I've been banging away at the game's tutorial for over a week now and am pretty close to having it at least functional. That will enable me to send the game out to testers and have a chance of them learning the game without my intervention.

Getting the tutorial working wasn’t actually that much effort.  It mostly slotted in to the already-existing AI routines.  I also had to add some checks so that the user couldn’t tap in the wrong spot at the wrong time.  Not too bad.

I am surprised at how long it is taking to actually create the tutorial content.  Every time I add something or debug something in the tutorial I need to play through it just to get to that point again.  What a pain!

I am just now adding a way to fast-forward through the tutorial automatically so at least I can just set it going and come back when it is at the spot I am interested in debugging.  I should have done this from the beginning as it would have saved me loads of time.  Better late than never, though it’s almost to the point where I question if the time lost implementing it is worth it.  Probably so and I’ll be thankful it’s there when something goes wrong in the future.