I read through all the current chapters and made notes as I went. Most are just raw suggestions and thoughts that occurred as I went through it and you are free to take them or leave them, but they are things I think are worth considering or would provide some benefit to the presentation or usefulness of the guide. Some may be blatantly outside of what you consider the guides purpose so feel free to ignore them if that is the case. Good work!
1- Spoiler your images. I am using an old out of the box non-widescreen monitor at the moment and without spoilers the only scrollbar is at the bottom of the post and I need to scroll the entire post or open the image in another tab if I want to see the full things.
2- I don't think animal/creature descriptions are entirely cosmetic.
Specifically they can be informative. I am relatively certain the describe certain things about the animals. ie, quite fat means high fat produced on slaughter. Incredibly muscular means higher physical attributes and higher meat returns on slaughter. Further and I need to look at this some more but I think sheep's description actually changes depending on how long it has been since the last shearing. The fat and sheep comments are untested at this point but I noticed a sheep's wool descriptor change from long to extremely long, and there is a thread about getting greater butchering returns from your smaller pigs through inventive use of a drowning chamber and necromancy and how it changes in particular descriptors involving muscles.
3- The Ascii is fine, but you might consider using and Ascii tileset so that width and height look the same. Or presenting an alternate version of the initial file that does. For a tutorial Ascii makes considerably more sense than a graphics tileset especially since there are some graphical issues with text and tilesets but the uneven width/height can be gamebreaking. This is more of an OCD-type issue on my part, my brain can no longer stop screaming that the tile width and height are different. Also consider making special note of the fact that x and y do not appear the same length.
4- I get telling them what to dig out when you did in Chapter 1 but you really should show them as well. If you plan on revisiting them and doing so in later chapters link to what it should look like.
5- I would consider putting a rectangle around the carpenter's workshop. I know the image is small but their screen won't necessarily be, so the quicker they can see how much or little difference they should expect to see the quicker they can get back to it.
As a play along you should note when the game is paused and when it isn't and expect readers to flip between playing and reading the guide. If possible add point form summaries and order lists in spoilers at the end of each chapter so instead of having to flip between this guide, the game, and notepad they can only need to go from this game to this guide. May not be possible with dig orders so try and consolidate them as much as possible. I saw parts of this already implemented as I read past interlude 1.
6- I don't know if it works on the starting seven but I am pretty certain you can alter what labours are activated when a dwarf appears in the init file. By default this is set to SKILLS but there are other options.
7- Maybe it doesn't matter and you are fine to do so but I would stay away from negatively emphasizing the usefullness of any skill in an objective sense. "A skill I rarely/never use" and "A rarely useful skill" are okay but "another useless skill" isn't. Main reason here is to stop people from thinking they can't or shouldn't use those skills.
8- When primarily dealing with the menu get rid of the rest of the screen shot unless it is in some way vital.
9-
You seem to be going out of your way to make sure things go well for the new player, but maybe consider letting them have a little FUN. The frozen ponds present a good opportunity for this. By building your forge on one you can create a situation wherein it deconstructs and drops the anvil in the water. Besides giving them a WTF moment it is something that can be resolved through the use of a screw pump which allows you to introduce that device in a simple use.
10- When you talk about resizing farm plots or zones for that matter consider mentioning the maximum size or that there is one.
11- Fertilizer is considerably effective when you have small farms and unskilled planters. Not worth noting during chapter four but worthwhile noting somewhere else.
12- Crops that aren't year round have a downside currently. If you plant too close to the end of the last season a crop can grow in you can lose your seeds and if you don't have any grown crops it can be problematic to get more seeds.
13- While grazers are added to the pasture of their mother anything hatched in a nest box is not.
14- Consider stylizing commands and keystrokes. s doesn't stand out nearly as much as
s or
's' especially in text walls.
Spelling/Grammar/Typo errors:
-Near the start of Chapter One you say "their own time and an an order of their choosing" when I believe you mean "their own time and in an order of their choosing".
-While Designating areas for digging you say "one 2x2 and the other 3x3" but the image implies that one of the rooms is 2x3.
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Topic: Tabarkel: A play-along tutorial for a complete newcomer (Read 13844 times)