Tour

[Kase]

I was thinking about making a little tour of the LVP's functions, like minigames, that you can see with a command like /tour. You can show some maps, some minigame's areas, new things added to LVP in the weekly update, the most used commands for newbies, and so on. Would be nice for you? 

[Jay]

I was discussing this the other night with bubbles and Peter in .vip. Tutorial would be a better description

[Kase]

I was discussing this the other night with bubbles and Peter in .vip. Tutorial would be a better description

Yeah, that meant tour of features 

[Chillosophy]

I had a similar idea once, don't know if that forum is viewable for mappers/beta testers, so here's a quote (including spelling errors):

New players should get a tutorial before they can play. I saw this on an MTA server called "Valhalla gaming", and it worked out really nice. First of all, the chatbox is completely empty. Everything that's spammed in the chatbox normally is blocked. The camera switched to a few locations on a timed interval, with a tutorial text in the chatbox.

We could, for instance, use it like this:

• Camera focuses on the "Welcome to the fabulous Las Venturas" sign.
  Text says: "Welcome to Las Venturas Playground (LVP)! LVP is a playground where you can do all kinds of stuff; DM, RPG and minigames!"
  
• Camera focuses on Jail Island.
  Text says: "There are a few rules you have to follow if you want to play on this server. [insert rules]. Disregarding  these rules will get you jailed, or even worse: kicked or banned."
  
• Camera focuses on Planning Department. Text says: "This is the planning department. If you're short on cash, you can get a loan here. You can also open special bank accounts that give you more banking features."
  
• Camera focuses on the ship.
  Text says: "This is the pirate ship, a place to be idle for a few minutes. There's no fighting allowed on the ship. If you do fight you will be jailed automatically. If you're standing on the ship you get $50 every few seconds"
  
• Camera focuses on the landing strip of the airport, the place where cruises usually start.
  Text says: "Every now and then a cruise will take place. Cruising means driving around with a group of people. One player is the cruiseleader, don't take him over. Try to drive in a decent way; don't crash your vehicle into other vehicles. There's no shooting or fighting at a cruise!"
  
• Camera focuses to the "Welcome to LV" sign again, and text says: "Have fun playing on Las Venturas Playground!"

In contrary to the Valhalla server, the tutorial could be volunteerly. Valhalla even uses a quiz after the tutorial which you have to pass in order to play on that server. That will probably scare away some players, so let's not do that. The tutorial will have to be translated into other languages, also mentioning that English is the only allowed language in the main chat. A command like /continue or /play can be used to skip the tutorial. A textdraw should always mention the "escape" possibility.

[Kase]

About the other languages, we can use something like /tour [language], with a few popular languages 

[tomozj]

I think I recall this idea being discussed, and it would be a smart move. Much better than any text, and perhaps the game could get players started (by letting them actually interact with parts of LVP). For example, it could spawn them near a random property worth nothing (which would be reset later) and step them through purchasing a property and show how it makes them money - I think progressing through a tutorial would constitute a fair reason to earn $10k!

Not only would this just show players parts of the server but also familiarise them with it, get them involved with a (hopefully) wide range of activities. Also, committing that sort of time makes you feel as if you need to actually give it a go so that it's worthwhile that you spent that time initially simply learning about the server.

[Phyc0]

On tour: You could even use NPCs too. This would clearly show new player how to do things. Because you want any new player to be able to easily find and use the tour successfully, it would be a good idea to offer them a tour when they first join the server (unregistered users), and even if they're registered but with less than 20 hours. The less commands the player has to perform, the better. You must remember, some of the new players joining LVP probably may have never played SA:MP before, and have no idea even how to use the chat. With a user-friendly interface, the tour will be a great success; allowing new players the chance to fully understand all of LVPs features. Their language should be selected automatically by getting the player's IP address. If you can't get their country (language) from certain IP addresses, offer the tour in English.

On languages: Because you've no idea how many of your players can actually read and understand English, there should really be an option for players to select their own language if available. I understand the admin-system is written in both Dutch and English. The only two disadvantages of allowing players to receive all client messages in their own language is because it may encourage them to use non-English in the main chat and the simple fact that's it would be very time consuming and difficult to find a reliable source of a good translation. This obviously isn't a priority at the moment.

[tomozj]

For the record, an optional and skip-able tutorial to the basics of SA-MP (commands and chat for example) would indeed be good.