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Abandoned Ingame explanation officer system

Grey Roger said:
I'd prefer it to be the other way round with the quest dialog several lines down, so that you have to actively select it rather than actively not select it.
Click to expand...
The point is that we need to (almost) force this on beginning players so that they WILL get to know what they need to know and don't have to spam this forum (or me in person, which happens more often than I'd like) to figure things out.
The tutorial in the Standard Storyline and some Free Play scenarios also has to be actively avoided; blindly pressing Space will continue it.
Which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Experienced players who know about things should be allowed to avoid this, of course.
We could make it difficulty-related, for example; I have done that before with several sorts of ingame hints.
On Apprentice and Journeyman the hints will be there, but not on Adventurer and Swashbuckler.

The default setting on the Standard storyline is Apprentice. That is also the one with the Tutorial.
If I recall, the Free Play storyline is Journeyman and would then also have the hints plus @Levis' suggestion enabled.
The other storylines wouldn't have it at the top of the dialog, though the option should still be there for those who want it.
You can choose your difficulty at any point in the game, so you have control yourself over having the option at the top of the dialog or not.

Would something like that make sense?
 
Yes, that definitely makes sense. Lots of help for novice players who choose a lower difficulty level, either knowingly because they're new to the game or unknowingly because they just accept what's given by default. Experienced players can choose a higher difficulty level and skip the help sections. :yes

I wonder if the tutorial can be extended to have you required to hire an officer? Officers are far more important now than they were in the original game when that tutorial was written, so it might be a good idea to tell this to a novice. Malcolm Hatcher could tell you that competent officers are important, point out the two ways of getting one, then the player has to hire an officer and that leads to the new explanation system. Bypassing the tutorial by choosing Stormy Start or a storyline which doesn't have it, and starting at a higher difficulty level, could then avoid the officer explanation quest.
 
Grey Roger said:
I wonder if the tutorial can be extended to have you required to hire an officer? Officers are far more important now than they were in the original game when that tutorial was written, so it might be a good idea to tell this to a novice. Malcolm Hatcher could tell you that competent officers are important, point out the two ways of getting one, then the player has to hire an officer and that leads to the new explanation system. Bypassing the tutorial by choosing Stormy Start or a storyline which doesn't have it, and starting at a higher difficulty level, could then avoid the officer explanation quest.
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I like that idea. :onya
 
I don't want to make the tutorial any longer because it would get boring. That's why I just want it to trigger when you start thinking about officers. Then it's soon enough for it. I will try to make sure it is easy to skip but hard to miss so new players get it.
 
Levis said:
I don't want to make the tutorial any longer because it would get boring.
Click to expand...
Also players who are used to earlier Build versions may *think* they already know everything and/or wouldn't know there is anything new to the tutorial so would skip it and therefore also miss out on the required knowledge.
I know a fair few players in the past missed out the use of the weaponslocker (mentioned very early during the tutorial) and how to increase the various skills (mentioned just after the swordfight).

For several interfaces, there are Tool Tips available. For the F2>Nations Relations one, I added a one-time text message on the screen to notify players of its existence.
You can also right-click on the various skills in the F2>Character Interface and I don't think many people are aware of that functionality either.
 
I think at present avoiding the tutorial means either going for stormy start or still having to do the buy spyglass, sell goods,mend ship, hire crew tasks just untutored. The custom starts allow a skip of those things. How about a toggle (yes another one) in Internalsettings that can be set to allow both a skip of the tutorial (as per a custom start type beginning) and possibly the new proposed officer information explanation (although I for one will do that initially because I don't understand it fully at the moment). Experienced players can the set the toggle and forget all about it.
 
pedrwyth said:
I think at present avoiding the tutorial means either going for stormy start or still having to do the buy spyglass, sell goods,mend ship, hire crew tasks just untutored. The custom starts allow a skip of those things. How about a toggle (yes another one) in Internalsettings that can be set to allow both a skip of the tutorial (as per a custom start type beginning) and possibly the new proposed officer information explanation (although I for one will do that initially because I don't understand it fully at the moment). Experienced players can the set the toggle and forget all about it.
Click to expand...
Toggle? Toggle! Noooooo!!!! I've been trying to get rid of as many toggles as possible.
Anything that can be chosen through gameplay instead of through the Options Menu is much more better as far as I'm concerned. :yes
 
I might also like to mention that I'm quite happy that we're thinking about non-tutorial methods of explaining to players how the game works,
especially also with an eye on figuring how to set of a tutorial in Hearts of Oak once we get to that point.
If the explanation is subtly hidden during gameplay and only done when needed (and not before by front-loading the game with an ever-lasting tutorial),
it might just be more fun and interesting and also more effective. Definitely something worth experimenting with.
Though we can expect to have to go through a few iterations before we can get it "right".
 
So this is my idea for a quest now, I put it in spoiler tags so people who want to be suprised don't need to read it:
When trying to hire your first officer after you've seen the abilities someone will walk towards you in the tavern.
He will tell you you are trying to hire his old officer. He used to be a captain but he is about to retire now. He invites you to visit him at Aruba soon. He still has to take care of some things there and then he will set sail for europe again (this is so the quest will expire after X months).

