Pa Manual

[Timeline]

Ok i know there has most likely been a thread before on this topic, and i apologise now for not going back and searching for it, its 4am as i type this and i'd like to get some feedback before i continue working on it tomorrow.

As i am one of the members of the pa crew who doesnt have a coding background, i have gained the dubious honour of working on the manual.
I know from experience of using / referring to it whilst dealing with support requests that it is sorely in need of updating and overhauling. So what i ask is... what would you the community like to see added changed etc to this gaming aid, that would be of a practical and beneficial use.

and before someone says it, i know it needs to be more aesthetic.

[Wandows]

A good start would be a 'graphical' techtree :-). Although the game currently isn't really complicated when it comes to researches and constructions, i've always found a more graphical overview (box with research/con as title, time it takes and what it enables then linking to the technique(s) it opens up after completion) alot easier to grasp then having to read a 'extremely' long list of textual items (like it currently is).

Included there would be all researches and construction and what they do, and a explanation of the engineering, all one 1 (relatively) small page.

[Timeline]

Yeah i agree visual is generally better than text. Setting it up as a flow chart for each research would be a less cluttered layout. There would have to be a 'highlight' or click system on each box on the tree so that all the information for that particular research (eta, what it gives, definition) comes up when the pointer is passed over / selects that box

[Wandows]

Also, the manual should be written from a game point of view. Atm it is extremely hard to find usefull information in the manual. Sure all pages have a mile-long list of options and what not more, but alot of those options are quite irrelavant for new players (and who actually reads a entire manual anyway, specially one as boring looking as this).

Imho the quickstart guide should be improved upon, explain the basics, why is engineering important?, why are roids important and which to initiate?, which researches should i focus on?, which constructions should i make and in which quantities?, why is having a balanced fleet important?, why is interacting with your galaxy important?, why is looking for an alliance important?

Combined with a decent techtree which holds all researches and contructions (or atleast the factories which only make sense once having hulls researched) this should help nubs alot already. The actual handling of the pages they'll learn while they are playing anyway.

[Timeline]

My main aim is to do as you mentioned and base it more along the lines of modern game manuals, with walkthroughs and introduction guides to all aspects of planetarion.
For this round an update and minor facelift will hopefully put in place, but unfortunately nothing fancy. main rework i'm aiming for completion for before r20 signup

[Kal]

remember with a visual solution it needs to be easy to change it - if every time we add a tec or whetver we need some grpahcis guy to make a new image it will cause problems.

[Fr0sten]

Originally Posted by Kal

remember with a visual solution it needs to be easy to change it - if every time we add a tec or whetver we need some grpahcis guy to make a new image it will cause problems.

I agree with you kal here it would be a pain in the backside but if someone makes a Photoshop Format of a tech tree with room for expansion im sure there would not be a problem on adding and changing things. Although there would be constant updates etc.

Also what about doing the Manual in PHP? and also adding a search facility! Why doesn't PA get kayako Support Suite and then you can have the manual in the form of a knowledge base! and also still do live support and support tickets! I think this might be a cool idea

Why not give it a trial!

[Shyne]

Make it into a wiki.

And have it translated. <-- Cue the ridiculous reason Jolt have for not translating the manual.

[SpookyVince]

If it will be translated, I don't mind giving a hand to translate into French.

One thing that may be better explained is the way combat works. I know it's there, but very often, new players don't understand it well, and need more explanations (usually done through IRC dialogue) on how it works, why in that order, why those ships are not useful, why those are useful, etc.

[wakey]

I discussed this a little over on Chefs thread about Newsletter/Portal.

Chef its hardly failed just once, especially when we include the portal into the mix (after all both are basically the same thing but presented differently) . Its failed over and over again and with many different groups running it and its about time time we just put the idea to bed and focus on aspects that help the game.

Lets use eve-online as an example of how to do it

The first page we come to when we type the url is a slick professional looking page as opposed to our clunky looking site.

Now the key elements on their site which PA should have and where development should be focused are
- Dev Blog. Theirs is updated multiple times a day and with the many different departments there's no reason a PA dev blog shouldn't have at least 1 new item posted each day. If one of the departments cant post something then they simply arent doing their job correctly
- Backstory. The backstory section has information on the races, the science and the organisations/alliances that play a part in the game. All is pretty indepth. From this information a cannon hs been created which has allowed people to produce 'Chronicles' and 'Short Stories' that expand the universe and makes it feel real. After all there's a reason movies, tv, books and computer games all come with backstories and its something that PA lacks
- FAQ. This basically does what PA's about does but its alot more informative and better structured
- Knowledge base. This is basically the manual but done better. Its fully serchable and seems like it would be easier to add and amend
- Player Guides. These again are well done. They give a step by step guide but are also written in a way that builds introduces the backstory and concepts thus instantly puts you into the universe.

Eve's whole setup seems to be focused on building a world for people to inhabit and to make information on how the game works and whats being done freely available. PA's setup on the other hand seems designed to keep people in the dark and completly ignore the rich sci-fi setting it has to build a world around instead deciding that a gloryfied spreadsheet alone is enough to be attractive (even the best Glorified spreadsheet games, Football Manager for example do something to make you feel that your in a rich vibrabt world when your playing the game. We have a planet that we know nothing about and which is just a line on the galaxy page, we are races who really arent anything but a name and ship type too us ect ect and we are all ultimatly disconnected from the game)

Basically over at EVE they have a FAQ section with all the quick Obvious questions. "What is Eve", "What is a persistent world" ect ect. You then have a fully searchable Knowledgebase which has quick couple of line answers to pretty much every question that could be asked.

Then finally you have Player Guides that are indepth and are written in a 'fiction' manner thus making it seem like a game and making you visualise and believe in the gaming world.

Additionally many of the technologies, races ect ect are written about further in the backstory section again in a 'fiction' way to further build on the immersion factor


PA should really take some pointers from EVE as it really highlights how you can take a multiplayer game and create a complex and believable universe for people to play in. Its probally even more important for PA actually as unlike EVE we dont have all the fancy 3d graphics to build the universe with.


If you want to know more go talk to chef as i had a longish convo with him about it

[ComradeRob]

That certainly sounds like a better way of doing it. What you're talking about would certainly require some development, but it's eminently doable.

[Heartless]

I like wakey's suggestion there. Sounds fair and reasonable. Except for the 3D graphics part. Even browser-games can have an appealing graphical user interface (admittedly that throws out people playing via text-only browser and some mobile browser users, but hey ... it's not like modern games are still coded for Amiga hardware specs).

[JonnyBGood]

I recall, a fairly long time ago, there was a PA forums FAQ board. The bonus to this was that it was easy to update, the negative was that occasionally people just didn't find it. That said it's not that difficult to just put in an "FAQ" link at the bottom of each page.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Heartless

I like wakey's suggestion there. Sounds fair and reasonable. Except for the 3D graphics part. Even browser-games can have an appealing graphical user interface (admittedly that throws out people playing via text-only browser and some mobile browser users, but hey ... it's not like modern games are still coded for Amiga hardware specs).

The point I was making about 3D graphics was simple that EVE is like a movie and PA is like a book. When your reading a book its upto the words to spark the readers imagination so the world becomes real in the readers head, a movie on the other hand takes that away from the watcher as the visuals are in front of your eyes. Now while a good interface and some visuals can move PA to a point where its more like a picture book if a real universe for the players is ever going to be produced it needs some real 'fiction' built around it to spark peoples imagination