Newbie Guide needed.

[new.vogue.nightmare]

We absolutely must get something for new players to read so we don't have people asking about other players when they spawn, speaking unintelligibly, and the like.

Wats ur character? Do u no where 2 find so-n-so?
^---You have the "chatspeak," the ooc/ic mixup, AND the total ignorance of the capital rule. I have seen so much of this today, it's nearly impossible to squash newbieness like this!!

[Báng]

Yeah that was a bad looking thing going on in Quillanoi, if thats what your talking about. They need to know they play characters and dont say stuff like 'whats your characters name'. Picking up the gameplay should be easy, its the Role playing side of it that should have a few guidelines.

[rklenseth]

I believe there is a newbie guide somewhere on the Cantr site but the place to send newbies is to the forum, I think. They will be able to get help from veteran players and staff members.

[new.vogue.nightmare]

Quillanoi AND Pok, and who knows where else!

...Cantr's September, *...sigh* ..how appropriate.

[west]

the newbie guide is...what, 500 turns old?

[Solfius]

Quillanoi AND Pok, and who knows where else!

...Cantr's September, *...sigh* ..how appropriate.

sorry, my doing. I got a load of friends to try it out, not sure if all of em get the idea of roleplaying. Been trying to explain it, but gets a bit difficult

[Missy]

You could always use visual aid solfius. Get out your GI joes..and say "OK this is a character, now control him. Make him come to life. " LOL

[Solfius]

lol, pretty hard to do that over MSN though

[abbeyroad]

::coughs:: WEBCAM ::coughs::

[Meh]

This is all I can think of.
Add or correct a paragraph or two.
Then maybe the staff will post it after we've kicked it around for ahwile.

The other Newbie guide.

I am assuming you have skimmed these:

Newbie Guide

http://www.cantr.net/ooc/index.php?page=newbieguide&l=1

General info

http://www.cantr.net/ooc/index.php?page=generalinfo

Both of which are available without logging in or having characters yet.

A few corrections

“Travelling by boat or by plane will only be possible when a starting location and an end location have both made the same improvements to the location. Thus, when you built a harbor in one coastal city there will be not effect, but as soon as another coastal city builds a comparable harbor, suddenly both of them will get a new exit listed so that they can travel to eachother. The same counts for airfields. “

As of 9/20/03 there are no planes or helicopters. And the way that boats work is you just build them on a sea or lake. Some require a dock like thing.

“There is no limit to the amount of characters you can create”

As of 9/20/03 there is a limit of 15 characters. You can start with up to two news ones and can add one per day until you meet your limit. If one of the 15 dies you can start antoher one immideately.

Now onto the rest of this.

Role-playing.

OOC

Your characters are just that characters. If you want to say something yourself to the people around you, something that your character wouldn’t say start it with “OOC”. OOC mean “out of character” for an out of character comment.

I am feeling sleepy. OOC: Gotta bail be back later.

It doesn’t have to be exactly like that ooc / OOC etc..

Now if you want to say something to all of the players then go to the forum. The staff and other players can answer your questions. And many people will post replies on your feelings. Don’t put anything too detailed about your characters in the forum because many people do not want to know about things they have not seen. In other words be as vague as possible to get your point across. http://www.cantr.net/forum/

Actions

Not all actions in the game have buttons so if you want to show something typically people do it like this

*jumps in the lake* Ahh this feels better

::looks frustrated:: This is taking forever

Doing that kind of thing is voluntary but adds a little flavor.

Character names and motives

You can always change your characters name and you may want to give it some thought before you tell anyone your name.

Trying to mimic a real life or fictional character and use their name gets old quick. Not just for others but for you. Mickey Mouse only has a certain range of sayings and things that he would do before you run out. It is better to name yourself something you can stick with and if you want to act LIKE a real life or fictional character that is fine. If you have writers block on a name just pick up one of those archaic phone book things open it and point. If you have no idea on the type of personality to play then just be yourself and maybe later you’ll slowly change the character to something else as he gains some stories to tell.


Surviving longer than a day.

Some of the places in Cantr are very strict others laid back. The best thing to do before you say or do anything is look at the objects on the ground, look for the notes, and read them without picking them up. If you don’t like what you see then be a rebel there but if your not a suck up in real life then it can be fun to play one. Just imagine it is this so and so suck up from real life and go with it.

Then you might want to announce your there. This is called different things by different people at different times and it doesn’t matter where your at. “I was just spawned”, “I just turned twenty”, etc.

Give it a day or so. There are many locations that new characters don’t pop up in. Take a walk down a path.


Character death or mistreatment.

At some times you will be more than miffed {can’t use the words I’m think of here} about a character dying or being mistreated. Believe me the worst thing you can do back is to not stay. If your dead that’s easy they are robbed of your character, your ideas, your productivity forever. Don’t try to avenge one of your dead characters death if your other characters didn’t see it. If your alive, LEAVE. Plot your revenge in secret.

By staying and complaining or complaining though other characters that weren’t there is the most natural thing to do. So is going to the bathroom whenever you need to like in an elevator. Try to resist the urge until later.


Time limit

There is one. It is 200 minutes per day. You will forget about it until that one day when your out of time. Some tricks to extend your time.

Cut & paste notes out of the game and read them offline
Cut & paste long “speeches” or notes into the game
If your ever away from your keyboard or just get distracted reading something in the game or thinking. Log out then log in. Hitting any other button counts as time.

