Fleet Operations Tutorials

[Anonymous]

posted on December 19th, 2011, 9:08 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on December 19th, 2011, 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This mod will add some tutorials (maybe missions as well) to Fleet Operations that will describe the following:

1) User Interface
2) Resource Management
3) Passives and Tactics
4) Borg Collective
5) Dominion
6) United Federation of Planets
7) Klingon Empire
8) Romulan Star Empire

I'm pretty sure that this will end up being a bit late for 3.2.x but when 3.3.x comes out, these tutorials should pretty much be up to date.  In fact, I'm counting on 3.3.x coming out before I finish the first tutorial so I don't have to redo the tutorials when the faction redos are introduced (are they going to be introduced in 3.3.x?).

[RedEyedRaven]

posted on December 19th, 2011, 10:38 pm

Last edited by RedEyedRaven on December 19th, 2011, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm pretty sure that this will end up being a bit late for 3.2.x but when 3.3.x comes out, these tutorials should pretty much be up to date.  In fact, I'm counting on 3.3.x coming out before I finish the first tutorial so I don't have to redo the tutorials when the faction redos are introduced (are they going to be introduced in 3.3.x?).

In all honesty, I do believe that you would have to redo your tutorials for almost any of the upcoming redoes, tweaks, fixes, patches;
here's why:

1. We'll get a new unit-profile system and many current passives and roles might be changed with that.

2. There are still general features planned for the game, you'd need to do new tutorials lateron.

3. Why do you bother to do this now? Tutorials (as well as the SP-Campaign) should be done, when the game is as finished as the devs want it to be. Otherwise it would be oodles of work and oodles of "Oh I've got to tweak that. AGAIN." or in different words: twice the work.


Edit: And even though a tutorial might be a little more entertaining; The basic explanations you consider to do as tutorials are found on the guide and are always up-to-date. Which also proves that tutorials still have time until work on the game reaches final stages.

posted on December 20th, 2011, 7:19 am

still a rather good idea tho after all once downloaded it would offer a basic tutorial offline and as we know it can take some time for patches to come out that have big enough changes. some people may prefere learning by a hands on approach like tutorial missions rather than reading a bunch of text. It also gives practice on making missions which is never bad

posted on December 20th, 2011, 8:48 am

still a rather good idea tho after all once downloaded it would offer a basic tutorial offline and as we know it can take some time for patches to come out that have big enough changes. some people may prefere learning by a hands on approach like tutorial missions rather than reading a bunch of text. It also gives practice on making missions which is never bad

That's entirely correct, but I'd still recommend to at least wait until the next big patch is out before making ingame-tutorials. 

posted on December 20th, 2011, 3:48 pm

While I do think it's a good idea to wait before releasing them, it's important that you go ahead and plan out what you're going to do, how it will be edited and the general format like what you'll be saying and if you want to set up specific scenarios in the map editor.  I'll be glad to help out sometime; the making of a tutorial interests me.

posted on December 20th, 2011, 5:49 pm

Nice idea, you can make PDF files from OpenOffice I believe.

Isn't there a manual already though?

posted on December 20th, 2011, 6:23 pm

In all honesty, I do believe that you would have to redo your tutorials for almost any of the upcoming redoes, tweaks, fixes, patches;
here's why:

1. We'll get a new unit-profile system and many current passives and roles might be changed with that.

2. There are still general features planned for the game, you'd need to do new tutorials lateron.

3. Why do you bother to do this now? Tutorials (as well as the SP-Campaign) should be done, when the game is as finished as the devs want it to be. Otherwise it would be oodles of work and oodles of "Oh I've got to tweak that. AGAIN." or in different words: twice the work.


Edit: And even though a tutorial might be a little more entertaining; The basic explanations you consider to do as tutorials are found on the guide and are always up-to-date. Which also proves that tutorials still have time until work on the game reaches final stages.

You've made some very good points, but I'm counting on the faction redos being finished and released before the tutorials are released so that I do not have to redo the tutorials.  I do not believe that I would have to redo any tutorials if the game is tweaked, patched, or updated.  Small updates will suffice.

1) The new unit profile system won't be a concern as the new system will be out before I start on any of the combat tactics tutorials.

2) I'm well aware that there are features planned for the game, but that doesn't mean that I have to wait before making tutorials on what is already there.

