Item — HN Reader

Thanks - yeah this is a tricky problem since on the one hand I don't want to frustrate users not being able to pause/unpause but on the other hand I need to not let them unpause too soon and have the ship be in the wrong position.

Currently it should be blocking unpausing until step 7 or so... and it also should auto-pause once the ship reaches step 8(?). I did both of these things for the reason you're saying, but maybe I need to do it even more "locked down", at least for the Basic Tutorial.

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For what it is worth, I ended up playing the tutorial mostly in real time, i.e. without pausing, because that felt more authentic. Under that constraint, I did have to play it three times to get proficient enough with the tools to succeed, but it was a lot of fun to figure it out under time pressure too.

Something that helped me a lot was exploring how the firing solution changed when I changed various parameters in the TDC. I don't know if there's a way to build that kind of exploration into the tutorial. Maybe by splitting it up into segments, asking the user to handle only one measurement at a time, and illustrating how the firing solution changes?

It is, however, annoying to start up the tutorial and click next-next-next-next to dismiss all the text when playing around with its scenario. Maybe a "dismiss tutorial text" button somewhere in the start of the tutorial?

Great feedback, thanks - and I'll think about a good way to let you just dismiss the tutorial text entirely...

Something else it took some time to understand was how the TDC evolved the firing solution over time. I really appreciate the yellow ghost ship on the map, but maybe there could be four more ghost ships indicating computed positions one minute, two minutes, etc. into the future? Possibly with increasing transparency.

Loved this idea, so I put it in the game. Check it out and tell me what you think. :)

Yeah, I noticed when I tried the second tutorial mission. That mechanic worked out great!

My first attempt at the second mission I had the periscope up too much and forgot to dive so the escort vessel rammed me. Maybe tell the player to pay attention to the detection-o-meter?

Second time I was very careful and managed to get hits with four torpedoes on the first salvo. I had to bring up the scope to watch. I had no expectation of even getting close so it was INCREDIBLY satisfying. Then at first it seemed like I'd escape but I lost track of the escort and then got blown up by depth charges.

I'm absolutel going to try again, though. This was a lot of fun.