Tutorial world plan (docs/TUTORIAL_DESIGN.md), roadmap updated
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Paul Bailey
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docs/TUTORIAL_DESIGN.md
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# Tutorial world design
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Status: **proposal**. Nothing here is built yet.
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A short, guided first world that teaches the survival loop by having you
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do it: gather, craft, chop, eat, hunt, cook, fish, keep a mixed diet,
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build a shelter and get through a night. It uses the real game systems
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(Actions, crafting, creatures, diet), so what you learn is exactly how the
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real game behaves, and nothing in it can drift out of date.
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## 1. What the player sees
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- The title screen gets **Tutorial** (above New World). The first time the
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game starts with no worlds, it suggests it: "New here? Try the tutorial
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(about 20 minutes)".
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- You wake on a small, calm island (the **Tutorial worldlet**, §4) on a
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clear morning. A short path loops round it past a few marked spots.
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- A **guide panel** (top right, under the clock) shows the current step: a
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title, one or two lines of how, and a progress count ("Sticks 2/3").
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A soft **marker** (a pale glowing post or a ring on the ground, plus an
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arrow at the screen edge when it's off-screen) shows where to go.
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- When a step is done: a tick, a short sound, and the next step slides in.
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`H` hides the panel; the pause menu has **Skip step** and **Leave
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tutorial**.
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- Nothing is forced. You can wander off, do steps early (they tick
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straight away) or ignore them. The panel only waits for the thing it
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asked for.
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## 2. The steps
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Grouped into chapters. Each step completes on a real game event, never on
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a timer. Numbers below match today's recipes and items.
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**1. First tools**
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1. *Look around.* Move with WASD, look with the mouse. (Done: walked 10 m.)
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2. *Pick up 3 sticks and 3 stones.* "Look at one and press E." Marker on a
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cluster by the path.
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3. *Pick wild flax.* "The pale tall plants give fibre, for torches, bows
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and beds."
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4. *Open your inventory (Tab) and craft a Stone Axe.* Highlights the recipe.
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5. *Put the axe in your hand* (1-8 or the hotbar) *and chop a tree.* "Hold
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LMB at the trunk. Trees give wood, and sticks when they fall."
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6. *Craft a Stone Pickaxe and break a boulder* for stone and flint.
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**2. Fire and food**
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7. *Build a campfire* (place with LMB, rotate with R). "Fire gives light
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and warmth, and you cook on it. Feed it wood or sticks with E."
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8. *Pick berries* from a bush, then *eat some* (RMB with them in hand).
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9. *Find mushrooms* under the trees. "Raw is fine, roasted at the fire is
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much better." Roast one.
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10. **The diet.** The panel points at the HUD's three Diet bars: Meat,
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Fish, Greens. "Each food fills one. Keep all three up: let one run low
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and you stop healing; two, and you start starving even on a full
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stomach. All three high: you heal faster." Done when you've read it
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(Continue).
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**3. Hunting**
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11. *Craft a Wooden Club*, or a Spear at a workbench (build a workbench
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first: "most tools and weapons need one nearby").
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12. *Hunt a rabbit.* The tutorial island has a fenced meadow with rabbits
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that stay nearby. "Rabbits bolt if you sprint at them. Walk up close."
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13. *Butcher it* (E on the carcass) *and cook the meat at the fire.*
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"Raw meat hurts you. Cooked meat heals and makes you Well fed."
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14. *(Optional, shown as a tip)* Deer outrun you (use a bow); boars are
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calm until you hit one, then they charge. The panel shows each animal
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with a small picture: what it drops and how to take it.
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**4. Fishing**
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15. *Craft a Fishing Rod* (2 sticks, 3 fibre, 1 flint at the workbench).
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16. *Catch a fish* from the pond. "Cast with LMB. When the float dips,
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click within a second and a half." Grill it. Fish bar fills.
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**5. Shelter and night**
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17. *Build a small hut*: 4 floors, walls, a door and a roof. A ghost
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outline shows where (you can build anywhere, the outline is a
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suggestion). "Pieces need support: walls on floors, roofs on walls."
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18. *Craft a bed, place it inside and set your spawn* (E).
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19. **Night.** The clock jumps to dusk. "It gets cold and dark. Stay by a
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fire, carry a torch, or get inside." Craft a torch.
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20. **Wolves** (from a safe distance). One wolf appears at the edge of the
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firelight and circles. "Wolves come out from night 4 in a real world.
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They won't come close to a lit fire, a torch makes them hesitate, and
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they can't bite through walls." It slinks off. (A scripted wolf: it
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never attacks in the tutorial.)
