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A Memorable Name posted:For the narrower typefaces, I would prefer if you either change the font size to fit to height or vertically aligned the text to the center, because it looks like there's just too much black space in the bottom in some banners and I think that would help people focus on the typeface itself a little more. djw175 posted:I'd say Agency FB at 75% or even less if possible. Suspicious Dish posted:75% is even too big. Scale it down much more. The banner is too tall, but it can be wider. The lack of centering and bad line wrap makes it look bad. Thank you. I'm working on implementing these changes now. One question for everyone, is there a way to make sure I'm placing the text in the center other than eyeballing it? I plan on using Irfanview once I have this all settled so I can place the text in a constant position, but is there a better way to figure out where on the image to put the text?
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Dec 19, 2012 06:06
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ThatPazuzu posted:ThePeavstenator, move away from your mic some, it'll reduce the huffs and puffs I hear time to time. The only problem is that it's attached to the headset I'm using and I have it below my chin extended as far away and down as it can be. I can't eliminate microphone boosting either because then the microphone is way too quiet. ThePeavstenator fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 06:06
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axeil posted:Thank you. I'm working on implementing these changes now. One question for everyone, is there a way to make sure I'm placing the text in the center other than eyeballing it? I plan on using Irfanview once I have this all settled so I can place the text in a constant position, but is there a better way to figure out where on the image to put the text? If you're using Photoshop, you can put a guide marker at 50%, and dragging will snap to it.
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Dec 19, 2012 06:09
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Suspicious Dish posted:If you're using Photoshop, you can put a guide marker at 50%, and dragging will snap to it. I'm using Paint and IrfanView because I don't have Photoshop  Is Photoshop expensive these days? Is it worth it to buy just so I don't have to gently caress around with free image editing tools? Also, making the background anything other than black makes the three game logos look really bad because they all have black backgrounds so I think I'm stuck with black unless anyone has a clever idea. axeil fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 06:13
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I can't answer those questions, since I don't use those tools, but it is available along with the entire Adobe suite (Premiere, Illustrator, Flash, etc.) for $50 a month, and available separately for $400. Somebody else could probably tell you how to make guides and good-looking text in Paint.NET or GIMP or one of those other programs.
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Dec 19, 2012 06:15
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ThePeavstenator posted:The only problem is that it's attached to the headset I'm using and I have it below my chin extended as far away and down as it can be. I can't eliminate microphone boosting either because then the microphone is way too quiet. The other thing I'm trying to eliminate is the screen tearing. This isn't a problem with .avi, but I also can't upload a 6 gb file to Youtube, especially when this is old-fashioned SD. I'm experimenting with different kinds of .mp4 settings in Vegas. (And yes I'm only lossy encoding for the final product)
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Dec 19, 2012 06:16
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axeil posted:I'm using Paint and IrfanView because I don't have Photoshop Try Paint.Net. It's like Paint except better in every way.
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Dec 19, 2012 06:19
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Suspicious Dish posted:I can't answer those questions, since I don't use those tools, but it is available along with the entire Adobe suite (Premiere, Illustrator, Flash, etc.) for $50 a month, and available separately for $400. I have GIMP installed, I've just never used it. Time to give it a shot. I think at this point I need to move this over to the Tech Support Fort since we're getting into more technical aspects. I'll post when I've gotten the headers looking better. Thanks for all your tips and critiques on the headers. I've never really done any image editing so I knew that was probably gonna be the weakest area. djw175 posted:Try Paint.Net. It's like Paint except better in every way. I'll give that a shot too. Thanks! axeil fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 06:19
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ThePeavstenator posted:The other thing I'm trying to eliminate is the screen tearing. This isn't a problem with .avi, but I also can't upload a 6 gb file to Youtube, especially when this is old-fashioned SD. I'm experimenting with different kinds of .mp4 settings in Vegas. (And yes I'm only lossy encoding for the final product) Well, if you are using Vegas, then I'd use DebugMode Frameserver and pipe your finished project into MeGUI or your preferred x264 GUI. The built-in H.264 encoders in Vegas are kind of mediocre imo.
