[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv 1.12.1 spec?

[Jason Short <vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew Sutton wrote:

> On Wednesday 05 December 2001 02:45 pm, Daniel Sjölie wrote:
>
> > Nah... I don't think this is the right way to do it...
> > Tutorials should be all client side... I guess the foundation should be
> > common for all clients but that's it... No need to make it more
> > compliated than that I think...
> i thought a tutorial was essentially a saved game. maybe we're talking about 
> different things :) anyway, if its a saved game, there'd have to be some 
> server support i imagine...
I had always assumed it would be handled client-side, via a "tutorial 
mode" rather than a specific saved game.
I guess I'm thinking back to the way PayCivs did it - this was, IMO, 
pretty good.  When in "tutorial mode", there would be hooks for specific 
events client-side.  When that event happened, a popup window would give 
you tutorial information, and then the hook for that event would be 
removed (so that it was not given again).

Here's a rough example, using only text.  In theory we shouldn't just 
have text, but images, linkes, etc. - this is a bit outside my scope.
upon starting a game: "your first job should be founding a city.  Find a 
suitable spot and choose 'build city' from the 'orders' menu."
upon moving a settler into a good city position: "this looks like a good 
spot to build a city.  choose 'build city' from the 'orders' menu to do 
it."  (I remember this one from CivI :-). )
upon founding a city: "left-click on the city to open a window for that 
city".
...and so on.  These would obviously need to be refined, and there 
should be a lot more of them.  But once the infrastructure is in place, 
I don't think we'll have any trouble coming up with tutorial text.

In theory it'd be good to have this text be common to all civ GUI's, but 
that may not be possible if it gives UI information that differs between 
GUI's.  I'm not sure how to handle this.  Obviously the hooks should be 
in common code (if at all possible), but the implementation of the popup 
will need to be gui-specific (although it's possible a function exists 
already that will do such a popup).
jason