[Lorric]

Lorric, why don't you try the Diaspora Walkthrough and tell me what problems you had with it? Bear in mind that improving the quality of FRED training is my major goal in this community, if you're experiencing problems, I want to know about it. The Diaspora documentation was built with the idea of teaching absolute newbies how to use FRED, if people are having trouble doing so, I'd like to know why.

I don't have Diaspora.

However, the Diaspora walkthrough is supposed to be (I think I heard something about this) an improved version of the FRED walkthrough, right? I also know I've read it in the past, and I'm confident I liked it. I did try that (FRED walkthrough), but got frustrated, not with the walkthrough, but with wrestling with the control scheme, the walkthrough was good as far in as I got. So I kind of ended up giving up there. I came back later, but ended up tinkering around instead. Experimienting, making easy little battles and opening up other people's missions to try and see what made them tick, sometimes going back to the walkthrough for pointers.

Alright, let's go find that thing and have another look, I'm interested in movement...

Here we are:

http://www.fs2downloads.com/freddocs2/concepts.html

It tells you how everything works, but nothing more really. Maybe some people can pick it right up and don't need anything else, but others like me clearly couldn't. I'm used to the controls now though. Perhaps asking some of the others who haven't got used to the controls and struggle with them if there's anything more that could be added it would help? The controls were by far the biggest impediment to my progress. It tells you clearly enough how everything works, but doesn't offer any tips on how to get the best out of anything, how to move around smoothly.

The biggest problem with the FRED Academy was finding people to playtest the missions. Usually it would fall to 3-4 people to do all the work. The Academy needed to be a community project where everyone who plays FS2 regularly played the missions and said what worked and didn't work. Then the technical experts like myself and Axem could come along and teach the newbies how to use FRED to solve the problems the others highlighted. Expecting the technical experts to also do the mission testing proved to be too much work, with the results that no one ended up testing the missions at all.

I still think the idea of the Academy is sound. I'd just need people to commit to mission testing a lot more.

Interesting to know how it was supposed to work. I wonder if there's any way to revive it.

Maybe you could think smaller? Have people put their names in a hat, and draw a "lucky winner" who gets attention from the experts for a while.

[karajorma]

The problem with that idea is that the winner would have to actually produce the mission after being selected. It would annoy the others if the person selected at random then didn't do anything. And it's not like we could ask everyone to write the missions first as that would mean a lot of people wouldn't get help after having submitted a mission.

I do like the idea of concentrating one one lucky person but I'm not certain how to make it work.

[Black Wolf]

I personally don't like the idea of one person being the chosen one for however long. What if they get bored, leave the community? Others might wait months for their turn, especially if they get the impression that it's so hard that you need outside assistance to get anywhere. The truth is that it isn't if people are willing to put the time and effort in to learn. Do the walkthroughs, not just read them. Use the wiki. Ask questions on the forum. These are all you really need to do yo get competent with FRED.

That asides, I have two ideas to reduce the entry barrier. I'm not sure how practical they are,  but what the hell, let's get the out there.

One, we put  one of those "new user tips on startup" boxes in FRED, obviously with a "Don't show this again" button for vets. I'm certain that between a few of the more experienced FREDders, we could knock a hundred or so tips up on the wiki in a matter of a week or two, especially if people like Lorric gave some input about what they struggled with. Something like the camera controls could be added in multiple times, so that they're seen more often, as they seem to be a major hurdle.

Two, we add a separate but very prominent way for nrwbies to ask questions, maybe something like a Yahoo answers type setup, exclusively for FRED neophytes  where  they can ask any question they want without registering. Eliminate that very basic hurdle sp that people can get very quick answers to basic questions. If we integrate it with the forum, registration could be required to answer questions, and if we gave all registered users above, say, 500 posts the ability to delete questions in that subsection only, we could probably control the inevitable spam associated with a registration free service.

Anyway, just thoughts. As I said, for people who make the effort, use existing resources and ask questions (even ones they think see silly), I really don't see why the entry barrier would be very high, but if people are saying it is, maybe we do need to look at some options to lower it.

