New build has some improvements I implemented after forcing my wife to play through the tutorials:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/armaget ... pha_z1926/
- you're no longer forced to complete the highest difficulty of the tutorials. Everyone should be able to pass them.
- the tooltips for the general tutorials only show you how to turn. Nothing else is required for the tutorials themselves anyway.
- there is a special tutorial forcing you through all input commands in settings where you can't die permanently.
- the background during fullscreen messages (such as the tutorial introductions) is now static, the moving slanted grid makes smaller text than the default menu a bit hard to read.
- you can't complete the team start tutorial by going out the back.
- the conquest tutorial now has help texts appearing as you play for the unlikely (cough) case the player doesn't read the full introduction text or forgets what to do after killing/driving off the defender.
- the double grind tutorial is now a challenge and moved downward. It was too similar to the regular start. I'll probably make it run faster, too.
There is one potential change I'm thinking about: the first setup menu. It asks you your name, favorite color and mission err bandwidth and keyboard layout, but most of those things only get important later. The tutorials don't even show your name (except when you press TAB, of course, and except for the AI fight), just the keyboard layout matters for them. So maybe it would be better to pop up three separate menus?
- when you first enter any game mode or player setup, ask for the keyboard layout
- when you first enter the AI fight tutorial or a challenge or a regular game, ask for the name and color
- when you first go online, ask for the bandwidth
Anyway, this is a good build to test on uninitiated people. If you have some left among your friends, sit them in front of a computer with a default installation of the game, also uninitiated (check that it works before, then delete the user*.cfg again). Don't help them, but rather observe what they're doing, where they are having difficulties, where they are bored, and of course where they break things. And report back. "Hallway Usability Testing" this is called where there are hallways to grab people unrelated to the project from.