[Meh]

Buttons Buttons look at all the pretty buttons



Player screen

Player Info

Info on you, mail, time left today etc.

There is a little button to the right if you’d like to change this info. Like your e-mail address.

CHARACTERS LIST

This page give you a brief summary of all your characters, where there at, their general health, progress on traveling or projects, and if anything new has happened on the events since you last went in.

Healthly looks like this:



Nearly dead looks like this:



{Don’t have a sample of the in between right now}

By clicking on them you go to that character.

Player Menu

Once you a day or two passes you will begin to see day report buttons. Clicking on these send that days report of all your characters to the mail id on your account.

There is three buttons that are available just about everywhere.


Create a new character.


Unsubscribe. Kills all characters and deletes your game id. Before going though with this consider contacting the players department and killing them off a few at a time and giving their possessions to another character/player in your characters location that wants to live. Your characters will drop dead silently and no one will know why. Quite disruptive. Your characters can always go and have a new life by just leaving where they are at. Starving them to death by not playing is an option too.


Logout. You don’t have to log out but if you want to conserve your 200 minutes per day…




Event Screen

Clicking on a character drops you into the Event Screen

Like most other character screens has the Screen Menu.

Screen Menu

{These are forms and not gifs so I can’t show them here}
Events
Inventory
Location
Building & Vehicles
People
Objects
Activity

Event Screen con’t

Also on just about every screen is the character info section

If your character is working on a project you see the progress and you can also click on it to go to the project screen and see those details

Also if you want to stop working on a project click this



Event Screen con’t

The event screen shows everything that your character has seen. If you were just spawned you see nothing until something happens.

The screen only repeats things for a limited number of viewing. If you want to see more of the past try the “Show All” or “Show further back buttons”

The only other thing to click is on the people who did stuff. You may see a lot of “a man in their twenties” etc. The people page will explain this.

Oh and then there is of course talking. Typing something at the top and pressing “talk to all” or enter in some browsers will put that text out there for all characters within earshot. There is a way to talk one-on-one on the people page.

Character Menu

Another menu that is on most screens.


Write a note.

Instead of talking you can write notes. Notes can be useful for when new people arrive after being spawned, coming from buildings, coming in off a trial. Handing and dropping notes is covered on the inventory screen.


Create an envelope

Envelops are used to store notes in. {For when you have a bunch or want to have a sealed note. More on this under inventory screen}


takes you too the build menu. More on that later.

In character player menu

The player menu changes a bit when in a specific character


takes you back to the player screen so you can get to your other charaters


takes you too a brief help section

And the log out button which we discussed before.

Whew..
That’s one screen onto the next.

Actually I’m tired maybe I'll be this bored again another day….

[rklenseth]

I don't think Jos want something that informative. I remember him saying once when this was a topic of discussion on the Yahoo Board that he would like players to discover the game by exploring its options.

Also, there will be aircraft in the future. There is and have been for a long while a helicopter engine. I think we will see helicoptors in the future but when in the future, I don't know.

Some players have no or a higher character limit because they joined before the 15 character limit (because someone decided to cheat and make a few to many characters so they could create an army or something of that effect.) I don't think that is necessary anyways to add. I think players will learn that on their own if they decide to make that many characters. Though what is in the current newbie guide is deceiving.

A lot of the stuff about role playing is not really official but something a lot of players do. Also, the ** or :::: is stuff some players do to show an emotion or show something they are doing. It is something that has come about in the latter half of my time playing Cantr. When I first started very few players did that and I think very few 'older' players still don't do that (personally, I think a lot of that is annoying because a lot tells other characters stuff they wouldn't know such as *he thinks to himself about how he would like to jump*. I'm fine with *smile* or *he jumps with a big smile on his face*. But I care not to hear what another character is thinking because my character can't read minds. I would also prefer an emote system but I think that is a dream right now). As I said before this isn't official but a style of play some players have brought into the game. I think the current phrase about role playing that it is encouraged but not necessary will suffice. Believe it or not there are some players that just play to build stuff. Perhaps add something to the effect about that there are different role playing styles involved in the game but that is about it.

I think the newbie should contain stuff on how to contact each department and for what reasons. Explain how to create characters and how to access. Go into detail about explaining the capital rule because I think that is one big point that a lot of players have trouble with or get into trouble because of it. And that would contain all the stuff about getting revenge for a character that had died because of another character.

I was thinking, why not create a staff position for the support of newbie players. This person could answer all the newbie questions. I know the Player's Department does that already so why not create the staff position within that department. That way newbie players know who to contact right away. Perhaps even add this to the newbie guide as well as a contact for help.

[Solfius]

::coughs:: WEBCAM ::coughs::

unfortunately I don't have one, but I hope to rectify that around the time of my birthday or christmas

[Thomas Pickert]

Thank you VERY much, David, for your efforts to compile an up-to-date newbie guide. That is very welcome. I have only glanced at it yet, but I think, that one will eventually make it to the anouncements section. As far as I have seen, it describes the basics of the game very well.

Thanks again for the work and thought you put into it.

[new.vogue.nightmare]

ooohhh, I likes the pretty guide for the n00bicus caesar! ^___^;;

'specially all the pretty buttons! They makes meh happy!

604-1: You see OniKaze slap OniKaze in the face.

Ah. I feel much better now. Thank you.