You can hire the officers or not that wont matter (for now, maybe it will give you are little boost or something later).

If you decide to visit this guy you need to go to Aruba, he will be in one of the houses in the port.
When you talk to him he will tell you he is going to retire but his crew wants to go on and they asked theire former captain to help them decide who will take which position on the ship.
There will be some people in the room with various stats and skills and the captain will ask you to inspect theire skills and stats and assign them a role.
The captain can give you information about the different roles and how it works.

Once you've done this a new person will walk into this house. He is the new captain of the ship and he will have some skills too. He will ask you if you can find out which type of captain he used to be before he was asked by this crew to captain the ship. So based on his skills and such you need to guess if he is a Merchant, navy or pirate captain.

He can also explain to you the differences of these three captain types (these are the ones you will encounter on sea and they have different kind of abilities so this is good to know when fighting them).

After you've done it all you will talk to the old captain again. He will reward you for your help.
This reward will be depended on how many you picked right.
Even if you picked none right you will get a little reward, but if you picked them all right this reward may be something special like an extra ability point or unlocking a random skill or something like that.

So what do you guys think about this?
It might sound hard to make but I think I know how to do it and it actually wont be that had cause most of the code is in place already, I can borrow most of it just from the officer creation codes.

I was thinking of using an officer creation to create these different officers. After that I just overwrite theire type with randchar so they have nothing contributing but you can see which perks they have and which skills they have etc.
 
Doesn't sound bad to me. CoAS style quizzes show up at last, then? :cheeky

Does sound potentially complex and I have to wonder if a simpler solution might be thought of.
But if you say you can do it without all too much doing, I see no reason why not. :doff
 
It's all doable. If I can find the motivation it should be done before the end of next week.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Experienced players who know about things should be allowed to avoid this, of course.
We could make it difficulty-related, for example; I have done that before with several sorts of ingame hints.
On Apprentice and Journeyman the hints will be there, but not on Adventurer and Swashbuckler.

The default setting on the Standard storyline is Apprentice. That is also the one with the Tutorial.
If I recall, the Free Play storyline is Journeyman and would then also have the hints plus @Levis' suggestion enabled.
The other storylines wouldn't have it at the top of the dialog, though the option should still be there for those who want it.
You can choose your difficulty at any point in the game, so you have control yourself over having the option at the top of the dialog or not.
Click to expand...
This apparently has not been done. I started a free-play game as Francis Drake, set the difficulty to "Adventurer", hired a random officer from a table and got stuck with the quest.

So it seems that free-play triggers the quest regardless of what difficulty level you choose. :(
 
Grey Roger said:
This apparently has not been done. I started a free-play game as Francis Drake, set the difficulty to "Adventurer", hired a random officer from a table and got stuck with the quest.
Click to expand...
@Levis only made a first version of it and that hasn't been completed yet.
It is triggered here in PROGRAM\DIALOGS\Enc_Officer_dialog.c:
Code: 
    case "ShowSkills":
       // Aconcagua: LaunchOfficer uses separate interface now
       //PChar.CharacterInterface_ViewEncOfficer = true;       // added after build 11 by KAM
       Diag.CurrentNode = "ReturnfromSkillview";
       NPChar.quest.meeting = NPC_Meeting;
       Pchar.Quest.Last_Enc_Officer = NPChar.Index;
// LDH --> 05Oct06 Bandaid fix for invalid characters, Devlin, 33_Piratess10, etc.  Needs to be researched and fixed in the character files
       if (NPChar.chr_ai.type == "actor")   // should be "sit" or "citizen" here
       {
         DumpAttributes(NPChar);
         DeleteAttribute(NPChar, "chr_ai.type");     // fix for invalid characters, devlin, 33_Piratess10, etc
         NPChar.chr_ai.type = "sit";           // note that they won't actually be sitting.
       }
// LDH <--
       if(!CheckAttribute(PChar,"quest.Officer_Tutorial.TalkedtoOfficer")) AddDialogExitQuest("OT_Captain_enter_location"); //OfficerTutorial by Levis
Simple solution would be to replace that with:
Code: 
      if(!CheckAttribute(PChar,"quest.Officer_Tutorial.TalkedtoOfficer") && GetDifficulty() < DIFFICULTY_ADVENTURER)
         AddDialogExitQuest("OT_Captain_enter_location"); //OfficerTutorial by Levis
Would be nicer to link it to a dialog option that you can either select or not, but I suspect Levis was more concerned with the basic functionality to begin with.
Fine tuning and perfecting is easier once there is something that works at all. :cheeky
 
Yes this is only a start. It will become better.
The person will only talk to you once when hireing the first officer. I don't believe that to be to intrucesive. You can always ignore him and the quest will just expire.
 
This is still to be completed for the Beta 4 public release by @Levis.
If not, it should be disabled for the time being.
 
I need some help with this. You don't need to program.
Just do this:

Find a place on a island which is aviable during early explorers where there is a round house or something which could have a round interior.
 
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