Devlog August 14th - Tutorials

Welcome to the first devlog of August!

Tutorials

This time we started work on tutorials. These are little instructions that help the player understand how the game works.

There are many ways to make these. Some games have a small introduction level that the player can be guided through, and some have an in-game hints or even a dictionary where the player can lookup game terms and mechanics.

In our game there's already a popup system that hopefully allows the player to investigate and learn how various parts of the game works. So we decided to go with a fairly minimal tutorial to help the player get started.

This is one of the first tutorial messages.

At the game start, after the initial cutscene that sets up the story, a few guiding messages appear. We explain the controls (We have taken care to display the correct keys, even if the player has chosen to change some of the keys.)

There are two buttons: The "Resume" button will take the player through all the available tutorial messages and then unpause the game.

The "Disable Tutorials" button will immediately unpause the game and also skip all future tutorials.

We added an option in the settings menu to enable the tutorials again if the player wants that.

In addition to the tutorial shown at the beginning of the game, we also have created two more tutorials: 

One tutorial is triggered the first time the player opens a popup, such as looking at their inventory. This is intended to help the players learn to navigate popups, especially since the buttons in the top right are quite small and easily missed.

The final tutorial is triggered the first time the player enters combat and will explain controls and combat mechanics.

It's likely that we will re-write tutorials or add more tutorials after testing. Once we test, we will have a clearer idea of which parts of the game that needs more guiding for the player. This is also why having some tutorials before testing is essential.

Other Improvements

While tutorials were the main big thing we worked on this time, we also did a number of minor improvements:

The game now starts on the main menu instead of starting the player right into a new game. We also added a separate music track for the main menu.

We also reworked some of the buttons on the main menu, so the player now only has the option to continue their game if there is an ongoing game to continue. In other words, when they open the game for the first time, this button is unavailable. If they open the menu while playing, the button is available.

While working on the settings menu, we also added a setting for the Combat Log Detail. This setting will affect how detailed the information displayed in the combat log during combats is.

We added additional dialogue to certain parts of the game. We also expanded our cutscene system to incorporate sounds - So now we can add sound effects to cutscenes and to things that the player interacts with. This should help bring the world to life.

That's all we have for this update. 

Next update will be on August 28th! Talk to you then!