How do you show a game progress easier?

[TruePurple]

[tab]For talking about a game, I got to alt tab between a wordpad/bowser etc to civ3 and back ever so often to write about the game. Civ3 does not seem to be a game that likes to be minimized, and takes awhile to switch over and back again. I suppose I could write it all down on paper then copy it over..but thats a hassle too.

[tab]For pictures its even more of a hassle, print screen, switch over to MS paint, choose paste in the menu. Then further more if I don't want to whole image saved I got to switch mspaint options, then grab the corner of the image and pull it in. If I want to trim image off the top I have to cut and repast the image then grab that corner and drag it in.

[tab]Then I got to choose to save the image, name it and set it to jpg. Move through the options of where to save the file since I almost never used my documents the default save position....

[tab]Anyways its a real hassle, I want to be able to tell the story of a game, but surely there must be a easier way to do it. How do you guys do it? Any advice/programs you can recommend for say saving a picture of a game by a few key strokes/mouse gestures without alt tabing the game for example?

 

[Bluemofia]

I do exactly what you do.

And I do most of that in between turns.

 

[TruePurple]

You mean when civ3 is working on the other turns? I find thats when civ3 has the hardest time with alt tab'ing. I also find it doesn't really progress well minimized.

 

[Bluemofia]

Yep. (but, I keep civ running in the background to check on it's progress.)

 

[gmaharriet]

I do the same thing you do also, and it can be very time consuming when playing a late-age turnset in a succession game...especially describing complicated battles.

Civ4 has some tools that are easier to use, but its turnlogs are dry as sawdust to read. I read other people's SG's for Civ3 all the time, but get bored to tears reading about Civ4, so I'll stick with doing it the slow way.

 

[bluebox]

Hi TruePurple!

I think there is no "complete" solution, though several small improvements might sum up for you.

There are tools for taking screenshots. You just have to press the print button and the tool collects the pics for you. Personally, I prefer the light and easy-to-use Screenshot Assistant though there are more elaborated tools available.

Doing write-ups is indeed time-consuming. I made this experience too. Personally, I pre-format my notes, e.g. using a list of turns and appropriate dates. During the game I just have to fill in my notes and do not have to think about the format. It helps me to keep track of the number of turns passed, too (e.g. for per-turn deals).

Alt-tabbing works quite well for me though I don't have a state-of-the-art comp. I guess laggy alt-tabbing is partly a hardware problem. Once I doubled RAM from 128MB to 256MB, all freezes (e.g. when loading a game) were gone. This was the most cost-effective investment to my machine I ever made.

Maybe you can optimize your system a bit by cleaning up the harddrive and drefrag it. Finally, you might want to use even smaller app's while playing civ - e.g. use notepad instead of wordpad, and shut the browser.

I hope maybe some of this helps you.