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Dec 19, 2012 06:43
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axeil posted:fonts http://www.dafont.com/gunship.font
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Dec 19, 2012 06:44
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ThePeavstenator posted:TEST POST-Ty the Tasmanian Tiger LP You don't have to keep mentioning that this is your first LP. No one is really going to care. I've played Ty before and you mentioned some things that happen later in the game. You might want to avoid mentioning them until you get to them, it'll keep your introduction focused as you explain the game mechanics. It's alright to have some silence but, if you're struggling for things to say you can mention some of the game's background instead. For example, you can talk about the development process, how the game was marketed, how it was received, etc. Talking about the characteristics of Tasmanian Devils was a good idea. You've got screen tearing so you should head to the tech support thread if you haven't already. Maybe they'll be able to help you out. Other than that, the video was alright. You seem to have registered yesterday so I doubt you're aware of forum etiquette if you image leeched (you fixed it though), quoted yourself to make a correction (use the edit function), and weren't aware of lpix. You should observe the forums and read rule threads. It isn't specific to your LP but, you'll have a much easier time if you're more accustomed to the forums.
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Dec 19, 2012 06:48
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Pierzak posted:Agency is the only one I see working here. I'd go with something similar to the title font, what about Gunship? Oh wow. That looks really good, almost exactly like something the Eurasian Dynasty would use. Thanks!
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Dec 19, 2012 07:00
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RickDaedalus posted:You don't have to keep mentioning that this is your first LP. No one is really going to care. Thanks for the advice. I think that the cause of my constant talking was that I brainstormed a list beforehand of things to talk about. I let the list become my map and I suddenly felt like I absolutely had to mention everything on it. I'm going to re-play this part of the game and keep some of the tips you guys gave me in mind. I think I'll be more relaxed a second time through and hopefully wont be talking the entire time. Also I think I figured out the frame tearing problem.
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Dec 19, 2012 07:37
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ThePeavstenator posted:The only problem is that it's attached to the headset I'm using and I have it below my chin extended as far away and down as it can be. I can't eliminate microphone boosting either because then the microphone is way too quiet. Try bringing it up to level with your nose instead. That seems to work well for me. Also, keeping it more to the side might work better than simply "away."
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Dec 19, 2012 07:51
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I had always heard that the best position to have a headset mic is just above the nose; the wind from breathing won't get in and the sound should still travel perfectly fine. Of course, I've never had a headset mic of my own (unless you count the 360 headset, which I do not), so I can't say for sure if that is the best or not.
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Dec 19, 2012 09:00
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axeil posted:Thank you. I'm working on implementing these changes now. One question for everyone, is there a way to make sure I'm placing the text in the center other than eyeballing it? I plan on using Irfanview once I have this all settled so I can place the text in a constant position, but is there a better way to figure out where on the image to put the text? Inkscape is a fantastic little program if you're working with a set of graphical elements and you want to compose something out of them. It's not for doing work on bitmaps themselves, but if you're using exsisting bitmaps and you just want to space a couple of things out it's really nice. There are a couple of things you'll need to know, though: "Align and Distribute" (Ctrl+Shift+A) will allow you to align objects in any way you want. You can drag guides in from the sides. "Transform" (Ctrl+Shift+M) will alow you to make asperger level changes to objects. Clicking on an object will let you move and resize it. Clicking again will let you rotate it. You can build complex objects from simple ones. This is done with Union (Ctrl++), Difference (Ctrl+-) and Intersection (Crtl+*) commands. These are pretty much the three most important commands you're gonna use. "Document Properties" (Ctrl+Shift+D) will allow you to set the size of the document and, crucially, a non-transparent background if you need it. PgUp and PgDn will move objects above or below one another. Elements are kept seperate and you'll only use layers if you're doing serious poo poo. It takes some getting used to, but in my opionion it's a lot easier and quicker to use than Photoshop if you're basically only throwing two or three things together. You can export to PNG, but if you can find a host that'll take SVG you don't even have to do that. 
