Note Taking

Does anyone know of a useful way to take notes while playing?

In civ4 my solution was to play the game in windowed mode, and I could type whatever into notepad easily enough. There was also the fall back option of posting player messages into the game log (I can't recall if this was a BUFFY feature, or part of the game itself).

So, what are my options for Civ5?

Windowed mode isn't a particularly appealing option - I'm not even sure it is possible, at least on my low-spec machine. I've noticed the "Steam Community" thing that I can SHIFT-TAB into, is there anything in there that I can bend to my needs? Or a simple game logging feature that I am not aware of?

I presume that once the GOTM gets rolling properly that there will be some Mod similar to HOF or BUFFY. Might I expect some sort of improved logging feature to be included with that?

Windowed mode is possible in Civ V...in fact, I've noticed it runs better on my low-end machine in windowed mode. As far as anything other than doing that and using notepad though, I've got no suggestions. It works for me, and I'm not aware of anything else we can do yet either.

I've got 2 monitors, so I just keep a text editor open on the other window and click into it as needed. I'm very glad they didn't outright fix the "bug" in the patch and instead added the "bind cursor to window" option.

Is there anyway to get the notification log to show the entire game? I was surprised when I opened it to do my after action report to find it did not include the entire game.

I have exactly the same problem. I did get windowed mode to work with Civ 5, but even so, alt-tabbing back and forth between Civ 5 and notepad or some other program crashes the game, whether I am playing in windowed mode or full screen.

What kind of setup are you folks running? I play on a Mac running Vista via Bootcamp. I'm guessing my crash problems are a specific issue and not the fault of the game.

Running windowed mode on a low spec (versus this game's recommended) Vista laptop, I can alt-tab between CivV and multiple other programs (Wordpad and browsers) just fine. I started off using full-screen mode; alt-tabbing did still work, but it took several seconds of nervously staring at a black screen to make the switch.
Edit: actually, under full-screen mode, there was a knack to it: if I hit alt-tab quickly, it switched without much trouble, but if I lingered too long on the keys, it went into deep thought mode. I guess the difference is to do with that little window showing pictures of the various running programs that Vista brings up if you hold down alt after the tab.

sleepingbear said:

Is there anyway to get the notification log to show the entire game? I was surprised when I opened it to do my after action report to find it did not include the entire game.

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There's a replay utility created by dannythefool that will show you the full replay event list if you pre-process the Replay file - found in MyGames/Sid Meier's Civ5/Replays or its equivalent on your operating system.

I'm working on a similar web-based system that will *eventually* provide similar features to those on the existing GOTM Replay page for Civ4/Civ3.

use an in-game web browser like steam's overlay

adrianj said:

Does anyone know of a useful way to take notes while playing?

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I use Microsoft One Note which is part of Office 2010. I would not be able to justify the cost if I only used it for CivV but it they've turned it into a general purpose notebook that has become my second most used application (#1 Outlook; #3 CivV) You can take screenshots; add links to web pages - in fact, if you copy and paste a web page it will automatically add the link; it will add itself as a printer so anything that you would otherwise print onto a dead tree you can print into a One Note Notebook. You can save any part of your notebook as a pdf so you can upload it to Civ Fanatics if you want to share. I've attached an example.

It can't make tea.

adrianj said:

Does anyone know of a useful way to take notes while playing?

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Sure. Pen and paper work just fine.

Ribannah said:

Sure. Pen and paper work just fine.

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So much for the paperless office

adrianj said:

So much for the paperless office

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Choice is good. People should be allowed to choose between dead tree products and breathing the product of live trees.