Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Dirust had an interesting idea of how to construct a tutorial for dwarf fortress.  Rather than just create a starter pack consisting of a pack of tools to use that "aid" the game (Aid in parenthesis as in my experience, its just one more UI that you have to learn because it is "required" (No it isn't.  You can play just fine without it.)), it would consist of those, plus a set of worlds that have a list of goals to accomplish (Maybe different iterations, constantly building, of the same fort for the more localized), with earlier goals explaining step by step how to dig, channel, and the such, while later ones being akin to 'eliminate the siege' and giving a whole slew of methods to accomplish that have been explained earlier.  Potentially up to the point of installing mods (though with PyLNP introducing its easy mod install tab, possibly unnecessary.)

Building off of that was utilizing DFhack to send off messages and pieces of advice (maybe in the announcements?) that could help the player.  Considering how that would rely upon monitoring the game, I'm not entirely sure how that could be done, but I would bet someone would figure it out.

Whatever we wind up doing, this would lower the barrier of entry, so it would probably be a good idea to get going with.

[Thurasiz]

Sounds really interesting.
About sending the Information, and tracking them, i could imagine something like that to be possible with DFHack scripts.
I'm definitly not knowing how, but considering some functions provide a GUI ingame, and obviously can track what's going on in the game, makes me think that someone who knows his way around DFHack could make something like a questsystem to issue and track the tasks the player needs to fullfill.

[Putnam]

I've thought about this, with the only problem being that I have no idea how to properly write a tutorial.

But I'm pretty confident that I could put together the DFHack advice/goal stuff.

[Urist Arrhenius]

This sounds really cool. I'll contribute in any way I can, once we have a better sense of the grunt work necessary.

[neblime]

I know nothing about modding/programming in the least
but I could imagine a tutorial where you have a series of set goals to accomplish, with instructions along the way...
Is it possible to make popups come up in game sensitive to what's actually going on? i.e. your first goal is to dig a tile, and you designate the tile, but have no miners maybe a popup comes up saying you need to change urist's labours that sort of thing

[Putnam]

Yes, it should be with DFHack.

[Dirst]

A good starting point might be the Adventurer and Fort Quick-Start Guides.  A pre-generated world will give a known environment, the hard part will be getting DFHack to monitor the player's actions to detect task completions, with the stretch goal of offering somewhat relevant advice (picture the advisors in a Civilization game).

The design question is whether it operates within the game, or as a second window.  A second window would need Stonesense-like visibility into the running game, and all else equal I think that's the way to go.

The tutorial window itself would keep a running tab of assignments and what has been accomplished... possibly in a generalizable xml-style configuration that can be used later by modders for quests and/or their own tutorials.  The only thing missing is a semi-animated picture of the Urist Assistant offering advice.  (Oh, the cruel things I use to do that assistant with VBA!)

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Here's a thought as to what the structure we could use:

First set of tutorials would be about the basics of Fortress mode.  Second could deal with Adventure mode.  Third could deal with all the advanced things you can do in both modes.  Fourth could be utilization of extraneous utilities.  Fifth could be modding.

A good starting point might be the Adventurer and Fort Quick-Start Guides.

Think we should keep them as is or have them rewritten where they are dictated by a dwarf?

[Sanctume]

I've learned from watching YouTube videos, but it was a pain at the time.

There are so many DF Let's Play Tutorial--but most of them are waste of time.
Because, really, when I search YT, "Dwarf Fortress Dig A Well"--I would get a list of videos, but the portion of building a well is somewhere in minute 45-47.
The basic key strokes of building a well is in the wiki, sure.

But the actual motions of digging, having an idea on where the water will be, and how to breach the river from z+0 to feed in the fort without flooding the whole thing... where's that easy tutorial?

Really, it should be at most a minute video.  I have had to write down notes, making my own descriptions on what that task is, and referenced time stamps to which bookmarks I have to watch the video again, and also write down the keys being pressed.  Not all DF videos have that extra app that displays keypresses, which is really nice.

I would say that CaptainDucks video are great intro/tutorial.  But I think it would be worth improving a community tutorial by having the wiki style search pages; updated to point to the correct video time-stamp snippets that covers the question/topic,. Without slogging through 30+ minutes or hours of video just to find that one hint, it would increase the likelihood of easing the learning curve.

Just imagine going to the wiki on "Digging a Well" and then have a bunch of pages, each with descriptions, and transcripts of key presses and steps, and links to the video to see how it's done.

Now make that an app, so someone from work without playing DF can go browse and learn DF using their phone.

edit: typos.

[Dirst]

A good starting point might be the Adventurer and Fort Quick-Start Guides.

Think we should keep them as is or have them rewritten where they are dictated by a dwarf?

It's unlikely that existing materials will be in a drop-in format (as Sanctume learned the hard way), but those existing materials can be an excellent guide of what topics to include.  Whether everything is done in the Urist Assistant's "voice" or not, they should be re-done so that they have an internally consistent "voice".

