18 replies to this topic

[quantumstate]

A little while back I messed around with making a tutorial using a custom AI. It seems to work reasonably, at least well enough to be better than nothing at all.

The constraints are that nothing the player owns can be modified by the tutorial script. You can send messages, detect what the player does and control an AI's units.

I am not much of a designer and don't have too much time so I was wondering if anyone would like to create a map along with some instructions for the player.

I was thinking something along the lines of:

• Walk your female citizens to the civil centre.
  
• Gather some resources.
  
• A barbarian horde is coming! train warriors.
  
• (AI barbarian horde arrives).

Edit:
To clarify (thanks Pureon) there are two parts, one is making a nice map and that other is writing a storyboard. The storyboard is more important to do first so it would be great to have someone write that. Once we have a storyboard we could modify an existing map which would be easier.

Also I have attached the example I made which might help give you an idea of how it works.

Attached Files

•  tutorial-ai.zip   6.85K   36 downloads
•  scenarios.zip   2.52K   35 downloads

[wrod]

i could make a map problem is im making my own map for amusement so it wont be very detailed and i dont know how to upload maps

[quantumstate]

wrod, on 11 July 2012 - 12:33 AM, said:

i could make a map problem is im making my own map for amusement so it wont be very detailed and i dont know how to upload maps

You should be able to attach files on the forum. Otherwise any upload site will do. This is assuming you are able to save maps and find the location of the on your disk.

It would be good to have something which looks pretty, it doesn't need to be very big though. We would want something of reasonable quality so only go for it if you are serious about making a decent map .

[Pureon]

I should be able to help with this at some stage too. I took a good look through your tutorial files and added some very basic additional functions a few weeks back.

Would you be able to expand the number of cases available? Currently we have:

• femaleNearCC - checks the distance of unit to CC
  
• sixFemales - counts the number of a unit type
  
• 500Food - checks amount of food resource

Some others we might want to have:

• Unit Killed - checks if enemy unit is killed
  
• Unit Garrisoned - checks if a unit is garrisoned within a building type
  
• Unit Visible - checks if enemy unit/building is revealed from FOW
  
• Unit Type Selected - I believe this one isn't possible

Additionally would it be possible to have the AI send a small attack force once a certain number of buildings have been built?

[quantumstate]

I just realised that I only edited the post so people won't have been notified. Basically now we would like someone to write a storyboard/script for a tutorial and then we can go and make it into a map.

[Pureon]

Below is a basic tutorial storyboard I've put together. It doesn't cover ships, trading, bartering, or heroes. It covers gathering resources, unit abilities, constructing buildings, phases, defending, attacking, siege, training units, researching technologies...

Spoiler

Tutorial starts with a Civ Centre, 3 female citizens, and 1 skirmisher. The civ is Sparta. 2 AI players - One for attacking, one for base defending(?).

Task -
Left-click on a female citizen, then Right-click on a berry bush nearby to make the unit collect food. Female citizens gather food faster than other units.
Activated at the start of the tutorial

Task -
Select the citizen-soldier, Right-click on a tree near the Civ Centre to begin collecting wood. Citizen-soldiers gather wood faster than female citizens.
Activated when the female citizen begins to gather food

Task -
Select the Civ Centre building, and shift-click on the Hoplite icon (2nd in the row) once to begin training 5 Hoplites.
Activated when the citizen soldier begins to gather wood

Task -
Select the two idle female citizens and build a house nearby by selecting the house icon. Place the house by left-clicking on a piece of land.
Activated when the Hoplites start being trained

Task -
Select the newly trained Hoplites and assign them to build a mill beside some nearby trees. They will begin to gather wood when it's constructed.
Activated when the house is built

Task -
Build a set of 5 skirmishers by shift-clicking on the skirmisher icon (3rd in the row) in the Civ Centre.
Activated when the mill is completed

Task -
Build a farmstead in an open space beside the Civ Centre using any idle builders.
Activated when 5 skirmishers are being trained

Task -
Once the farmstead is constructed, its builders will automatically begin gathering food nearby. Select the builders and instead make them construct a farm beside the farmstead.
Activated when farmstead is constructed

Task -
The farm's builders will now automatically begin collecting food from the farm. Using the newly created group of skirmishers, get them to build another house nearby.
Activated when farm is constructed

Task -
Train 5 Spearmen in the Civ Centre. Select the Civ Centre and with it selected left click on a tree nearby. Units from the Civ Centre will now automatically gather wood.
Activated when house is completed

Task -
Order the idle Skirmishers to build an outpost at the edge of your territory.
Activated when Activated when 5 spearmen are trained

Task -
Build another house nearby so that 5 Village Phase buildings are built allowing you to research Town Phase.
Activated when Activated when outpost is constructed

Task -
Select the Civ Centre again and advance to Town Phase by clicking on the 'II' icon. This will allow Town Phase buildings to be constructed.
Activated when 2nd house is built

