OpenTTD (and Simutrans) in PC Gamer (UK) Issue 199

[Xander]

I think the tutorials really should be something the dev community reconsiders.

OTTD is huge now, I imagine to a new person using it for the first time the sheer plethora of options could be very off-putting. I'm running the latest nightly and just building a train timetable offers me more options than I know what to do with. I know I just click the middle button, click the station, click the station name, choose Full Load (any cargo), click away from the station name, then click the button again, click the destination station, then click the button again, click depot, then click "Service", then click the Stopped button, but I wonder how quick a new kid on the block would learn this?

[yoyo1505]

I have been thinking recently that OTTD needs to keep itself newbie friendly. It does a pretty good job at the moment by keeping most advanced features as non-essential, and you only have to look at them if you want. The in game content downloads continue this easy usability. Tutorials are one of the main things that are missing.

[Raccoon]

I'm currently trying to explain OpenTTD to a newbie and to him it is quite confusing with all the windows and options. And there seem to be several inconvenient things, too, that can give a newbie a hard time, like those fiddly infrastructure building tools and the whole vehicle-orders-system (which has become even worse in the current release due to its over-complicated GUI/functionality).

[Yexo]

I have been thinking recently that OTTD needs to keep itself newbie friendly. It does a pretty good job at the moment by keeping most advanced features as non-essential, and you only have to look at them if you want. The in game content downloads continue this easy usability. Tutorials are one of the main things that are missing.

I'm currently trying to explain OpenTTD to a newbie and to him it is quite confusing with all the windows and options. And there seem to be several inconvenient things, too, that can give a newbie a hard time, like those fiddly infrastructure building tools and the whole vehicle-orders-system (which has become even worse in the current release due to its over-complicated GUI/functionality).

Then please help us improve it instead of complaining about the usability. The wiki has a tutorial that can use some expansion/updating (as always). If you ca think of a better gui that offers all the options the current order gui does, please draw it (a sketch in paint is fine), and upload it here, together with a description.

[Xander]

I'll get right on that

[Zuu]

Having taken a though on this tutorial issue..


I came to the conclusion that the easiest way so far is probably to get around and add OpenURL support to OpenTTD as we then can have a big manual button in the main title screen that opens the wiki page.

Now I knew on beforehand that doing it on Linux is not a trival task.

But what I have found so far is:
* Windows:
Use ShellExecute
* MacOSX:

Code: Select all

system("open http://www.google.com");

* Linux:
There is no "default browser", and I can't find any attempts on sf.net to make any library for handling this issue. So what we will have to do is to ship OpenTTD with one browser, say firefox as default browser on Linux and have a setting so users can enter a custom browser.

But this adds the requirement of adding support for text based settings, which as far as I know don't exist at the moment.

---

Another "light" option would be to add a tip-of-the day window on the title screen. But this opens a can of questions regarding how translations should be handled. Adding a string id for each tip-of-the day might not be optimal? But if we should not use the current form of strings then what should be used then?

[Darkvater]

so, eh....anyone has some copy of this PcGamer magazine? Or some link to a shop I can go and buy it?

[eis_os]

Portland should help under Linux:
http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/XdgUtils

Keeping the balance isn't easy if you can do all... (it doesn't mean you should allow all in a game)

[Raccoon]

I'm currently trying to explain OpenTTD to a newbie and to him it is quite confusing with all the windows and options. And there seem to be several inconvenient things, too, that can give a newbie a hard time, like those fiddly infrastructure building tools and the whole vehicle-orders-system (which has become even worse in the current release due to its over-complicated GUI/functionality).

Then please help us improve it instead of complaining about the usability. The wiki has a tutorial that can use some expansion/updating (as always). If you ca think of a better gui that offers all the options the current order gui does, please draw it (a sketch in paint is fine), and upload it here, together with a description.

This wasn't meant as a complaint. These were just a few thoughts on the game as it is probably seen though the eyes of a newbie. And seems to be a quite complex sight.

In OpenTTD a lot of options and functions were added to the original game, all of which appear in one window or another, filling them with even more information than there were before. However, most of these functions are useful for advanced players only, while completely confusing newbies

See, I'm familiar with all the difficulties of creating guis suitable for different types of players. And in this case, it really is difficult to find a solution suitable for both types of players, beginners and pros, without recreating the whole gui.

I came to the conclusion that the easiest way so far is probably to get around and add OpenURL support to OpenTTD as we then can have a big manual button in the main title screen that opens the wiki page.

Simple, yet effective solution to start with. However, it only works for those who speak English and have access to the internet (unless the manual is included in the package)...

Which brings me to a great thing about the tutorials in the original versions: they explained everything ingame by just moving the cursor around, clicking and using tooltips of the selected language set, making them useful for all languages without extra translating efforts. Would be really great to have such a feature in OpenTTD

[Zuu]

I came to the conclusion that the easiest way so far is probably to get around and add OpenURL support to OpenTTD as we then can have a big manual button in the main title screen that opens the wiki page.