[4maskwolf]

What things would we want tutorials for, specifically?  We should establish that before moving any farther.

Basic Fortress Tutorials (in no particular order):
1. Designation commands.
2. Building commands.
3. Room building.
4. Trading
5. Basic professions
6. ?

Basic Adventure Tutorials (in no particular order):
1. Finding equipment
2. Fighting normal enemies
3. Recruiting companions
4. Survival
5. Adventuring (Bandits, criminals, creatures of the night, wild animals, etc)
6. ?

Advanced Fortress Tutorials (in no particular order):
1. Military
2. Advanced building construction (wells, magmaworks, etc)
3. Aquifer breaching
4. ?

Advanced Adventure Tutorials (in no particular order):
1. Fighting harder enemies: strategies (fighting megabeasts and other powerful creatures)
2. Adventuring continued (vaults, goblin sites, megabeast attacks)
3. ?

Utilities (in no particular order):
1. Further use of DFHack (bugfix and game improvement commands)
2. Dwarf Therapist (how to use)
3. ?

Modding (in no particular order):
1. Modifying and creating raw files
2. Avoiding raw duplication
3. Basic modding (creatures, inorganics, entities, plants, etc)
4. Advanced modding (syndromes, interactions)
5. ?

[Sanctume]

Don't really need to re-invent the wheel of tutorials, because the wiki starter guide is quite helpful, but not perfect.

People learn differently.  Some can learn by just reading.  Some can learn from hearing instructions.  Some need to see the steps demonstrated in order to copy.  Some needs more details than necessary.

Your approach is fine, but I fear that you are going to be overwhelmed or burned out when you begin to expand the scope to start covering Advanced concepts.

The key is to get feedback so that you can gauge how well the tutorials are being received, or how userful.

[Dirst]

Don't really need to re-invent the wheel of tutorials, because the wiki starter guide is quite helpful, but not perfect.

People learn differently.  Some can learn by just reading.  Some can learn from hearing instructions.  Some need to see the steps demonstrated in order to copy.  Some needs more details than necessary.

Your approach is fine, but I fear that you are going to be overwhelmed or burned out when you begin to expand the scope to start covering Advanced concepts.

The key is to get feedback so that you can gauge how well the tutorials are being received, or how userful.

The basic idea is to package a saved game with instructions, and a DFHack plugin to watch for those instructions to be carried out.  With the known save, there's no chance of not having iron ore... or of hitting an aquifer four Z-levels below the surface.  It doesn't put the player on rails, but it does try to make sure there are no fallen trees blocking the road.

[orbcontrolled]

The Mayday tutorial was what first got me started in Dwarf Fortress, is that still floating around? It might make a good starting point.

I'm going to put out the suggestion of using DFHack to turn off certain elements of the game early on. Set all wild animal region-pops to 0 until needed, turn on autolabor, disable ghosts, etc.

Something like:

Labor permissions (or just "labors") allow you to set which kinds of work each of your dwarves is allowed to do. Labors are a way of making sure that certain dwarves are always concentrating on certain tasks; So that you can order, say, your skilled metalsmith not to waste his valuable skills trying to do woodworking or cooking.

You don't have to worry about labors, because right now DFHack#autolabor is managing them for you. If you order a job to be done, DFHack will ensure that at least a couple of your most suitable dwarves are given permission to do that kind of work. You can play the game this way as long as you like with few downsides, but tutorial ## will tell you how to partially or completely disable this feature so that you can dedicate certain dwarves to certain tasks for optimal workplace efficiency.

I also considered that DFHack could also disable drink/food/sleep for fewer distractions, but I'm seriously reconsidering that after writing the following in my head 

Dwarves need to eat, drink, and sleep to survive. Your dwarves will begrudgingly sleep on the ground in the absence of beds, but more worryingly it looks like your tutorial-master has neglected to send along any food or booze!

Since this map has no ready water source, you have roughly # months to complete this tutorial before your dwarves die of dehydration. Don't worry too much if that happens, it just means that your reclaim party will have to clear out the corpses before continuing their predecessors unfinished work.

(The more I think about it, the idea of "corpses piling up over time" would be an amazing stretch goal to incorporate some day. The first tutorial starts with a scripted animal attack that kills half your dwarves and the first lesson is in proper corpse-handling. Then the "designating" tutorial kills a miner to teach about cave-ins, the woodcutter gets eaten by a bear to show the dangers of letting your dwarves roam far and wide, fisherdwarf gets attacked by carp, etc. DFHack generates migrant waves as needed, and the corpses just keep piling up as each lesson costs the lives of one or more dwarves. First major tutorial section ends with setting up a rag-tag military to defend against a goblin ambush, and the fortress falling.)

Your fortress has crumbled to its end. Congratulations! You have successfully completed the first tutorial."

[Urist McVoyager]

Soundsense does keep track of the world, in order to know what sounds to play when. So DFHack definitely will be able to add a plugin for a tutorial.

There also should be a tutorial for worldgen and picking your embark site, or else people will get lost before they even start.