Doomsday Engine

May I suggest to have the tutorial as an optional button, that for people to see the tutorial, they have to click, rather than making them opt out

I know you want to highlight the cool UI, but is it actually best to wait until such a time comes that the typical user boots into Ring Zero by default, before the tutorial is added. by which I mean, the typical user no longer uses Snowberry because the new UI has advanced enough to make it obsolete.

At which point, Ring Zero could include 'open taskbar' and 'tutorial' buttons on it.

Something I have also thought about, is that the taskbar and main taskbar menu should open by default when Ring Zero is opened and that there should be a new option at the top of the main taskbar menu called something along the lines of 'button to open taskbar' with a box the user can type a binding into.

I also wonder if, currently, any tutorial may also contradict 'what Snowberry says', which also may confuse typical users. I point to step four in Mr Romero's 'how to setup Dday' guide as a prominent, if not particularly good, example as to what I am trying to say: http://planetromero.com/2013/11/doomsday-1-12-server-setup.

I also debate that highlighting the UI further right now, might actually give the wrong impression about Dday's priorities to the typical user; I point to Lightning Hunters thread in the forum: http://www.dengine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1629. Once the typical user can see the virtues of the new UI (i.e again once they no longer have to use Snowberry), then highlight the UI.

Dday has historically been known among the typical users for having a difficult to understand UI; even having a tutorial might seem like a sticking plaster, rather than solving this issue once and for all.

Of course, I won't lie, I also think the new lens flares are coming in too early; that they should wait until halo's and dlights are also updated from 2d to 3d (and also possibly when the auto dlight algorithm takes the entire sprite rotation into account). I believe the later two still being 2d will notably, if not completely undermine the former at this stage and it's better to 'wow' the users with all three together, as they are so closely linked in the gameworld.

vermil wrote:

Something I have also thought about, is that the taskbar and main taskbar menu should open by default when Ring Zero is opened and that there should be a new option at the top of the main taskbar menu called something along the lines of 'button to open taskbar' with a box the user can type a binding into.

That's a nice idea.

[re: dropping Snowberry]

Managing the transition to the Snowberry-less future is a bit tricky, as Snowberry has quite a number of features and replicating all of them is not trivial. It will likely come down to a compromise where some of the less-known/used features of Snowberry are dropped for a while.

• Snowberry mode, where the game is selected before launching Doomsday and the game is loaded immediately. In this case, the tutorial would be different or would not show up at all.
• Ring Zero mode, where the game is selected after launching. Here a full tutorial/guided setup would be necessary.

Dday has historically been known among the typical users for having a difficult to understand UI; even having a tutorial might seem like a sticking plaster, rather than solving this issue once and for all.

We should of course strive to make things easier to understand (which can mean "simpler" or perhaps "more like the native platform UI"). I still think it's polite and appropriate toward new users that we inform them about some basic operating principles of the Doomsday UI, if those cannot be made immediately obvious.

It is important to bear in mind that within the traditional sphere of a DOOM source port there is basically no parallel for what we are trying to accomplish with Ring Zero and the new UI in general. Long time players coming to Doomsday will have certain expectations about how our project works, many of which being carried over from vanilla and/or other source ports.

Naturally such a user is going to feel rather lost at first given how differently Doomsday does things. I agree with skyjake that a "tutorial" (perhaps not the best name for this but the cap fits) is highly important, if only for the opportunity to make it obvious to the user that we do things rather differently.