Writers Forum - Come on In!

Ricobirch · September 18, 2002, 02:54

I was browsing the Europa Universalis 2 AAR forums and found they had a thread where writiers were able to discuss tecniques, struggles, and problems in writing thier AAR's.

I think we could also benifit from a similar thread.

I'd like to kick off the disscusion by addressing what I think is a major problem with writing about Civ 3.

Geography, the free-form maps that the game generates present a major problem for the reader. It's hard for a reader to relate to your story when they have no idea of where things are.

The easiest way around this is of course screenshots. But this presents another problem, people tend not to look at them. For example take my current story. I posted a screenshot the showed th area in my story. And at this point the thread had about 150 views. To this date only 5 people have viewed the photo.

I'd like to hear from my fellow writers how they get around this major hurdle.

GeneralTacticus · September 18, 2002, 04:01

The other problem with screenshots is that if you're not writing about a game, you won't have any.

Sonic · September 18, 2002, 11:19

Ricobirth, to avoid problems do the following:
Get some graphical program which is able to change .bmp format to .jpg. For some reason, bitmaps are always only downloadable on this site, while jpegs are being added as picture.

DarkCloud · September 19, 2002, 21:19

If someone is a really good author, he won't need more than one or two introductory screenshots to show the state of the world- then, through exposition, he can tell the conquests... etc... and if he likes he can mock up a few maps with invasion marks (true historical style)

That would be the BEST solution

Metaliturtle · September 19, 2002, 23:32

I usually use the world map as it is a common reference, although I can see how this situation can be problematic

steamthunk · September 23, 2002, 14:10

I read this post before posting my story so I included a small map taken from the military advisor and then used Paintshop Pro to label only those cities that were mentioned in the text. I'm assuming it helped out, but I've no proof.

I think maps are a good idea in general though. Many fantasy authors, for example, include them at the beginning of the book.

Stupid question: What is AAR?