[MatthTheGeek]

A final problem is seeing something like Wing Commander Saga being picked apart as seemingly only a couple of steps up from garbage, and why would someone even bother trying to do start new? They'll just think "What's the point, everyone'll just say it's ****/not worth bothering with." I just picked that because it's a recent example, but you see the finest work at times on here treated like sub-standard, with little else getting a look-in.

There are two things here you are absolutely and utterly failing to make a distinction of right there.

FREDing and mission/campaign design.

The first one involves learning sexps and is a highly technical task.

The second involves neither of those. It's about inventing feasible, yet engaging and creative mission concepts and storylines.

WCS utterly failed at mission design, and this is what we've been judging. WCS didn't have any (major) issue with the technical aspect of FREDing.

You seem to have trouble with FREDing. That's ok. You can have very great mission/campaign design with simple FREDing. I'd quote Crossing the Styx and Uncharted Territory as two example. Note that those two campaigns are recent and were published after WiH, yet they received a lot of praise, and they earned it.

When people review user-made campaigns, they're not reviewing your FREDing (unless you've really come up with breakthroughs in FREDing like BP), they're reviewing the mission/campaign design. And mission design doesn't require technical skills, it's a purely artistic part of the job.


I'd also note that the community has been pretty careful to not shoot down new campaigns that tend to be of sub-par or even mediocre quality. Shadow Genesis being the best, recent example of that scenario.


EDIT: and I am very disapointed that noone else brought to light that critical distinction after two pages of thread. :<

[karajorma]

I've always said that mission design is the most under-appreciated skill in this community. No one will comment on your mission design unless you get something wrong.

I personally don't like the idea of one person being the chosen one for however long. What if they get bored, leave the community? Others might wait months for their turn, especially if they get the impression that it's so hard that you need outside assistance to get anywhere. The truth is that it isn't if people are willing to put the time and effort in to learn.

Yep, those were some of the reasons I couldn't see a way to make it work.

[Lorric]

The problem with that idea is that the winner would have to actually produce the mission after being selected. It would annoy the others if the person selected at random then didn't do anything. And it's not like we could ask everyone to write the missions first as that would mean a lot of people wouldn't get help after having submitted a mission.

I do like the idea of concentrating one one lucky person but I'm not certain how to make it work.

You wouldn't have to wait for someone to produce the mission, they could send the WIP to you on maybe a weekly/fortnightly basis, whatever's comfortable for you, to show they're still working on it. Maybe they can miss one or two of these time slots, but miss three and they're out and someone else is in.

There are other ideas, you could instead of by random select have people state why they want to have your help and what they would do with it, and pick the one who impresses you the most.

Or you could simply ask for a commitment of a certain amount of free time and if the person picked randomly fails to meet that (they'd get two or three chances as IRL can screw you up) then they're out and someone else is in.

Another idea could be to keep some sort of log of what happens with these, focusing on one single person would allow you to do this in some detail, and uploading those logs to HLP I'm sure would be beneficial to others.

What would you ideally like to be able to do/expect of your one person? If you tell me that then maybe I or others can think of a way to make it work.

[karajorma]

I think you've missed the point that both Black Wolf and I made. Which is that while we are concentrating on one user, everyone else is left sitting around holding their dick. This gets even worse if we're going to have to wait 3 weeks doing nothing while we wait for a user to disappoint us and produce nothing.

[Lorric]

I think you've missed the point that both Black Wolf and I made. Which is that while we are concentrating on one user, everyone else is left sitting around holding their dick. This gets even worse if we're going to have to wait 3 weeks doing nothing while we wait for a user to disappoint us and produce nothing.

I'm not saying you have to be there for them 24/7 to the detriment of everyone else. Set your own rules.

[Lorric]

One, we put  one of those "new user tips on startup" boxes in FRED, obviously with a "Don't show this again" button for vets. I'm certain that between a few of the more experienced FREDders, we could knock a hundred or so tips up on the wiki in a matter of a week or two, especially if people like Lorric gave some input about what they struggled with. Something like the camera controls could be added in multiple times, so that they're seen more often, as they seem to be a major hurdle.

I have been pondering this idea and I think it has great potential. Now and again someone posts something about FRED which is useful to a few people. Imagine having such things and more all in one place, on every user's machine! There would of course be a full list of all the tips in addition to flashing one up every time you load up FRED. I think it's a brilliant idea!

