Tutorial Panels

For the current sprint, I am in charge of overhauling the main menu. Part of the overhaul is that the player needs to know how to play the game. Since the time we have left is so small, a new tutorial level was too expensive for us to make, so instead we opted for the cheap and faster version of tutorial panels. When the player plays either the Turtle or Shorca boss for the first time, it will force them through the panel tutorial. If they have beaten the boss but still want to see the tutorial again, then when they hover over the boss level, selecting "Y" will bring up the panels.

I created a generic panels object that would be given a set of images to swipe through. The image would take up almost all the screen given about 10 pixels of buffer. When the player would want to get to the next panel, then the panels would animate by rotating the image across a pivot offscreen given the effect that it is being swiped off. It also fades out as it is swiping off. The user also has the option to go back to a previous panel. When this happen, then the swipe animation is done in reverse where it will fade in and rotate back to its original position.

This provides a basic way to convey info to the user in a fast and cheap way with a little flair. Obviously, we would like to teach the player to play in a better way, without a tutorial would be awesome; however, time restraints left us to be fast and cheap. I still love the final results and feel that it is a great resource for Eye of the Swarm as it can be used in other contexts if panel information has to be given to the player in other contents.