#i'd do this with a mouse too back when i was big into shooters

[rad-roche]

oh while i'm on topic, here's something else that helped me too. if you're a traditional artist who really struggles with digital, or you're just starting out and can't get over the hand-eye disconnect that comes with a graphics tablet, especially ones without a screen, the bad news is that you can only overcome that with raw hours and muscle memory. the good news is, you don't even have to draw in the meantime. whenever i get a new tablet that's really throwing me off, or i'm returning from an injury or the like, i'll just play osu with it until i feel more comfortable

even on the easiest difficulty, within a week it'll be second nature! fun, too

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Community Teaching of Game Features

One of the wildest contradictions of game development comes from the question of how much to tutorialize and how to go about it.

For games with relatively simple controls like Megaman X, you can do the fancy invisible tutorial of its prologue level where it quietly teaches you individual concepts, only moving on - literally only allowing YOU to move on - when you've mastered them. Basic l/r movement? Starts you in a basic screen with nothing. Shooting? Enemy too big to jump over. Jumping? Bottomless pits. Wall-jumping? Pit that DOES have a bottom that you have to wall-jump back out of. Hollow Knight also does this beautifully. Both games have several videos, with Arin Hanson's Sequelitis vid probably being the most famous.

But back when I was playing Pokemon Emerald, I looked up how you get some of the pokemon I hadn't found yet and...there was no way to expect a person to discover the information about how they could be found in game. And when I shared this complaint with my friend with a PHD in Japanese media studies - a literal Pokemon Professor, as she bragged when she first got said degree - she said that the way I'd discovered where they were was probably the way I was supposed to. Gamefreak wants people to share wikis and talk on the playground about the Mew under the truck (it isn't) and make guides and videos about how to get all the Cursed Beasts in Scarlet/Violet and so on.

And I saw a video series from a while ago where Razbuten shared his wife's experience with learning the vocabulary of games later in life (than childhood; I'm pretty sure she's a good deal younger than I am). And something struck me during that explanation: He talked about how many of the lessons he'd probably learned from message boards, guides, or just having someone tell him "you can push b to run in Mario," but here he was trying to have her learn the same lessons in a vacuum. To his credit, one of his conclusions on the same video is, "Don't do that."

But it left me wondering: How much effort should a developer spend on teaching new players? Part of why tutorials trend toward kind of low-effort is because a game can reasonably expect that 80%+ of its audience already knows almost everything about its control scheme, if said scheme is following conventions of the genre - be that mouse-aim on a shooter, the function of HUD compasses with quest markers, or something as seemingly obvious as "press A to jump." Of the remaining 20%, 80% of them can be expected to pick up the controls of the individual game swiftly because they're relatively familiar with games in general. So in terms of True N00bs who need to be taught how to traverse a game, any game, in your tutorial? That's like 4% of your audience. Is it worth tutorializing heavily in a way that some of them won't even read and which might reduce the fun of the first level (that is, the level roughly all of your players are guaranteed to play)? It makes sense that so many tutorials end up feeling so low-effort. And on the other end, if you want one that's glorious and teaches everything while never getting in the way of great players, how much money and dev time has to go into making a masterful experience like the one that Arin Hanson gushes over in his Sequelitis video? Is that worth having one less level in your game? Two? What's the cutoff?

My suspicion is that some studios see the 4% and opt to go low-effort, and others do their best to elegantly include something that at least somewhat gives totally new players a handle on the situation.

The two bits of Secret Sauce I've taken away from this and would offer to fellow devs:

The Safe Zone. Hollow Knight has platforming areas with few or no enemies and with no penalty for falling. Super Mario 64 has the lawn in front of the palace where you can just mess around with the controls and explore.

Fun Controls. One of the things that has helped maintain Nintendo's place at or near the top of the industry for so long is that the movement style for its characters is just fun. Mario in Super Mario 64 is fun to run around the palace lawn in spite of there being no objectives there! This in turn gives incentive for players to experiment with the system and discover moves for themselves.

Blarg, this is neat but got far afield from the point.

The point was that even basic controls of your game can be community-taught, and that will usually be better than you can teach them because it can be responsive to the individual queries the player has. I've experienced the same when trying to figure out how to write a rulebook for a board game. You need one person in the community of people who plays your board game to be able to learn the game from your rulebook, if that. It's possible they'll learn from videos online anyway.