As for me, I'm not sure how I could contribute though personally. This does seem like something for the masters. Take the issue with the movement controls for instance. I wasn't just fighting with the controls, I was fighting with my own brain. In order to get to where I am now, I had to get rid of what was there before, if that makes any sense. I can't remember what was there before properly because it had to be replaced. And I'm still no master or anything at moving around.

On the tips, perhaps a thread could be opened up. People could post tips for this, and then they could be put into this idea along with some choice words of wisdom from the masters.

You could mine the FRED board for ideas as well.

[Mito [PL]]

Hello,
as a very young FREDder (1 month of experience or less) i'd share with my feelings a bit:

1. FRED camera movement isn't so bad, though. Or at least for players using keyboard to play FS. It's rather... of it's kind. You control the camera like a fighter, and i would confirm the need for changing camera control style is real... but how to change it?
2. Well, i think it's natural that a young, unexpierienced FREDder would think "Will they like it?" or "Did i miss something?".
3. A man learns through his entire life. I, personally, found learning FRED a bit fun. To learn how events work and then check every tool/SEXp/ect. by trial and error method. I want in-game cutscene? Let's see what are cutscene SEXp's doing. I also can tell that FRED needs mostly being patient and community likes being creative.
4. I find tutorials VERY useful, but also shrinking the horizon of creativity a bit. A human mind is most expieriencing the "first encounters", so if i first read that function X is good/made for/useful for Y or Z, my first thought while seeing X is Y and Z.

Of course, i may be wrong somewhere.

[Kobrar44]

I wonder why programming tutorials never start with programming lesson #1: algorithms. You wish to program in C? I'll throw data types at you right away! You wish to FRED? Memorize these beautiful sexps for a start! I tried to learn C++ some time in the past, but couldn't understand what was really going on. At least when I attended uni, where I got proper introduction with algorithms. I understood those fast and then the programming in general and in fact it turned out I'm quite predisposed despite my earlier failures. Pointing to some good lesson on algorithms for programming newbs would be a good start for any FRED tut.

[z64555]

I wonder why programming tutorials never start with programming lesson #1: algorithms.

You need to pay attention to the prologue of the tutorials, a lot of times you'll come across a tut that assumes you already know the basic theory of logic and algorithms, and just want to learn the language post-haste. The "proper" learning courses in the Computer Science colleges also have this to an extent (in the form of prerequisites), but for freshman and sub-freshman level courses you get the bare basics of everything and build up on that.

Hello,
as a very young FREDder (1 month of experience or less) i'd share with my feelings a bit:

1. FRED camera movement isn't so bad, though. Or at least for players using keyboard to play FS. It's rather... of it's kind. You control the camera like a fighter, and i would confirm the need for changing camera control style is real... but how to change it?
2. Well, i think it's natural that a young, unexpierienced FREDder would think "Will they like it?" or "Did i miss something?".
3. A man learns through his entire life. I, personally, found learning FRED a bit fun. To learn how events work and then check every tool/SEXp/ect. by trial and error method. I want in-game cutscene? Let's see what are cutscene SEXp's doing. I also can tell that FRED needs mostly being patient and community likes being creative.
4. I find tutorials VERY useful, but also shrinking the horizon of creativity a bit. A human mind is most experiencing the "first encounters", so if i first read that function X is good/made for/useful for Y or Z, my first thought while seeing X is Y and Z.

Of course, i may be wrong somewhere.

First off, Hello and Welcome to Hard-Light! please be sure to stop by the Official New People Thread to get the complementary beamz.

Now, for your questions:
FRED currently does not have any means to allow you to remap the keyboard shortcuts, so you'll have to make due in the mean time. The SCP does have project in the works that should hopefully allow a lot of new things for FRED in the near future.

The tutorials are there to offer a venue for people to try new things to get a result. Creativity isn't something that can be hampered by outside sources once you understand that creativity is really just a clever way of using something you already know in a different way. Granted, you don't need to take a tutorial to learn something new, but with a tutorial you know exactly what the end result will be. Once you know what process yields what result, you can then apply your own creativity to make the process easier, or perhaps modify it a bit to come out with a higher quality result.

I hope this has been helpful.