Tutorial could really use some improvement

So I booted up the tutorial program to see what i’ve missed from just playing the game outright (as well as the fact i’m comfortable enough with the stable version so I wanted to see what features the experimental had to offer) and it seems to be really glitchy for such a critical piece of the game…
Even before I booted up the game I get an error text and even a crash message, and it seems kind of like the instructions are a bit unclear of what to do (not in what they’re telling you a thing does. that part is perfectly clear. I mean its unclear within the tutorial itself what the next step in the tutorial process is to do to “unlock” the next set of instructions) and I ended up getting stuck right after the “fill water” instruction because there are no bottles around to use (or at least the bottles on the zombies where all frozen solid and there is no way to safely thaw them out), and I couldn’t tell if that was the end of the tutorial since there only appeared to be two main “steps” (both literal and figurative since I could only find one staircase).
Now that may in part be just me but part of the reason tutorials are set up in the first place, is to explain things specifically for people who may either be too inexperienced with games or not smart enough to understand the game as is. Its generally a good idea to make tutorials based on worst possible expectation of the players competence, as you can never really underestimate human ignorance.

I would suggest “railroading” the player more through the tutorial, instead of making it so open (both space-wise and input wise) to make instructions more concise and lower the possibility for a player to completely screw up the tutorial (like say, by setting the gas pumps on fire or getting killed in some fashion)

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Maybe we should delete tutorial mode, and add more detail to “help” menu. To be honest, the game it’s so complex, and make it hard to improve the tutorial. It will take much time to develope. Unnecessary.

Not even when i started playing (the C stable) was the tutorial helpful being honest, the game just keeps getting better and more complex, on the bright side, the help menu did get a bit updated (at least the vehicle section).

Other way to tackle the tutorial would be to make the help menu based tutorial, limiting the options and “ralroading” as you suggest, but nobody got the time for that, too many suggestions too little coders ºnº

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I was thinking the same thing, but its always good for people who learn more from “doing” than being “told”

I agree that the tutorial needs work. It’s been brought up before, and I thought someone was working on it.

Help is great and all, but roguelikes/ascii style games are already difficult from a UI and new-player engagement perspective. A more meaningful tutorial could be great.

That said, it really doesn’t need to be more than ‘this is how we move, this is how we pick things up, this is the craft button’ and so on. With the level of complexity in the game, there’s always going to be a severe limit on how much you can teach the player before their attention span wanes.

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For starters I’ve updated the help option in this PR.

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