Oolite Bulletins

I tested the missile avoidance lesson (it's brilliant, thank you so much!) but I have a few comments on the tutorial as such:
1) With NumericHUD.oxp and/or ChupacabraHUD.oxp (and probably any custom HUD), the MFDs will load, but no parts of the HUD will be revealed
2) With Detectors.oxp or Telescope.oxp (both by Norby), the MFDs will not show up at all despite the tutorial controls being primed.
3) The torus drive should be noted somewhere before combat, and if not, it should be disabled altogether to avoid weird stuff like torusing away into empty space or into the asteroid field.

The best solution for the OXP conflicts would probably be to disable all OXPs in tutorial scenario.

Zireael wrote:

The best solution for the OXP conflicts would probably be to disable all OXPs in tutorial scenario.

That would certainly be the easiest solution. The big disadvantage is that it prevents translation OXPs from translating the tutorial. There may be a way around this by allowing OXPs to declare themselves compatible with the tutorial, it then being an OXP bug rather than a core bug if they aren't - I'll need to think about it.

Zireael wrote:

1) With NumericHUD.oxp and/or ChupacabraHUD.oxp (and probably any custom HUD), the MFDs will load, but no parts of the HUD will be revealed

Understandable. Those HUDs do not use the standard dials to show many of the various gauges, so a "hide/show dial" command won't work. More conventional HUDs should work, though.

Zireael wrote:

2) With Detectors.oxp or Telescope.oxp (both by Norby), the MFDs will not show up at all despite the tutorial controls being primed.

Possibly they set your HUD to one which does not have an MFD defined. There is no default MFD position since wherever it's put has an even chance of overlapping something important. (I'm surprised the HUDs from item 1 display an MFD, for that matter, unless you added them yourself)

It might be necessary to copy hud.plist to oolite-tutorial-hud.plist and force the player's HUD to be that, then. Even that won't be compatible with a switching HUD, though.

Zireael wrote:

3) The torus drive should be noted somewhere before combat, and if not, it should be disabled altogether to avoid weird stuff like torusing away into empty space or into the asteroid field.

A new player wouldn't have much reason to press that button in the first place. It's easy enough to disable it, though.

Zireael wrote:

With Detectors.oxp or Telescope.oxp (both by Norby), the MFDs will not show up at all despite the tutorial controls being primed.

Thank you for the report, new Detectors OXP with MFDs is in my box. Telescope do nothing with hud but use Visual Effects. The problem is we have not merge function with hud.plist (like we have with shipdata.plist) so must use one at a time. Due to no better solution I copied the default hud.plist into Detectors and inserted the lines of number displays into (there is a description in the readme how can do it). If default hud.plist changes then this OXP must be updated forever, but I can not keep this in my head, players must remind me or do it by hand.

I poked about the JS hoping to make MFDs more useful in the game, and ta-dam, here is a teeny-tiny patch (based on some Commanders complaining about the blinded effect when switching to F5 through F8 in flight):
I don't think this one requires much explanation - it shows the most important info from the F5 screen on MFD, therefore removing the need to switch to F5 (unless you got damaged equipment).

Further ideas include:
- MFD showing station market prices (removing the need to switch to F8)
- MFD showing ship's manifest (removing the need to switch to F5-F5)
- MFD showing contracts and/or delivery time
- MFD showing damaged equipment (removing the need to switch to F5 completely)

Do you like it ?

...and lesson 7 is now done, which covers the original topic a tutorial was suggested for - docking!

Torus is now also disabled for these lessons just in case.

Zireael wrote:

Do you like it ?

Interesting idea. A few thoughts:
- at the moment it will only update the MFD content on launch from a station. Setting up a timer which calls $showGeneralInfo every few seconds might be better.
- player.ship.setMultiFunctionDisplay(1,"useful_MFD_general_info"); will have inconsistent behaviour. On a HUD with 1 MFD, it will activate this display if no other displays are in use. On a HUD with multiple MFDs, it will activate this display into the second MFD slot, whether or not it's being used for anything else. It might be better to skip this line entirely and just let the player bring it up with the ';' key when they're interested.

Took this out for a spin tonight with the current Linux nightly (Oolite development version 1.79.0.5460-131220-50337c8 (x86-32 test release)) and found everything to do with the tutorial working well.. I do have a few observations, though.


'n' for "go to next step" and 'b' for "go to next lesson" are all well and good, but more than once I found myself wishing for a key that would let me go back and start the current lesson over, without having to "b-cycle" to the end, exit tutorial mode and then re-start the tutorials again. (in fact, a couple of times, without thinking, I found myself pressing 'b' in an attempt to "go back")

Speaking about the fuel bar, it says, in part, "With the correct equipment, fuel can also be used to...". This might be better if worded "With the correct equipment fitted to your ship, fuel can also be used to..."