3) I'm doing the tutorials now so to hopefully build up some momentum for MMM.  As mentioned earlier, many of the new features will be out before I start on the tutorials on how to work them.  So I will not have to redo the tutorials every time a patch comes out.

I know that there is a Fleet Operations guide.  These tutorials are not designed to replace the guide, but rather to supplement the guide.  The tutorials are designed to help people learn how the basic mechanics of the game works.  The user can reference the guide for more detailed explanations.

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still a rather good idea tho after all once downloaded it would offer a basic tutorial offline and as we know it can take some time for patches to come out that have big enough changes. some people may prefere learning by a hands on approach like tutorial missions rather than reading a bunch of text. It also gives practice on making missions which is never bad

That's entirely correct, but I'd still recommend to at least wait until the next big patch is out before making ingame-tutorials. 

The tutorials I'm currently working on (basic usage of the User Interface) is very unlikely to need tweaking when the next patch is released.  The idea is that when I start on the tutorials like how to play as Borg or Romulans, the next big patch will already be out.

---

While I do think it's a good idea to wait before releasing them, it's important that you go ahead and plan out what you're going to do, how it will be edited and the general format like what you'll be saying and if you want to set up specific scenarios in the map editor.  I'll be glad to help out sometime; the making of a tutorial interests me.

The funny thing is, all those steps you mentioned are actually the steps I'm taking right now!

Thanks for offering to help.  I sure could use it.

---

Nice idea, you can make PDF files from OpenOffice I believe.

Isn't there a manual already though?

Yes, there is a manual that is already out.  We're not talking about PDF documents or manuals.  We're talking about in-game tutorials like the ones in stock A2.

posted on December 20th, 2011, 6:34 pm

If you want to do this, it'll be a lot of work. You'll need some basic Computer Science and programming knowledge (e.g. what is a Finite State Machine and how does it operate). Oh, and unless you want to have everything going through on-screen text, you'll need voiceovers. 

posted on December 20th, 2011, 7:17 pm

If you want to do this, it'll be a lot of work. You'll need some basic Computer Science and programming knowledge (e.g. what is a Finite State Machine and how does it operate). Oh, and unless you want to have everything going through on-screen text, you'll need voiceovers. 

Well, for these single player tutorials, I'm using MMM's LUA interface to script the missions.  I have the basics of the interface down and basic programming skills that I can use.  And there's always the Fleet Ops guide and the MMM website I can look to for references and questions that I have.  I also have the trial-and-error method that I use a lot.

I actually am planning on using voiceovers for the tutorials.

posted on January 19th, 2012, 7:11 pm

Hello good Sir! I have actually started working basically the same idea. I think it might be useful if we joined forces I've got a good amount of programming experience under my belt from previous projects in different games. I'm already 2/3 through one tutorial i was building already (except for voice overs due to a lack of quality microphone). I'm around a lot right now as I'm also hunting for a job. do you use teamspeak at all? we could at least bounce ideas off each other etc.

posted on January 20th, 2012, 5:06 pm

I have teamspeak and I've noticed that you are also working on tutorial missions.  You appear to be much faster than I am.  I would love to bounce ideas off of each other and perhaps I could learn from a more experienced programmer.  I don't have a good quality microphone either and my programming experience is so limited that I need constant references (though it is getting better).

posted on January 22nd, 2012, 8:58 pm

I've actually taught a few guys over at Star Trek Legacy's Ultimate Universe a thing or two so thats not a problem I can be on tomorrow afternoon sometime on the FO community ts?

posted on January 22nd, 2012, 9:09 pm

Tomorrow afternoon sounds fine.  What timezone are you in?  I'm GMT -5 Hours.  FO Community TS it is!  And I just remembered, I have to install Lua don't I?

posted on January 22nd, 2012, 10:40 pm

You don't need to install Lua if you're doing MMM missions as everything is included in the loader. You can always install Lua if you want to try things out outside of the game environment.

[remore]

posted on January 23rd, 2012, 4:51 pm

Last edited by remore on January 23rd, 2012, 7:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Aye Lua is useful for halflife2 modding, GMT -5? East coast right? same here. i might have an issue with using a microphone as where i normally get wifi is locked right now and i don't know if It will still be locked by this afternoon, currently im in a library lol

yea todays looking like a wash, tomorrow I will definitely be able to though unless i under up working...  not that thats a bad thing in America now a days...