Simple, yet effective solution to start with. However, it only works for those who speak English and have access to the internet (unless the manual is included in the package)...

You wrote the wrong name in the quote-tag, it was I who wrote the text you claimed you have quoted Yexo. But I'm not angry or anything, just wanted to point that out, so you are more careful next time you quote.

And about your comment, I might sometimes forget not everyone knows at least basic English, since in my country most people have English as their second language and know enough to read a simple wiki manual with some pictures to look at. It is more often that they are to lazy to read I'd like to say. But you are right that there are countries where people don't know English as good.

Still there are many users out there that do know English, and thus can read the Manual in English.

Which brings me to a great thing about the tutorials in the original versions: they explained everything ingame by just moving the cursor around, clicking and using tooltips of the selected language set, making them useful for all languages without extra translating efforts. Would be really great to have such a feature in OpenTTD

For this we would need to store mouse movement as a series of buttons to use, rather than screen coordinates to make it resistant enough to survive some GUI changes or even keep up with that some people have the tool bar centred while other have it to left/right. And there is work by Alberth towards making the OpenTTD GUI support RTL (right to left) languages better. So the tutorial must have access to the constants for the different widgets so it can click on "auto-rail button on the rail toolbar", and then the screen coordinates are queried so the mouse pointer can be moved there.

[Xander]

We have some excellent translators in the group. If one of us lays downs the tutorial in english, what is stopping us having "tutorial/trains/spanish", "tutorial/trains/french" etc.?

[Raccoon]

I came to the conclusion that the easiest way so far is probably to get around and add OpenURL support to OpenTTD as we then can have a big manual button in the main title screen that opens the wiki page.

Simple, yet effective solution to start with. However, it only works for those who speak English and have access to the internet (unless the manual is included in the package)...

You wrote the wrong name in the quote-tag, it was I who wrote the text you claimed you have quoted Yexo. But I'm not angry or anything, just wanted to point that out, so you are more careful next time you quote.

Aaah, you are right. I deleted the wrong quote tag after merging both quotes into one post. I'm sorry

About the Wiki tutorial. Like I said, it is a good thing to start with for now. But it will be necessary to update the Wiki regularly to include new features and/or changes. Currently some of the contents are outdated (e.g. the bus tutorial is missing the RoRo-station types and such things). And it would be even more work, if these tutorials would exist in different languages.

An ingame tutorial might be some work to do for now, but it also might be the better long-term solution. If done correctly (dynamic programming to cope with all the custom changes), it won't have to be updated after every change. Only fundamental changes such as the new "Vehicle's Orders" GUI then would require an update of the tutorial script (different buttons, different functions).

Well, these are just a few thoughts and its the wrong topic anyway I don't know, how much effort it would be to implement such a feature into the existing code, but it still might be worth the effort. As I remember, these tutorials helped me A LOT in understanding the basics.

[Xander]

An ingame tutorial might be some work to do for now, but it also might be the better long-term solution. If done correctly (dynamic programming to cope with all the custom changes), it won't have to be updated after every change. Only fundamental changes such as the new "Vehicle's Orders" GUI then would require an update of the tutorial script (different buttons, different functions).

I think you've hit the exact reason we won't be having an "in-game" tutorial for a long time. The game is still being made, still growing and expanding. If we did have a tutorial in-game right now, it would need to be remade to accomodate the button movements in the new waypoint GUI. The same is true for the different stations, vehicle types (Trams), and any other GUI changes.

The work involved in recording/programming a new tutorial to account for a small change will be much higher than what would involved in making an explanatory paragraph/updating the screenshot for a wiki tutorial.

[2007Alain2007]

we have videos on youtube showing how to build and run on here that some off you have made using automatic screenshots

[FHS]

The easiest solution is showing a video tutorial

[Drury]

Sorry for a bit dig, but Google Trends never lie...

[audigex]

No, but as any researcher will tell you, they can mislead.

Google trends, plus a couple of extra phrases

Your display shows simutrans as being approximately half as popular as OpenTTD based on searches for "OpenTTD" vs "Simutrans", but doesn't really tell the real story.

Suddenly if we include "Transport Tycoon" and "Open Transport Tycoon", we get a lot more results for OTTD. Add in various other variants such as "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", "OTTD" and "open ttd" and there are far more. I've ignored "TTD" as there are other things which it could easily refer to.

The point I'm making is that while google trends can be useful, it only really apples to a set term - there are many other ways of getting to OpenTTD or TTDPatch even through google; ignoring other references in game or review sites, open source software sites and people finding the games through various repositories or word of mouth. Don't assume it says all there is to be said.

The patch has a disadvantage in that searches for "Transport tycoon" and similar will show OpenTTD first.

[555gln22]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

[XeryusTC]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

They have a whole seperate community around it. Just take a look at the site of the Czech train/road/rail sets.

[555gln22]

I dunno, are there really that many OpenTTD users in the Czech Republic?

They have a whole seperate community around it. Just take a look at the site of the Czech train/road/rail sets.

I didn't know that. Thanks!