Icons, Tutorials, Stats!

It’s been a month of polishing. Superstar Gladiator Manager artist Mesrile created a whole new icon set that’s been incorporated into the game. This makes a massive difference to the professional feel of the game, giving the icons consistency of style and a good sense of what they actually mean. A big leap forward.

He’s also been working on a new banner for the Store Page which should be up in the next couple of weeks, giving us a sharper more eye-catching look. (WIP only below)

On the technical side I finished creating the cup page, stats page and team history pages. All essential stuff in any management game. As a gamer of too many years I’m a sucker for games that are all about data – which is why I love sports management games. The most frustrating thing in the world, though, is when you can’t actually see any of the data. I hate having to create record sheets on scraps of paper around my desk and can never understand why the information isn’t in game. Not so Gladiator Manager – all the stats you like will be there at the click of a button!

I’ve now begun on the tutorial. I’d love to know what you all think makes a good tutorial. I just played an absolutely awful one in an otherwise good game: This Is The Police II. OMFG that tutorial kills you. Like an hour of cut scenes with one little playable bit in the middle that made me even madder than the slow moving pictures. The reason for my frustration at the playable bit was that it was completely linear. I hate linear tutorials – you know when it’s just ‘click here’ and oh! look the monster has conveniently been a dumb ass and stood in just the right place so now we can show you this other mechanic – so click here now. No choice at all.

I want to be very hands off on the tutorial and operate mostly through optional help screens that pack in useful hints and tips when the player wants to delve deeper into the game mechanics. I’ll need a few immediate pop-ups to point out really important things but otherwise I want to let the player explore and discover things for themselves.

One of the Gladiator Manager’s great strengths is the engine transparency – any time you like you can select ‘detailed battle view’ in a fight and see exactly how every single roll panned out and affected outcomes based on fighter attributes. Anyone who really wants to understand the game can therefore just look under the hood, while anyone who prefers the management side can just hit ‘quick sim’ and let the black box do its worst.

So no linear ‘click here’ tutorial for me – but I still need to do some work making the information accessible and attractive.

I should be done with the tutorial by the end of the month and then I can move to real polish like options, resolution scaling, esc menus and better saving facilities. At some stage I need to clear out all the rubbish assets lying around unused and slim it down for upload to Steam, and then I might be able to get a beta up and running for testers to get their hands on.

The Steam discussion page is up and running and there’s a YouTube let’s play series too. Jump in and join the discussions! We have over 200 wishlisters and growing now!