AtomD fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 14:31
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I'm a few hours late to this discussion, but I'll weigh in anyway, even if PC Snob has thankfully abandoned his idea.The_PC_Snob posted:I'm not even arguing they're original characters. They're archetypes and that's precisely what I explained. Heck, I can pull up the TV Tropes page for what each of them represent. As I said, I introduced them for readers to have something familiar with in the game. It was an idea that came AFTER I started creating the LP. That's a pretty bad idea, and I am someone who wrote extra material and characterization for many of my LP's in various degrees. Characters are not one-dimensional archtypes. They SHOULD be unique and interesting, complex with deeper feelings and emotions. Writing them is hard, especially if they're haven't got any backstory or much in-game character to work from. It took me a lot of tries, getting feedback from various people to try and LEARN how to make a character who was interesting and worth reading around before I even started the LP. It'll take you a lot of tries as well. Don't just throw in a bunch of shallow archtypes and call it a day.
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Dec 19, 2012 15:57
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Alright, so now that we're done with PC Snob's poo poo, I get to make things awkward for that other guy doing an FE8 hack. At least it's not the same one. Ephraim and...Lyn? save the day in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones I'll spare you the long OP, this will be my third FE LP and I'd like to think I can write them by now. The important things for this test post: - I'm playing FE7 Crossover, which is a romhack that more or less does exactly what it says on the tin. 14 FE8 characters have been replaced by FE7 characters, though none of them show up in the prologue. - The hack makes a whole bunch of under-the-hood mechanical changes, but it has a shitton of issues including awful sprite recolors, number inflation, and a total disregard for anything coming close to game balance. - Despite changing out just under half the cast, not a single word of the script was changed. This is most obvious in Chapter 1 (which my test post is not covering), but for the sake of consistency, I've summarized the in-chapter plot and conversations. My primary concern is with the conversations - I've (tried to) cut a lot of talking out and condensed it down to the core of "What's going on, why are we here, and why are we doing this?" I ran it by a couple people before bringing it here, and they seemed to think it was fine. I'm worried that I cut too much and there wasn't enough left. - I tried to write in a way that assumed at least a basic level of knowledge about Fire Emblem (what the weapon triangle is and how it works, what a "Jeigan" is, how the stats work, etc.), but without requiring any knowledge of FE8 itself at all. Again, it seems to have passed my "A couple buddies on Steam" test, but obviously we have similar interests and they might miss a problem since they are familiar with FE8. Long story short, my intention was "Some basic Fire Emblem knowledge is required. FE8 experience is not, but it certainly helps." - There are two versions of the test post, both are identical aside from one using a gif to show the countries, and the other sticks with a screenshot layout. I'm leaning toward the gif one, but I'll leave it up to you guys to say what works better. Non-gif version Gif version
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Dec 19, 2012 17:18
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It looks good. I'd take the .gif one just because it takes up less space visually. On a gameplay note, JESUS CHRIST, Seth has 15 Con. Why would anything ever need that much Con?
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Dec 19, 2012 17:25
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Either one really but I prefer the non-gif. Text gifs are tricky, too slow and fast readers will skip right over them, too fast and slow readers will lose out. Screenshotting doesn't take up much room and keeps both sides happy.  Seth has +4 Con and Eirikia is stuck with 5.
