New game, old manual (Full Version)

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Jonathan Palfrey -> New game, old manual (12/6/2007 1:02:41 PM)

This is not a complaint -- it would be churlish to complain about free upgrades -- but it seems that the latest version of the game still comes with the original manual, plus a 15-page ReadMe file covering a whole series of upgrades. I wonder how many players would be willing to pay money for a fully-updated manual.



Gil R. -> RE: New game, old manual (12/7/2007 7:35:40 AM)

Redoing the manual is A LOT of work, especially in terms of layout, graphics, etc. I'm not saying we wouldn't do it, just that it's not an easy thing for this large a manual. It wouldn't be bad, though, to have some sense of how many people would want an updated version of the printed manual.



goodwoodrw -> RE: New game, old manual (12/7/2007 8:31:32 AM)

Is the e manual updated, I'm thinking of D\L the game soon?



Jonathan Palfrey -> RE: New game, old manual (12/8/2007 1:29:16 AM)

If it seems a LOT of work to you, then I understand why you don't do it.

But it surprises me that it's a lot of work. I've been writing manuals about the same size as this one for various computer companies for more than twenty years (currently for HP), and for me it's no big deal to update a manual. Just change the bits that need changing, and run off a new PDF file. I get the impression that you produce manuals in a rather strange and complicated way; but I also get the impression that you're stuck with it because it's the way decreed by Matrix Games.

If I were in your company, and making manuals my way rather than the Matrix way, I'd cheerfully undertake to update the manual whenever a new patch was released. But well, maybe this is fantasy land.




Erik Rutins -> RE: New game, old manual (12/8/2007 3:20:12 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey
I get the impression that you produce manuals in a rather strange and complicated way; but I also get the impression that you're stuck with it because it's the way decreed by Matrix Games.


That's right, we decided a long time ago that if we couldn't do manuals in a strange a complicated way, they weren't worth doing at all! [;)]



Jonathan Palfrey -> RE: New game, old manual (12/8/2007 10:11:03 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

That's right, we decided a long time ago that if we couldn't do manuals in a strange a complicated way, they weren't worth doing at all! [;)]



Good for you, Erik. One for the sense of humour, and two for giving extra work to the noble writer, who presumably gets paid for doing it. In my current job, I regularly have to do unnecessary work to produce HTML files in a strange and complicated way. I've tried pointing this out gently, but I don't shout and scream about it, because I'm paid by the hour and I get paid the same for unnecessary work as for the necessary kind.



Gray_Lensman -> RE: New game, old manual (12/8/2007 4:49:06 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins


quote:

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey
I get the impression that you produce manuals in a rather strange and complicated way; but I also get the impression that you're stuck with it because it's the way decreed by Matrix Games.


That's right, we decided a long time ago that if we couldn't do manuals in a strange a complicated way, they weren't worth doing at all! [;)]



[sm=00000280.gif]



Jonathan Palfrey -> RE: New game, old manual (12/9/2007 10:53:34 AM)

My point was that I routinely produce professional manuals that are similar in size, layout, and graphical content to the Forge of Freedom manual. I've been doing it for years and using a variety of different programs and processes for the purpose; but I've never found updating a manual to be particularly arduous or time-consuming. The introduction of changes will generally cause page breaks to appear in different places, but the software should cope with this more or less automatically.

If the idea of updating the FoF manual intimidates you, I think there must be some serious defect in the way you produce manuals. However, you may have some good reason (unknown to me) for tolerating this apparently defective process.



Widell -> RE: New game, old manual (12/9/2007 1:33:52 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey
If the idea of updating the FoF manual intimidates you, I think there must be some serious defect in the way you produce manuals. However, you may have some good reason (unknown to me) for tolerating this apparently defective process.


Well, to turn this into something more constructive, maybe Matrix/FoF could imagine a team of volunteers to update the manual? Not sure if that fits into the complicated and defective parts discussed in some strange detail above, but could be a way to move forward. Maybe only offer the e-manual updated in order not to have to reprint stuff which I can imagine has financial impact which are not acceptable(?)

Just my 2c



Jonathan Palfrey -> RE: New game, old manual (12/9/2007 2:49:11 PM)

Hello Widell, thanks for the suggestion. It would certainly be possible to take the PDF file and hack at it with Adobe Acrobat. Better-looking results could be obtained by working with the original source files, but then the correct software would be needed. According to the document properties, the FoF manual was produced by Adobe InDesign, which I have on my computer as part of the Adobe Creative Suite; but so far I've never used InDesign because I use other software for work.



Erik Rutins -> RE: New game, old manual (12/9/2007 3:15:43 PM)

Ok, to put it simply - we write our documents up as word files with image placeholders and a separate stack of images. These are then all put together in InDesign, where the layout is done and a bunch of other features added. FOF's manual was already up to the actual page count limit of what could fit in our game box (we had to put the appendices as a separate PDF). Updating the word side of the manual to account for all the many changes, including the updated screenshots and then reorganizing it to make sure that it doesn't add _any_ extra pages (or deciding what to cut out to make room) is not a minor task in the end. Once that's done, layout would have to be redone. Since our manual editing and layout queue is among our most bottlenecked areas, there hasn't been much of any room to consider this yet.



Jonathan Palfrey -> RE: New game, old manual (12/9/2007 7:19:23 PM)

Erik, thanks for giving us an outline of your process. When you talk of "redoing the layout", I guess you mean that new content is imported from Word as plain text, which then needs to be tagged in InDesign. I agree that this would be a rather labour-intensive process. I suppose you do things this way in order to keep things simple for the many different companies whose manuals you publish, and also to ensure that the tagging is done in a standard way by your own people.

The way we currently work at HP (I don't think this is confidential information) is to write manuals in XML, using an XML editor which forces writers to conform to the DTD designed by HP. The XML editor is quite easy to use, and it very effectively enforces the use of standard tags in a standard way. The XML is then automatically converted by a different program into PDF and/or HTML files for distribution to customers. We currently have some unnecessary complications with HTML files, but the PDF output works quite well.

If Matrix decided to do things this way, I think it would simplify your process and save effort in the long run. Most importantly, each manual would require little or no effort from Matrix people: the incoming XML files could be processed automatically into manuals ready for customers. However, it would require some expertise to design the DTD and set up the whole system in the beginning, and you would have to persuade your various manual writers to use a suitable XML editor. I pass on the idea in case it's any use to you, but perhaps it will seem infeasible in your circumstances.

Assuming that you stick with your present system -- which you will certainly do in the short run at least -- I'm not sure how it would be feasible for volunteers to contribute to it. As you say, allowing volunteers to edit the Word files would still leave a significant amount of work to be done by you, unless the volunteers could do the InDesign part of the job as well.

A suggestion: any volunteer could go through the PDF file adding annotations wherever changes have been made. The PDF file format is designed to permit annotations, which can easily be added with Adobe Acrobat. An annotated PDF file might be preferable to an out-of-date PDF file.



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