Task -
Start building 5 female citizens in the Civ Centre and set its rally point to the farm (right click on it)
Activated when Town Phase is achieved

Task -
Build a barracks nearby. Whenever your population limit is reached, build an extra house using any available builder units.
Activated when 5 females are created

Task -
Prepare for an attack by an enemy player. Build more soldiers using the Barracks, and get idle soldiers to build a Defense Tower near your Civ Centre.
Activated when Barracks is built

Task -
Select the Barracks and research the Infantry Training technology (sword icon) to improve infantry hack attack
Activated when Defense Tower is built

Send small enemy force to attack Defense Tower

Task -
The enemy's attack has been defeated. Now build a market and temple while assigning new units to gather any required resources.
Activated when enemy attacking units are killed

Task -
Now that City Phase requirements have been reached, select your Civ Centre and advance to City Phase.
Activated when all required buildings are built

Task -
Now that you are in City Phase, build a fortress nearby and use it to build 2 Battering Rams
Activated when in Phase 3

Task -
Stop all your soldiers gathering resources and instead task small groups to find the enemy civ centre on the map. Female citizens should continue to gather resources.
Activated when 2 rams are created

Task -
The enemy's base has been spotted, send your siege weapons and all remaining soldiers to destroy it.
Activated when the enemy's base is revealed

Task -
The enemy has been defeated. All tutorial tasks are now completed...
Activated when enemy's base is destroyed

[Pureon]

Has anyone had time to go through the above? We had a short discussion about it on IRC a week ago, but otherwise this has gone quiet.

To clarify: The tutorial starts with abundant resources, so there's no need to wait for resources to be gathered before phasing up or constructing a building. That makes the tutorial flow quite fast, despite the 20 or so tasks it involves completing. The ability to know when a unit is being trained, and then is fully completed, allows us to speed up the gameplay/tasks which is a good thing.

I might use a small RMS map as a base map for this, does anyone have and recommendations? (Not too many trees and no rivers/seas to cross)

[quantumstate]

I've committed a map with this tutorial. I'm sure there are many improvements to be made, go ahead and test (the map is called Introductory Tutorial) and give feedback.

Known issue: Phase advancement is done by using a timer because the AI doesn't detect techs.

[Jeru]

Are there still volunteers needed for this task? I can let people know over social media.

[quantumstate]

Jeru, on 12 November 2012 - 08:33 PM, said:

Are there still volunteers needed for this task? I can let people know over social media.

It depends what people think on the current version. It could certainly be improved, it might be nice to add a storyline.

[Pureon]

quantumstate, on 12 November 2012 - 08:04 PM, said:

I've committed a map with this tutorial.

Nice one. I'll check it out when I'm back in a few weeks time.

[fabio]

Nice work!

A minor suggestion: these two tutorial scenario should be put in a dedicated section ("Tutorial") rather than Default, also they should start with a number ("1 - Introduction...") to make sure they are displayed in the correct order.

[fabio]

You can get stuck in the tutorial if you select the arrow rather than the sword technology (I just tried to see what would happen).

EDIT: Well, no, after a while the enemy attached and the tutorial continues.

Edited by fabio, 13 November 2012 - 02:58 PM.

[fabio]

The enemy soldiers suicided before attaching them, note that I enabled the "Reveal Map" option, maybe related to this?

[fabio]

Lastly:

• it should not be possible to select You in Player 2 and AI in Player 1;
  
• the tutorial AI should be hidden and only useable in the tutorial maps (EDIT: I mean something like r12626).

Edited by fabio, 13 November 2012 - 04:45 PM.

[quantumstate]

Lion.Kanzen:
Thanks for the bug report, I will get that fixed. I took the liberty of removing some of the repeated error messages.

The Starting Economy Walkthrough is experimental (that is why it is a demo map). It is meant to be followed in real time, so a log doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if this is an effective learning technique though.

fabio, on 13 November 2012 - 03:11 PM, said:

The enemy soldiers suicided before attaching them, note that I enabled the "Reveal Map" option, maybe related to this?

This is intentional to prevent people from attacking the enemy base too early. Playing with reveal map on is not supported.

Ideally we should launch the map using a special interface so switching the players round shouldn't be a problem, making the AI hidden is a good idea.

[fabio]

quantumstate, on 13 November 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:

Ideally we should launch the map using a special interface so switching the players round shouldn't be a problem, making the AI hidden is a good idea.

Other games usually consider the tutorial the first, simple campaign.

[Zeta1127]

I would test this, but the new sound manager made sound practically unusable in Alpha XI, and I would need to start using SVN to even know whether my issues have been resolved, so I don't think I would be much help at the moment.

[fabio]

Having a look at the Tutorial AI it looks this is not a real AI but rather Triggers over "Unassigned AI". Would be possible to generalize the Triggers so that they can be used with any AI on any map? I was thinking at asymmetrical maps, where the computer opponent start with a big city with an "Unassigned AI", and after you reach the city phase the AI changes to Aegis.