New Interactive Guide
In this update, Star Explorers has gotten its first, proper tutorial!
I am both very excited about this, and very wary at the same time. I have run through it several times to make sure it works, but I have not tried to break it too hard yet. I plan to subject my kids to this over the weekend, to make sure it is robust enough for new players. If you want to try it out, go ahead and start a new game, and keep the interactive guide button set to "on" when you are typing your name in.
Right now, it will introduce you to all the main steps you need to complete the first mission. It offers some freedom of movement, but will limit what you can do while performing some specific tasks.
Percentage Counter
It also provides a "Percentage Complete" counter, so you will know how far you have to go till the guide is finished. It *should* save progress between play sessions, but again, I did not test this at every possible point. So as with all testing branch updates, play at your own risk, and enjoy!
What Does it Cover?
Right now, the Interactive Guide covers the following:
- The Help Menu
- Opening the Computer Console
- The Star Chart Overlay
- Ship Movement
- Combat Mode
- Warping
- Accessing the Star Chart
- The Target Sector
- Orbiting Planets and Leaving Orbit
- Landing on Planets
- Planet Exploration
- Cave Exploration
- Finding Acknexium Crystals
- Launching the Homing Beacon
- The Details of Charting Stars and Planets
That's all the basics of the game. After this, it leaves you alone to explore and learn on your own. The whole thing can be completed in a few minutes if you already know what you are doing, for testing purposes. Or, for new players, it could probably be finished in a 30 minute session.
It is broken up into small sessions, but there is some freedom of movement between these sessions once you start warping to stars and exploring planets.
Expect Bugs
Like all new features, you can expect some issues to pop up, things I have not yet encountered or tested yet. If you don't want to deal with that, you can always skip the guide for now. You would need to start a new game to use it anyway. Older games should not be effected.
But if you are adventurous, give it a try, and see what happens. Maybe you will learn some stuff you did not know yet. In any case, the whole thing only took a couple of days to get working. I think by the middle of next week or so, it should be fully functional and free of any problems. Perhaps even ready to be moved to the default game position.
Next Steps
Once this tutorial is fully tested and any lingering screen resolution issues are resolved, I will be once again able to focus on actual game content! I am looking forward to that and I hope you are too!