TenaCrane fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 17:33
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The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe: Let's Play The Last Express Four months ago someone posted a test post for a subtitled video LP (and never, as far as I can tell, posted the actual thread). What I'm thinking of is a blind screenshot LP. Intro Part 0 - In which we begin playing the game but do not actually run the executable Part 1 - In which we join the train and, four minutes later, lose the game Let me know what you think.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:11
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Lex Talionis posted:The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe: Let's Play The Last Express You know, I am not really sure what to say. On one hand there isn't too much wrong with this technically as such, but on the other I really don't feel this is the best approach for this game. I'm pretty sure the subtitle of this forum is (or was), "we play the games so you don't have to", so for me, doing the LP of this particular game would mean going in with good knowledge of what alternate paths etc. exist and trying to show off as many as possible in some interesting way (including also some that lead to a premature end, such as what you showed in the test post--this is another thing, do you really feel that this is the best way to start, by leading your readers on a wild goose chase and then saying "welp, next time we'll try this again, hopefully with better result?"). I just don't think the whole "I'm pretending to play this game blindly" is such a great idea. Second, let's put the graphics/animation to the side, but I think that you really DO lose a lot without sound/voiced dialogue here. The makers of the game went to great length to get native speakers for most (if not all) of the roles and it's a really great thing to be able to hear all these different languages and different accents. (You also seem to recognise this, and even go so far to include notes in the two ladies' conversation about accents and languages!) Also, in game, only languages that Cath understands are subtitled, but even so the untranslated stuff is still actually correct and if you as a player understand the language you can get a bit more story flavour that way. In summary, I do feel that video with subtitles may be a better format for this game. About the historical asides, even if you did this as video, I don't see why they could not be posted as additional textual material after it. However, if I were you I would probably try to illustrate them with an appropriate picture/photograph or two, in order to avoid having a big wall of uninterrupted text. Finaly, and this is not really so important, if would be nice to include a paragraph or two about this game's financial failure caused more or less by the fact that its publisher (Brøderbund) was going through some kind of bankrupcy/corporate takeover at the time and weren't interested in spending money on marketing (don't know all the details but you could research it). Well let's see what others think, but as I mentioned to the other guy, this IS one of my absolute favourite games and would like to see it presented well.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:42
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Lex Talionis posted:The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe: Let's Play The Last Express ivantod posted:You know, I am not really sure what to say. On one hand there isn't too much wrong with this technically as such, but on the other I really don't feel this is the best approach for this game. I'm pretty sure the subtitle of this forum is (or was), "we play the games so you don't have to", so for me, doing the LP of this particular game would mean going in with good knowledge of what alternate paths etc. exist and trying to show off as many as possible in some interesting way (including also some that lead to a premature end, such as what you showed in the test post--this is another thing, do you really feel that this is the best way to start, by leading your readers on a wild goose chase and then saying "welp, next time we'll try this again, hopefully with better result?"). I just don't think the whole "I'm pretending to play this game blindly" is such a great idea. My thoughts are basically what this guy said. Blind is bad if it adds nothing.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:44
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Artix74 posted:Ephraim and...Lyn? save the day in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones This sounds terrible... but in an amazing way. Your dialogue gets the point across just fine, the gif looks pretty good, and what the christ, I don't think the author of this really appreciates the nuances of the Fire Emblem Stat System. I love that there has been enough Fire Emblem on the forums to make LP threads with prerequisites viable.
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Dec 19, 2012 19:02
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This kinda got buried by the PC_Snob stuff, unfortunately, so I'll just ask again to see if there's anything that needs fixing up or the like.Dragonatrix posted:Okay, so take 2! Added a VN section update as well as gameplay, and expanded the gameplay update to include more stuff. It might be a bit too long as is, though, so I have the old version still for comparison and to use instead if the new one is too long or something.
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Dec 19, 2012 19:18
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In your honest opinion, do RTS let's plays work better as screenshots? Or as Videos?
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Dec 19, 2012 19:20
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Turtlicious posted:In your honest opinion, do RTS let's plays work better as screenshots? Or as Videos? In my opinion? Heavily edited videos.
