manual

[Elbenfreund]

Heya !

Since I found this great project I wanted to participate in the dev. Unfortunaly my coding is rather crap, I cant do gfx nor sounds. My creativity is the one of the pencil, and it looked as most work on this field was already done.
As if wasnt enough till now it looks like I wont be able to get my etch to run ufo at all which made me realy hopeless on oportunities to contribute.
But here I am, up with the not so original nor glamorous but maybe helpful. While playing the lates snv on win I noticed that there are quite some feature not(almost not documented at all.  Also it kinda hard to gather all information about the stats if you dont have permanent connection to the internet. so it came to my mind to create a offline manual, gathering all relevant information and founding a source to consult in case someone whats to go in deep. This would include game mechanics as well as stats and "how to's" and gerneral information. The weapon of choice to do this of cuz would be (la)tex puttin it into pdf/div. So If I get the ok from mattn I willstart doing this and shouldnt need THAT long...

looking forward for your reply on this, take care: Eric

[Mattn]

it would be really cool if you could update our docs.

you could use http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/howtoplay/howtoplay.html as the template and update and extend it.

thank you very much

best regards
martin

[Elbenfreund]

Heya,

so meanwhile the concept for the manual is up as well as first screenshots and their explenations are edited. Nevertheless there are some sections that might be better filled by the people in charge, so here is what I would need.

---game development history---
as i came to ufo:ai just some weeks ago im not too familiar with the origins of its development. Nevetheless I think it might be interesting and also a nice propaganda / PR thing to give new people a ->short<- insight on how things started.

---system requirements---
linux/win/maxOS?
as the engine itself seems pretty done some general requirements (cpu/ram/harddisk) would be nice. I willl also add some of the wiki notes about gl / dri here.

Thanks for your help, and I'm looking forward to come up with the first Beta till mid of next week. Have a nice afternoot: Eric.

[Elbenfreund]

ok, so the very fir alpha release is out. Jiten was helping out with some webspace (as files were to big for sf.org)
the final version will consist of 3 version:
-no graphics
-just most important screenshots
-all the funky / big shit we got

to-do:
page-brakes
geoscape screenshot
entire "base" section
include "hyperlinks" package
include better a font
increase font size on screenshots
maybe transparent background for screenshots

please feel free to comment. I think I will be able to do a second release at the end of week including the stuff left in the to-do list.

so here comes the url:

http://
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jojkaart/ufoai-manual_rev.0.0.4/ufo-manual_EN_rev.0.0.4.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jojkaart/ufoai-manual_rev.0.0.4/ufoai-manual_EN_rev.0.0.4.tar.gz
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jojkaart/ufoai-manual_rev.0.0.4/readme.txt


Thanks for your time, Eric.

[Mattn]

good work - but please use another screenshot on page 10 (not the harbor map - this map looks ugly atm) - i will continue reading and report more feedback soon

[Zako]

I've just looked at the manual, not read it, but it looks good to me. The green text with green background is a little hard to read IMHO. Maybe white would look better. Also you have written combaat knife (an a too much) at the bottom of page 16.

[vorticone]

There is quite a few spelling mistakes. But the general look of the manual seems quite good to me. The text is well structured and looks good for a first draft. But I wouldn't worry about typos until much much later.

[Mattn]

if you are done we can add the manual to svn - i can even give you write access to svn to maintain the docs.

[XCOM1]

Good work Eric.  Good structure and well written.  I wouldn't worry about the typo's though until the final draft.  Overall a good piece of work.  One suggestion though.  You might think about including the background story into the manual itself as sort of a pretext.  Just a thought.

[v29a]

xcom1: the background story isnt done completly. (and i think our writers want to do the text for the manual if this is done) ;-)

[Elbenfreund]

ok.... after some RL stuff I am back to ufo:ai again, coming up with a brand new version of the manual, this one has some major improvements for all you out there

http://
http://users.blacksec.org/~elbenfreund/


Basic features:
-commented screenshots for geoscape and both HUDs
-text for all relevant game mechanics, as far as they are implemented of cause (if you miss any, just let me know)
-almost complete aspell-check (left alone the ufopedia articles)
-slight structure improvements
-far better compressed images while keeping the quality high
-brand new "first steps" section

I would apreaciate if some of you could take the time to have a look on it, even if it may not be necesscary to proof read it its current stage.
Well, exspect a rather soon update anyway as I will bother the IRC crowd for the latest gossip/updates and get the results into the manual ASAP.

Thanks for your time, Eric.

BTW: I will add to SVN later, now I gotta do some university again