In the section on scanner use, it says, in part, "The circle of the scanner represents the horizontal plane around your ship, with the lines forward approximately indicating your field of view." This would be clearer if changed to "The circle of the scanner represents the horizontal plane around your ship, with the diagonal lines forward approximately indicating your field of view."

At several points in the tutorial it tells the player to move to (for instance) 500m or 1km of certain objects. However, no guide is given as to how to determine distances. Yes, if the player presses 'n' before they are close enough, they will be told to move closer, but this isn't really adequate. An explanation of the distance markers on the scanner, and how they relate at various zoom levels, would be a good idea.

During the combat tutorials, a couple more "breather points" where the player could let their shields and energy recharge before the next bout would be nice. Or maybe even just give them full shields and energy banks at the beginning of each round of combat. Taking on multiple beam laser equipped ships whilst armed with nothing but a popgun is tricky enough for a beginner, without the added problem of starting the round with heavily depleted shields and energy from the previous bout. More than once I found myself starting combat desperately weaving and dodging in a attempt to let my shields and energy build back up sufficiently to try and take them on.


Those minor criticisms aside, the tutorials are looking good!

<nods> There was a full stop missing somewhere too - I'll have a rummage through the text later.

I've adjusted the way that the course controls work to also allow restarts (and to make it less inconvenient to slip and press 'b' when you meant 'n'). I'll need to do a bit more testing on them so they probably won't be in tonight.

Diziet Sma wrote:

During the combat tutorials, a couple more "breather points" where the player could let their shields and energy recharge before the next bout would be nice. Or maybe even just give them full shields and energy banks at the beginning of each round of combat. Taking on multiple beam laser equipped ships whilst armed with nothing but a popgun is tricky enough for a beginner, without the added problem of starting the round with heavily depleted shields and energy from the previous bout. More than once I found myself starting combat desperately weaving and dodging in a attempt to let my shields and energy build back up sufficiently to try and take them on.

The beam laser ships aren't required to be defeated to pass, though - you can quit at the first break and still get a "Completed" score - and there is also a fairly easy way to beat that fight even with a moderately damaged ship, as well as the option of just shooting the buoy.

cim wrote:

(and to make it less inconvenient to slip and press 'b' when you meant 'n').

Well, it wasn't really a 'slip'.. I wanted to "do over" and my brain just went "b for 'back'" without any input from me.. but yes, accidentally skipping to the next lesson would be annoying.

cim wrote:

as well as the option of just shooting the buoy.

Ah! That was the other thing I wanted to mention.. sometimes combat moves out of scanner range of the buoy. Perhaps consider having the compass locked to the buoy during combat?

Diziet Sma wrote:

Ah! That was the other thing I wanted to mention.. sometimes combat moves out of scanner range of the buoy. Perhaps consider having the compass locked to the buoy during combat?

Since we haven't yet covered the compass in any detail, that probably won't help. I've set the buoy up to quietly teleport itself closer to the player if they get too far from it.

Lesson 8 (which is not particularly exciting, but the player will just have performed a stressful docking and maybe need a bit of time to relax) - and most of the suggestions - are now merged in and should build tonight.

cim wrote:

Lesson 8 (which is not particularly exciting, but the player will just have performed a stressful docking and maybe need a bit of time to relax) - and most of the suggestions - are now merged in and should build tonight.

And it's working well!

Just had a thought.. is 1.77 in feature freeze?

Because if not, I'd suggest back-porting the Tutorial (and, I guess, the MFDs it relies on) to 1.78. This is one of those things that, the sooner it's part of the game, the better it will be for Oolite, so far as getting new players goes. (just thinking out loud, here)

Diziet Sma wrote:

Because if not, I'd suggest back-porting the Tutorial (and, I guess, the MFDs it relies on) to 1.78. This is one of those things that, the sooner it's part of the game, the better it will be for Oolite, so far as getting new players goes. (just thinking out loud, here)

Unfortunately, the tutorial basically depends on almost all the new major features added since 1.77.1, to a greater or lesser extent. About the only practical way to backport it to 1.78 as-is would be to rename the current master branch as "1.78".

Ok.. forget I mentioned it..

The final part of the tutorial is now uploaded for tonight's build - it covers basic in-system navigation from the witchpoint to the station.

Tonight's build merges the reduced detail and shader level settings into a single "graphics detail" setting, since no-one in the graphics poll was using simple shaders, and reduced detail was always accompanied by no shaders and vice versa.

There is also an "extra detail" setting - currently the only thing in it compared with "shaders" is better explosion graphics, but there's a bit more to come there.