit more difficult to do properly, could take in all manner of things)
- Keeping your dwarves happy


- Adventure mode start-up
- Movement (inc. fast travel)
- Combat
- Item management/acquisition
- Food, drink & sleep
- Weather, night time and the like
- Talking & Companions
- Quests




Obviously, there's a lot (including all of the ones I've missed). Anyone fancy doing one or two?

[lordnincompoop]

I was about to request this be moved to DF Suggestions, but this seems to be different enough to stay here.

The best choice, however, would probably be to take advantage of the existing content. Reorganise this as a project to expand upon the tutorials and guides already present in the DF Wiki - and finally make an organised, central guide to the whole thing.

I very much doubt you'll be able to succeed and establish yourself without taking advantage of what there is already, especially considering the immense amount of work and text you're proposing. You'll also most likely get a lot more exposure if you publish it on the Wiki, because of its already-established nature.

All that aside, I'd be willing to help write or edit tutorials for syntax and style.

[Ghills]

I'd be willing to help with this too. Tutorial saves have already been proposed in a couple of places, and I think it's a great idea.

[blue sam3]

I'd be willing to help with this too. Tutorial saves have already been proposed in a couple of places, and I think it's a great idea.

Great. Any particular one(s) you'd like to do?

[BigD145]

For most, if not all, of these you could use a tiny world with a 1x1 embark. I would also recommend using the built in Notes.

[Ghills]

I'd be willing to help with this too. Tutorial saves have already been proposed in a couple of places, and I think it's a great idea.

Great. Any particular one(s) you'd like to do?

I think I'll start on farming. There's a lot of confusion around it in the forums (irrigation, seasons, when seeds appear on the planting list, etc) and it's a pretty awesome thing. 

I actually really like the farming setup in DF. A lot of people stop at plump-helmets-on-repeat. But there's so much that can be done with farming, and so much that goes into setting up a realistic farming scenario.

Should we all use the same embark for the tutorials? It might help keep player confusion to a minimum.

I'll try to gen an embark with everything and post it here. Other people can use it too, instead of getting.

[blue sam3]

I'd be willing to help with this too. Tutorial saves have already been proposed in a couple of places, and I think it's a great idea.

Great. Any particular one(s) you'd like to do?

I think I'll start on farming. There's a lot of confusion around it in the forums (irrigation, seasons, when seeds appear on the planting list, etc) and it's a pretty awesome thing. 

I actually really like the farming setup in DF. A lot of people stop at plump-helmets-on-repeat. But there's so much that can be done with farming, and so much that goes into setting up a realistic farming scenario.

Should we all use the same embark for the tutorials? It might help keep player confusion to a minimum.

I'll try to gen an embark with everything and post it here. Other people can use it too, instead of getting.

Yeah, that sounds great.

For most, if not all, of these you could use a tiny world with a 1x1 embark. I would also recommend using the built in Notes.

2x2, for those without any of the various utilities that allow you to embark 1x1. Agreed on the notes thing.

[Ghills]

I've got a farming-friendly embark up at http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=4860. Other people are welcome to use it if they want. It doesn't have iron or flux, but it's got a volcano, clay, lots of wood and plants.  And a sheer cliff that cuts the embark in half.
I use the Phoebus tileset, but you can clear that out if you want to (LNP -> install default graphics is the easiest way).

I haven't done anything yet, so the uploaded embark is open for whomever wants to use it. 

I'm going to set up a farming sub-fort that's mostly in the soil layers. This tutorial will cover:

-Underground farming
-Aboveground farming
-Fertilizer
-Crop rotation
-Breaching the caverns and walling them off again
-Tree farming

I figure that I'll eventually have a zip file with the savegame and a tutorial file, as well as an abbreviated tutorial here is this thread that can serve as a reference.

[Kon]

The Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress helped me a great deal to learn how to play, especially the tips on how to use magma for forges. However, one thing that is obvious from reading these forums is the huge variety in how people play. A tutorial should not be so detailed as to say "this is how you do it."

[Ghills]

Depends on what you're talking about.  If you're talking about what a player should do, or why they should do something, I totally agree with you.

But we're talking about How in this thread. How do you use a farm? How do you set up seasonal rotations? How do you process plants?   For that, specific steps should be provided, otherwise the tutorial is useless.