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21. *Sleep in your bed until morning.* "You can only sleep at night, under
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a roof, with walls round you, and not with wolves about."
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**Finish.** A summary card: what you learned, plus a reminder of the
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shortcuts (E, Tab, X to dismantle, R to rotate, RMB to eat or wear), then
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**Start your own world** (to New World) or **Keep exploring** (stays on the
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tutorial island).
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Also covered as short tips when they first become relevant, in the
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tutorial and later in real worlds (§5): getting wet and cold in rain,
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death and your grave, stamina, carcasses rotting, regrowth, dismantling.
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## 3. How it works (code)
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- **`data/tutorial.json`**: the steps as data. Each has an id, chapter,
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title, text, an optional marker ("near": a named spot), an optional
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set-up (give an item, set the time, spawn the wolf) and a **goal**: an
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event plus a count.
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```json
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{"id": "sticks", "title": "Gather sticks and stones",
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"text": "Look at one and press E.",
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"marker": "start_pickups",
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"goal": {"all": [{"gained": "stick", "count": 3}, {"gained": "stone", "count": 3}]}}
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```
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- **Goal events** come from what already exists: `Actions.item_gained`,
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crafting, placing a piece, `Actions.notify`-level events, a creature's
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death, a carcass butchered, eating (by food group), a fish caught,
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sleeping, walking a distance. A small **`Guide` autoload** listens to
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those, checks the current step's goal and moves on. Adding a few signals
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to Actions (`crafted`, `placed`, `ate`, `killed`, `caught`, `slept`) is
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the main engine change, and they're useful for addons (M3) too.
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- **The guide panel and marker** are UI only (`scripts/ui/guide.gd`).
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- **Progress is saved** in the tutorial world's save (current step, done
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steps), so you can quit and come back.
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- **Scripted bits** are a handful of small hooks, not a scripting language:
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set the time, spawn a calm creature group in a fenced area, spawn the
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"demo wolf" (a wolf in a state that circles and leaves), show a ghost
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outline for the hut.
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## 4. The tutorial island
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A **worldlet** (docs/WORLDLETS_DESIGN.md), about 160 m across, with a
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fixed seed, so everyone gets the same island:
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- small and calm: one pond (for fishing), a stand of trees, a few
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boulders, berry bushes and mushrooms along the path, flax by the pond;
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- a fenced rabbit meadow; no wolves except the scripted one; deer and a
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boar further off for the optional tip;
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- **named spots** ("start_pickups", "first_tree", "pond", "hut_site"...)
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that the steps' markers point at;
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- the clock starts at 08:00, clear weather, and the wolf grace rules are
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replaced by the script.
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Until the worldlet work is done (W0-W2), a **first version** can run on
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the normal Valley island with a fixed seed (a sheltered spot near the
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spawn as the tutorial area), with markers placed by searching for the
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nearest tree, bush, boulder and so on. Everything in §3 carries over
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unchanged when the proper tutorial island arrives.
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## 5. Hints in real worlds (optional, same system)
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The same Guide can run **light hints** in normal worlds, off by default
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for experienced players and on for anyone who finished or skipped the
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tutorial: one-off tips the first time something happens (first rain, first
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night, the Day 3 howl, a low diet bar, first death). A setting turns them
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off.
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## 6. Multiplayer
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The tutorial is **single-player only** (it's your own world). Hints in
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real worlds work online too, since they only listen to your own events.
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## 7. Phases and tests
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| Phase | Delivers | Done when |
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|---|---|---|
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| **T1** | Actions events (`crafted`, `placed`, `ate`, `killed`, `caught`, `slept`), the Guide autoload, `data/tutorial.json`, the guide panel and markers | a headless test plays the first chapter by calling Actions and every step ticks in order |
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| **T2** | the whole tutorial on the Valley island (fixed seed): all chapters, scripted night and demo wolf, title-screen entry, saved progress | a headless bot completes every step; screenshots of each chapter |
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| **T3** | the tutorial island worldlet (after W0-W2) with the fenced meadow and named spots | the same bot completes it there, and the shared suites pass on it |
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| **T4** | hints in real worlds, with a setting | each hint fires once, on the right event |
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T1-T2 don't depend on anything else and could come before or after M2.4.
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## 8. Questions for you
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1. **Length:** roughly 20 minutes for everything above. Shorter (just
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chapters 1-2, the rest as hints), or is full-length right?
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2. **Tone of the text:** plain and friendly (as written), or with a bit of
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character, like an old hermit who lives on the island and talks you
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through it?
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3. **Before or after the rest of M2?** My suggestion: after M2.4, so the
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tutorial teaches the game as it'll be when you play with friends.
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