Strategy Compilation

[CK9]

Okay, I havn't been able to do much for the community so far besides a map or two and a vid.  Now, I want to do something that might be a little more useful for everyone, especially to any new players we may pick up along the way.

Contents:
1) What it is
2) What I need
3) Timeline
4) Progress

What this is:

What I shall be working on is a compilation of player-made strategy guides for everything from the colony games to the individual multiplayer maps.  This will go into just enough detail to get newer people started, and allow older players to build off of and come up with even more ideas.  If I can find how to set it up right, I'll even make it so people can submit new ones to it without having to wait for me.


What I need:

I need 2 things:

1) strategies:  I will already be adding in all the ones in the strategy section, but that simply isn't enough.  Write your own Campeigne guides, give some tips for colony games, come up with new tactics for multiplayer...there's a lot that can still be thought up out there.  (NOTE:  I will also be including a list of methods that are frowned upon so newer players know not to use them (i.e.: mass-missle spamming)).

2) testers:  Even if something looks good on paper, there is a chance it won't work.  I need people to play and test these ideas out.  If they are usable even to a small degree, they will be incorperated into the final project as a stretegy.  If it fails and proves be be flawed, it will still make it into the final project, but in a section of ideas that need some more work.

If you have a strategy you'd like to submit, please post it here and PM me with a link to your thread when finished.

If you'd like to test out the ideas, send me a PM with the subject "strategy tester" and I'll send you one of them ASAP.  When you get the results, send them to me and state if you wish to test another one or not.

Timeline:

Here's how I hope the time works out (it's all dependant on everyone in the community):

Start taking in ideas: immediately
Start composing: January 1 2008
Finish web-version: February 1 2008
Finish download version: February 2 2008
set-up change submission: February 6 2008

Progress:

Strategy guides taken in: 0
Strategy guides tested: 0
Web version status: not started
Download version status: not started
Change submission system: researching

[Leviathan]

This sounds good. I hope I can help and I hope many other long term players will be helping out

[Brazilian Fan]

Will this strategy guide contain the so called 'lame strategies' (scout rush, lab bombing, missile spamming, etc.)?

[Highlander]

Brazilian Fan - How about working on strategies against those tactics rather than worrying about them ?

I like your idea CK. I don't have internet at my apartment right now, but I'll try to get some stuff done on the campaigns. I will mostly try to base my work on Hard difficulty though.

[Brazilian Fan]

Highlander - We need to know what type of strategies will be included in the strategy guide, so that someone doesn't post something that won't be used.

[CK9]

We won't know if they will be in untill I get them and they are tested

[Leviathan]

Tested? Well it would be nice to have a video of each one as part of the compilation.

[CK9]

Aye, but that makes it a bit more tricky.  I haven't had great success with video embedding on my web pages (must be camtasia's auto-coding) and they would bog down download speeds.

[White Claw]

If you could an it makes sense to do so, try to get away from videos and just include a few still shots.

[CK9]

Still shots are easy, but don't always get the message across.

[Hooman]

Could also draw circles and arrows on them in paint or something to make them more like diagrams.

I'd like to stay away from high bandwidth, low resolution, grainy videos.

Maybe if there was something closer to a game recorder, it might be useful for this.

[CK9]

All vids look great until you upload them to youtube, lol

[White Claw]

Could also draw circles and arrows on them in paint or something to make them more like diagrams.

I'd like to stay away from high bandwidth, low resolution, grainy videos.

Maybe if there was something closer to a game recorder, it might be useful for this.

Yes!!! This is more what I was thinking. Watching videos can be helpful as well so I didn't mean to rule them out, but I found a lot of videos just suck. Not helpful at all and I feel more dumb for having watched them. Someone just wanted to have a video... Though a game recorder would obviously be a bit more work involved, but OP2 already supports a "demo" mode.

[CK9]

I can always do a narrated still-frame, those normally don't lose image quality, heh

There's a lot of possibilities out there, still waiting for more stuff.

[Sirbomber]

Maybe if there was something closer to a game recorder, it might be useful for this.

There is one. Hacker made it awhile ago, though it's known to be buggy.
Unfortunately, there's no link for it. None that I can find anyways.

[White Claw]

Do any of the Mods know if it's hiding in the archive somewhere?

[CK9]

I've never seen it

[Hooman]

Yeah, I remember it was supposedly a little buggy. I sort of wanted to look into why, but I don't think I ever got a copy of it. Or if I did, I've misplaced it.


I did have another idea for a game recorder though. Instead of recording game commands, and then using the game engine to play the game back, I was thinking you could also just intercept all the graphics drawing calls, and then draw the graphics yourself in a seperate app for playback. Heck you could even use something like Windows Media Player if you got carried away and wrote a custom codec. Well, anyways, the idea wouldn't let you scroll around to just anywhere on the map like Hacker's game recorder potentially could. Although, it would naturally follow a players view and movements much like a video recording would. Much lower bandwidth though. It also means you don't need to duplicate the entire game engine for playback. You're just drawing a bunch of images to given locations on screen. It'd actually be a reasonable stand alone app to write. (Although still a fair bit of work).


Btw, CK9, has anyone sent you anything substantial yet? And if not, I trust you're going ahead and working on this yourself without waiting for other people to contribute? [Because I'm not so confident those people will necessarily come].
 

[White Claw]

I would contribute, but I don't play multi so I've got no strategies outside of the campaign. Unless those are the kinds of things you're looking for too...

 

[CK9]

I've gotten a couple things, one from bomber, one from freeza, and Mcshay has offered to help in the testing phase.  I have my plymouth campeigne easy to work with, as well as other scattered guides in the other posts.  I should write a guide for eden easy, and normal as well.  I have a hard time getting through hard, so if anyone else could write for those, it would be appreciated.

[Sirbomber]

I can help you with an Easy Eden guide. I can usually get through the Eden campaign in 30 minutes to an hour (on Easy that is).

[Leviathan]

This will be a great part of the wiki to have these guides etc.

But we do need the whole wiki to be improved in general.

[CK9]

wiki = unused

Once I finish it, it will be up on my ite and have a downloadable text version (I don't have any programming software, so it has to be text with pics) available in the downloads section of the forum.

[Leviathan]

We will put it on the main site then.

[CK9]

in the mean time, keep them coming people!  I would write them myself, but I don't have enough free time in the day to do them all.