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Dec 19, 2012 19:21
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djw175 posted:In my opinion? Heavily edited videos. Yeah, start off showing us your initial base/plans/whatever, then skip forward to whatever bits you deem interesting. Repeat.
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Dec 19, 2012 19:26
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Dragonatrix posted:This kinda got buried by the PC_Snob stuff, unfortunately, so I'll just ask again to see if there's anything that needs fixing up or the like. quote:EX: The [digital root] of (1234) would be... 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 ? 1 + 0 = [1]
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Dec 19, 2012 20:15
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Lex Talionis posted:The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe: Let's Play The Last Express This is probably one of the worst games to LP blind because there's so many optional scenes and alternate paths. Don't do it. Don't.
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Dec 19, 2012 20:16
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Turtlicious posted:In your honest opinion, do RTS let's plays work better as screenshots? Or as Videos? As I'm working on SSLP of an RTS my vote goes for screenshot but I think both methods require a good knowledge of when to include/exclude things. Seeing 20 scout forces blow up when confronted with base defenses is boring but "here's my base" straight to "and now I've blown up their base" is also boring. Do you have a test post yet? Maybe try a video and screenshot one and see which one works better? TheOneAndOnlyT posted:I'd say this looks pretty good. The only thing I can find is that during your explanation of the digital root, I think you tried to put in a character that the forums can't understand: Is it possible that's a character encoding issue on your end? I know not having Unicode selected in my browser can sometimes give me crazy characters like that. axeil fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 20:26
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Nah, this is an issue on Dragonatrix' or LPix' end. I'm going to guess the editor he copy-pasted from a script dump or something into didn't support Unicode, or had the encoding set to ASCII.
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Dec 19, 2012 20:35
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Yeah, just checked the script dump I have and it's a "?" there too. That's probably my fault for not checking the encoding or something, since I wouldn't have thought to (never been relevant before insofar as I can tell).
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Dec 19, 2012 20:43
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Turtlicious posted:In your honest opinion, do RTS let's plays work better as screenshots? Or as Videos? Video, RTS are all about situational awareness and tracking processes / movements, and I don't believe screenshots can capture this dynamic.
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Dec 19, 2012 20:50
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So here I am, back for more. The New and Improved Supreme Commander LP (I hope that tagline holds true) For now I'm not messing too much with the screencap sizes because I'm not sure what's the ideal size here. For now, they're a size that fits my screen well. So, is this my path to redemption, or am I just giving you more dirt for you to bury me with?
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Dec 19, 2012 22:43
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How big is your god drat monitor that those look good? Are you projecting this on the side of a barn or something? Also, separate your OP and the first update.
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Dec 19, 2012 22:52
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Much, much, much better. The screenshots are still big, but I guess you can just put em into [timg] tags if you can't shrink them further. From my experience, people seem to prefer if your images don't go over 
Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 22:54
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Xiahou Dun posted:How big is your god drat monitor that those look good? Hmmm, the larger ones occupy roughly 3/5 of my browser window. I'll convert them to thumbnails.
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Dec 19, 2012 23:03
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The_PC_Snob posted:So here I am, back for more. - Your update should be written with the assumption that the reader has never played Supreme Commander and knows nothing about it, but your readers will have played games before. You don't need to explain what an RTS is, we know. The rest of the history is good though. - Your screenshots are too big. You should design them so that people who don't have a widescreen monitor will still be able to see the entire image. And before you say "but who uses a non-widescreen monitor these days," I'm at work and am using one right now. - You don't need a separate update just for backstory unless it's really, really long. Yours isn't, so just merge it into the gameplay update. Overall though, your actual coverage of the gameplay and explanations of mechanics are pretty good. Fake edit: The_PC_Snob posted:Hmmm, the larger ones occupy roughly 3/5 of my browser window.
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Dec 19, 2012 23:07
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Can you shrink your images using IrfanView? They might be okay if you pop em in there and convert them to a smaller size.
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Dec 19, 2012 23:07
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