Hi everyone,
I have been working on the tutorial island for most of last week but have not managed to finish it yet. However, I will take this opportunity to tell you a little more about what I am planning for the new tutorial.
In weekly update 125, I spoke about our plans to have the tutorial be a longer format (between 1 and 2 hours), and have this essentially be an opportunity to really introduce players to each part of the game and how they interact with each other. This means, however, that we also need some “meat” to the tutorial in the form of a narrative that players can (and want to) follow. As a result, I had already stated in 125 that we needed to adjust the old tutorial island to accommodate the new format, and that John would try to work on that.
John has unfortunately been pulled in a different direction again and hasn’t managed to work on the island too much, so I have taken over as of last week, and have made pretty good progress. I would estimate that the island should be finished next week or the week after, and that an initial draft of the tutorial should follow a few days later. In addition to introducing the basic mechanics of the game and the new functions of 0.8, I also realised that there are a ton of mechanics in the game that I never actually mentioned or that would be reasonable for a player to find by themselves (I realise that undocumented features are officially bugs, so I guess there are a decent number of intentional bugs in the game).
For example, approaching a pirate from behind while sneaking allows for a silent takedown with the sword, which I had added after some frustration that spotting a pirate early and sneaking into position without him seeing you brought absolutely no benefits. However, I don’t think I ever communicated this through the posts or otherwise, so I think it is about time.
The first draft of the tutorial will not yet include the pioneer wagon, which I am still planning to create before an official 0.8 release, but I have already created an area to expand into as a part of the tutorial, and adding this “mission” once the mechanic exists should be relatively straightforward. In any case, I should be able to give an image preview of the overhauled Opal Reef by next week, so you can look forward to that for then.
Until next week!