aar help

Well, I finally decided to write an aar and I would love it if I could get some pointers from the old timers here. I have read most of the aars and I have been inspired to write my own. So here are my questions.

1. Do you use a word document to write your aar and then copy and paste it online, or do you just type it up online.

2. How do you keep track of what is going on in your empire? Do you take notes? Or how do you do things like that.

3. How do you insert pictures into your text?


Um, I think that's it. My aar will be a romani one. It will not be historical, but I do not plan on blitzing. It will start roughly 240-230bc. Rome has just went into the marian era. (Yes I cheated) I think it would be nice to have a different roman aar, where its not all historical. There will be a lot of politics involved, and it won't be written from a stand point of one charactor, but instead any family member can have there say so long as they are important.... what do you guys (and gals) think?

I use wordpad and keep it on a flash drive so I can write up stuff wherever I may be. Sometimes I come up with ideas at random times
I use a yearly summary to keep track of things. But I try to narrow it down to a small area. You can devote chapters to individual cities if you wanted to.
I use a program called FRAPS. www.fraps.com It is free and if you pay the 10 bucks you can get your pics already in jpeg. Otherwise you have to convert it.
Good luck and I hoped this helped

Chirurgeon, what an honor it is for you to answer my question. I have followed all of your aars and loved every one of them. My favorite one was your luso one. It was a piece of art. Thank you.

Oh, and a couple more questions.
Any ideas what I should call this AAR? And, what would a roman "faction leader" be called in rome back then? Thanks for the help.

There shouldn't technically BE a faction leader, but you could pretend that he is the most powerful and influential senator.

I wrote the first ten chapters of the my AAR just in the browser, but after clicking submit to only get a failed to load screen, I started writting in a text document then copy/pasting them.

To keep track of what is going on in my campaign, I just take pictures of all events, whether I plan to post the pictures or not. So, I'll have random pictures of guys standing somewhere and I'll remember to mention that an army moved to a certain area or such.

I use FRAPS, too. Then you just upload the pictures onto one of many picture hosting sites around the internet. Those sites will often then give you a "code for forums" that you can just copy/paste into your text.

When I play the Romani, I just ignore the faction leader. I let the game choose him and don't care who he is. Instead I try to concentrate on the Consuls.

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Originally Posted by King Vasiliyi

Well, I finally decided to write an aar and I would love it if I could get some pointers from the old timers here. I have read most of the aars and I have been inspired to write my own. So here are my questions.

1. Do you use a word document to write your aar and then copy and paste it online, or do you just type it up online.

2. How do you keep track of what is going on in your empire? Do you take notes? Or how do you do things like that.

3. How do you insert pictures into your text?


Um, I think that's it. My aar will be a romani one. It will not be historical, but I do not plan on blitzing. It will start roughly 240-230bc. Rome has just went into the marian era. (Yes I cheated) I think it would be nice to have a different roman aar, where its not all historical. There will be a lot of politics involved, and it won't be written from a stand point of one charactor, but instead any family member can have there say so long as they are important.... what do you guys (and gals) think?

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While playing he campaign, I jot down a few notes: year, events - the golden thread ... and I take screenshots, which I immediately copy in Paint and save them. After every turn I quicksave my game. When I have finished a chapter I save my AAR under a new name, for example "Arverni1" , "Arverni2"...etc.

For every new chapter I have an own folder in my AAR-Folder, named "Chapter10 - Name of the Chapter", for the Screenshots, which I name "1Description" "2Description" or if in battle "3BATTLEDescription". Since they automatically are arranged in alphabetical order, I have the screens in chronological order by giving them numbers.

Then I write the AAR down in Microsoft Word. With all those [B][ /B] and [IMG][ /IMG] stuff and of course I already upload my pics and copy the links. Since I am paranoid , I save it every 20 seconds :laugh4: :laugh4: . What exactly happens to my Characters is not decided until now. Believe me, when you write your story and see the screens, you see opportunities for your background-roleplay story, you've never thought of before. This is the time, where you live out creativity :2thumbsup:

When you have it, you copy it into your AAR-Thread in this forum. Don't already submit reply, but preview your post. Read it twice, for I bet my ass there are horrible mistakes of every kind possible, you didn't see in Word. It happened, that I rewrote a complete chapter, after previewing it.

To keep the overview when you want to correct a word or sentence, it's the best if you copied fragments of the words before the one you want to change. For example:

"And he drew his sword, shouted "kill the bastards" and chargd"

now you want to correct the word "chargd" into "charged"

you copy this by pressing ctrl+c : "rew his sword, shoute". Most likely, there will be no other part in your AAR that exactly is the same, so if you press ctrl+F to search you only find it twice: in your preview and in your text, where you can correct it, so you don't have to search your ass off in order to find the particular sentence in your whole text.

(I hope you got what I mean ^^)


After having corrected all your AAR, go and make some coffee, eat something little and then return and read it again! Now you did your best to erase all mistakes and faults. Of course, if you are no native speaker, there's a great chance that there never will be a perfect text, but this way you minimize loss.


And now: what is allowed in a AAR? That depends on the kind of AAR you intend to create. Do you just want to report your actions? Just play the campaign, write it down and you'll be fine.

Do you want to create a background story and roleplay characters and stuff? Here you even may cheat. Make other factions richer, so they expand faster or do whatever fits your story, but please note:

your AAR will be boring, if you use the cheats only to blitz the enemy and take the whole map. Let the enemy defeat you from time to time, bring yourself in desperate situations, let your family members die in battle and make up intrigues and stuff. I'm sure you'll have tons of other ideas I'd never could imagine. Let your fantasy lead you.



How to upload images? Visit this site, you can sign up for free if you wish, but you don't have to.

https://imageshack.us/

I very much love this site, since it even saves uploaded images (if you signed up) so if you need them again, you don't have to upload them again.



How to call your AAR? Call it whatever you like. Imperium Romanum. Rise and Fall of an Empire. Romaioi Barbaroi. ^^ .....


I wish you good luck for your first AAR!

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Originally Posted by SwissBarbar

Romaioi Barbaroi. ^^

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:yes::yes::yes::yes:

Maion

I write the story in MS Word, not least because it has the advantage of spell-checking, and copy it on forum later.

I take screenshots using a program called "Howie's Quick Screen Capture Tool" (download here - it is in the "Misc Software" section) which already saves the pictures in .jpg format.

Instead of notes I, like MAA does, take screenshots of everything I want to remember later.

In heavily graphic AARs (the Pahlavan and Pontic one) I have used MS PowerPoint to create the slides, which I then saved as .jpg pictures to be posted. In my current Baktrian AAR I make only a few pictures, so I use Photoshop to edit my screenshots.

Another good picture-hosting site is https://www.photobucket.com/.

Have a good luck in your writing and beware: creating an AAR story takes usually twice and more the time than to actually play the game which it describes. Have a lot of endurance too!:2thumbsup::2thumbsup::2thumbsup:

thanks to all who posted. I have already started writing. I hope you enjoy