Experimental example map Created 19 years ago2005-10-31 21:08:18 UTC by Captain P

I quickly made an example map today for someone who had trouble getting a func_door_rotating to work with glass parts. It's not a real hard problem, using two doors and triggering them, but I used this opportunity to implement something I'd thought about quite some time ago: an in-game tutorial.

The idea is to let someone play a map, show up entity information in a graphical way, display some information and thoughts about it, all in-game. Video tutorials seem to be popular amongst some people, so why not in-game tutorials?

Here's the map I made today. It's a quick draft and not exactly just how I have this in-game tutorial idea in mind, but I think it's a nice example of what I mean.

Like the idea? Got some requests perhaps? I might do this more in the future, perhaps some for HL and certainly some for Source. So, what do you guys think? It's a rough version I created and I have ideas on improving it, but how would you like to see this improved?

oooooh i Love this idea!

Will it come with a tutorial on its own, too?

Well, yeah, that's a good one. I'm already writing some tutorials for on my portfolio, attaching this sorts of maps to it would be a nice package I think. You either play through the map or read the tutorial, something like that...

Nice Idea...

Teching a method inside of a real life example... nice...

Very nice work (as always), CP!

Suggestion: you could actually show the "origin" brushes (or a brush labeled or indicated as the "origin") on one set of doors, leaving the other set of doors as they would appear in-game.

You could also use the multimanager to rotate the parts of the doors separately, for illustration.

Wow, CP. You've opened up some real possibilities!

Loffe sorta beat you to it by about a year ;). Inspired by the Lost Coast commentary?

<<downloads>>

Well, it did what it said. We have a tutorial on it, though. An interesting idea nonetheless.

Ah, that one, I remember the screenshot. Well, not really inspired by the Lost Coast commentary system, I've had this idea for maybe a year or two, I don't remember exactly. Just never did anything with it.
Strangely enough ZomblieLoffe commented on my map that it's a bad idea... I guess not everyone will like it, personally I don't like video tutorials either, but for some it could be helpfull, isn't it?

@BJ: Good idea, I was thinking along that line. Showing entities and brushes outlined or highlighted, with their properties, highlighting the things you're working on on that moment...

Anyway, keep in mind this map was just a quickly done one, not covering a real problem or anything, rather it's an experiment that I'm going to work out in the future.

Hmmmm, the problem with ingame tutorials like this one, is that you can't fast forward, rewind or pauze.

For example, if you have some troubles with a tutorial, you can't simply rewind it to see it again. You have to restart the map all over again. This is not the case with just text and image tutorials.

But i think that there is an easy fix for that, just make buttons toggleble (word), so that once you understand part 1 of a tutorial, you can move on to the next part.

I am using a system that has several info points dotted throughout the map, that you can access by walking over, so the rewind problem isn't really there.
I've also made sure only one speech can be active at a time, and it's info sign is highlighted as long as it's text messages run, so that's not a problem I think.

Whadda!

I thought you can't tie clip brushes to entities!?

I don't even remember that map. And it doesn't show much entity setups, just a general path of the track.
I still think it's a bad idea.

Accompanied by an example map (that you can check out in Hammer), do you still think it's that bad of an idea?

Plus, with HL, alt-tabbing between the game and the editor isn't really a problem, just like with a video tutorial. I think the advantage here is that the map is more interactive and is much smaller in filesize than a video would be.

I thought you can't tie clip brushes to entities!?

No, no, you can't tie clip brushes on their own to entities. I used to think the same.

I thought you needed to use null! So clip brushes can be tied with other regular brushes to entities but not alone...

you can't tie clip brushes on their own to entities.

Own? Explain. :S Everytime when i tie a clip brush to another brush entity, i get this error. :S

"On their own" = 'only with themselves' = "alone"

They can't be the only thing in an entity. You can have, say, a door with a clip brush, or just the door, but not just the clip brush.

Afaik, using the null texture will cut out faces when it touches other faces within the same entity. Clip doesn't do that.

Nice Idea, Nice Implemination

Good Job, Captain P

Ok, i got it.
Neat finding, CP.

I like the idea a lot - kinda like the New wave of "Training" stuff being made in Games. Like that surgery thing in HL?

The what?

you should fix the extra texture it wants. not very noob friendly if its asking for a wad not everyone has.

I had to create an empty one

Mentioned before, it was halfwar.wad I assume? That's fixed now. Or did you miss another .wad?

just Halfwar

Ok, well, that's fixed so now it should be noob-friendly.

7th: http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?news=1118361742-64853000

Interesting, and nice to see jobabob :).

I didn't comment on this thread yet, but I must say that it's a rather interesting idea, Capatin P.
I think that such tuts would be perfect for complete noobs.
Such tuts could cover all of the "In the beginning" tuts..

Yea.. I'd really like to [Play? use?] that Mod... Disect some Combine. Mmmm Sexy.