At that point, the value of having your rulebook be effective as a guidebook, a set of examples, and a place to find answers to frequently asked questions quickly gets bumped up over having it be a straightforward how-to tutorial. Doesn't necessarily change how much you write but rather changes the style of what you write, possibly even the format.

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

If you're still doing the character breakdown thing, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Reimu, Marisa, and Sanae.

the final breaking them down! (x)

Protagonist hour seems like a good way to cap these off. I’m gonna try to be concise/brief with these, but I am always happy to blab in even more detail about all touhous in DMs or wherever.)

Miss Touhou Project herself... rakuen no sutekina miko...

How I feel about this character

^ This is me whenever I think about her (happy). I trust her with my life and when new characters appear, it’s always a fun routine to think of reimu (and marisa) inevitably meeting and then treating them with the same mix of care/indifference as everyone else.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Marisa’s the given but I actually consider their relationship to make for the least interesting for romance (though that’s of my own choice because i think they’re  a best combi in that they know everything about each other and always have each other’s back, but it’s not like, something i’d dig a story out of)

Past that, I think I have basically have all the ‘common’ ships. At one point Sakuya and Sanae, now moreso Suika, Aya, Yukari (as long as it’s not some creepy grooming thing which is unfortunately why 80% of people like this ship...), and uh... Miyoi? There’s something funny to be had there, I know it, with their bizarre, incompetent game of cat-and-mouse.

My non-romantic OTP for this character 

Number ones to my mind are Shinmyoumaru (simultaneously the housemate who has the most frustrations and also the most appreciation for Reimu) and Auun (who probably lectures Reimu as much as Kasen does). I think she can be pretty funny paired with up with literally anybody, though.

My unpopular opinion about this character / One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

what if her next outfit mixed in an equal amount of a third colour along with the red and white. Add in some blue and yellow too... Give her a super colourful outfit.

It’s Ma - ri - sa, not Marissa, Marisa!

How I feel about this character

I love her. Please pronounce her name correctly around me.

All the people I ship romantically with this character 

More obvious and common ones including everyone in her usual circle (Alice [the big one], Patchouli, Narumi... let’s just throw in Nitori here while I’m at it). I also like regular and spicy encounters with Yuuka, Seiga, and Seija.

My non-romantic OTP for this character 

like reimu, she’s also pretty great paired up with anyone. If I had to pick anything to mention specifically, I’d go with her sweet found family thing with her ghost mom Mima and shopkeeper brother/uncle Rinnosuke. Speaking of...

Cirno and the three fairies of light are her daughters. She’s Flandre’s favourite older sister (Remilia is still trying hard, though!). And she is still taking care of that tsuchinoko to this day.

My unpopular opinion about this character

she’s the most nerd among the magicians, compared to Alice’s prep and Patchouli’s kinda-sorta-goth. Also Magus Night is the best of her themes.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Not exactly related to ‘canon’, but why has nobody translated any of her titles as ‘Extraordinarily Ordinary Magician’!?

Green Rei- No I’m kidding. Sanae!

How I feel about this character 

Look I have to work with what I have, and green pants are how I choose to express that I love Sanae. She has always been one of my fav PCs. Queen of lacking common sense.

All the people I ship romantically with this character 

None of these are particularly big ships I think about a lot but Reimu Nitori, and Hatate are kinda cute.

My non-romantic OTP for this character 

Aside from her shrine family of snake and frog, I think she’d have a really fun back-and-forth with Sumireko. She often goes to see Utsuho as part of seeing if the Moriya-braned nuclear reactor is doing okay and the both of them are bad at acting professional about anything. I also like to think she also makes it her ‘duty’ to keep watch on youkai who frequent the human village for the sake of protecting the people, but this just really means that she insists on being friends with Sekibanki.

She also acts overly famliar with all of the Myouren Crew, thinking they have this rich history as former enemies when all of them and all of them range from thinking she’s a nice enough weirdo (Byakuren, Ichirin) to thinking she’s mostly annoying but tolerable (Nue, Shou).

My unpopular opinion about this character

Her favourite pokemon isn’t politoed or whatever, but pikachu. Basic like me!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. 

it’s about time she reappear in the shooters! other than that... She and Youmu should get more new theme music!