How long do you play on one game

[Hiapoe]

Hi all,

I have some trouble with writing reports (Actualy I started a lot of them already, but never finished - let alone posted - one...)

The problem is, I start playing a game and report at the same time (ALT-TABBING between Word, Photoshop and Civ).
This takes a LOT of time and a game never finishes in one night playing...
Also my focus on writing the report tends to diminish during the game. (I have seen this though with other reports too, lots of screenshots in the beginning but nearing the end more dates followed by single sentences )

Anyway, I wondered, do you guys play the games beginning to end in one time? Or do you take days like me, or even weeks??

And what's your method of writing the reports and staying focussed on them?

Thanks,
Hiapoe

[pling]

I take notes while I play (like just date & event & screenshot number if there is one, and maybe a joke if I've thought of something ) & I play more than one session coz I tend to have better ideas of what to do if I stop & leave it for a day or so. Then afterwards I crop/whatever all the screenshots & upload them, then write the report (normally in two goes, depends what else I'm supposed to be doing) using my notes. I tend to be verbose anyway so I find it easy to generate the words for the report from the notes ...

[Ruff_Hi]

Fairly similar to Pling but I don't generally take notes. I try to develop a thread that will hold the main story and screen shot alot - I then page through the screen shots as a way of looking at my notes.

This works well unless I am playing two (or more) games at once and the screenshots get all mixed up. I have taken to cut/paste each game's screenshots into its own folder.

[Berrie]

I can't give you any tips because I have the exact same problem as you described

I hope some day to finish a report when time and interest meet together...

[Hiapoe]

I can't give you any tips because I have the exact same problem as you described

I hope some day to finish a report when time and interest meet together...

It's already a big help for me if you say you got exactly the same problem!
Albeit only a psychological help...
As the dutch proverb says: "Gedeelde smart is halve smart", roughly translated: "Shared pain is half the pain"

[Sullla]

Everyone needs to figure out a system that works for them, but I can share here the process that I've developed over time. I take notes on paper while playing (sometimes lots of them; I had 10 pages of notes for Adventure Two, although I've since cut back on that). This was a habit I developed while playing Civ3, and so I have a big binder full of notes scrawled down reflecting lots of past games. I have very little trouble with note-taking because, well, it's what I do for a living! (I'm a history student, you see.)

I take lots of screenshots while playing, not all of which will eventually find their way into a report. I might take 100 screenshots and use about 70 of them, for example. Even though I'm pretty focused on the game itself and not on the report when playing, it still usually takes me roughly 20 hours and 10-20 sessions to finish a game. But then again, I also play very slowly.

Writing a report is an entirely separate process than playing, at least for me. I first have to go through the screenshots and crop/adjust them, adding things like arrows and circles and whatnot to emphasize the points I want to make. Once I've done that, I go through them and try to decide where to put the page breaks, forming the chapters of my report. (Epic Three was one of my best examples of that, which I divided into four distinct ages of the plow/sword/quill/rifle reflecting the current emphasis of the game.) Once that's done, I can start writing using my notes and screenshots as the basis of the report. I always write them from the perspective of a finished game looking back; there are advantages and disadvantages to doing it this way, but I've found that this works better for my particular style (which I've been told is very analytical by others). Take 3-5 hours of writing, and voila! You have a finished report. Used to take longer, but I've got lots of html templates and naming conventions which I reuse over and over again to speed things up.

That's how I do it, but there's no best way to approach this. I enjoy writing, and I have to do serious writing so often for a living, that this is one of the things I do to relax. I would encourage everyone to do the best they can, but don't stress out over the report writing. Have a good time and enjoy it.

[zilchy]

Hiapoe, I have a similar problem.
I start with the best intentions and then get wrapped up in the game and my note taking and screenshots rapidly decrease to zero. This is also why my game is not to the same level as a lot of peope here as I lose focus and attention to detail as I press on with whatever is happening in the game at the time.
However, I have just finished Adventure 10 and nearly finished the write up. It was easier in the fact that it was a tiny map and so there was less to do/think about. But I found that for me taking notes and doing the report afterwards has been better than trying to do the report at the same time. Let's see how I do with the next Epic.

[Blake]

I just take lots and lots of screenshots then basically write a narrative to go along (I might use about a third of the screenshots, but most contain useful information - like i try to screenshot every trade and I might describe most trades in text but only include the actual screenshot for the most notable ones). My reports are typically a bit less text heavy than most, other than my odd aside about strategy, game mechanics or strange random stuff (like Saladin's hat).

Here is exactly how I do my narrative:
I start from the first screenshot of the game, paging through each screenshot (using Infraview) I write what happened in that screenshot, if a screenshot is quite good, I crop resize and save it (using "adv9-xxx" format, rather than semi-meaningful name) then load it into the report (I use Nvu) and under the screenshot I write what's happening in/around it. I imagine my reports are a bit more disjoint than some, I don't try and make the text and pictures flow together, at times it's almost captioned screenshots, I'm not a good writer (well, story-teller anyway) altough I can narrate so that's what I do. I only make one pass through the screenshots.

Tpyically I play the entire game in 3-4 sessions then report the whole lot about a week later (at that point I still seem to remember most of the game when my memory is refreshed by screenshots, YMMV), altough in some cases (like Epic4) I've played about half the game, then reported that half, then played to the end, and reported to the end. Sometimes I get my past/presence tense messed up - I go from describing what's happening, to what happened... I have lots of trouble being consistent (as I said, not a good writer) I make a good faith effort to fix it but I'm sure an english teacher would crucify me.

I know I wouldn't be able to "report while I play" (or even take notes for that matter) - for one thing, I'd have a lot of trouble "keeping it interesting" - it's only after playing that you know what the most interesting bits worthy of being reported in detail are (if I think something might be interesting, I screenshot it, if the screenshot still looks interesting come report time, I include it). I don't read turnlogs and I typically don't include any reference to turns in the text of my report unless it's meaningful (wonder/liberalism etc) - I do however try to include the date (and gpt) in many of my screenshots - in some players reports the date has always been cropped out and I find that frustrating because I like to see the date at points to compare progress.

So yeah, that's what works for me. Zillions of screenshots and zero notes.

[Hiapoe]

Thx guys... As I'm not much of a terrific writer myself... I'll try the zillion screenshot tactic in a test game

[Justus_II]

Although I haven't had time to report recently, this is what worked for me. During the game, I would take notes (usually on paper, I've tried the Alt-Tabbing but I used to have a slow computer and it took too long to tab back). I would also take screenshots of key deals, wonders, dotmap-type pics, etc, but not as many shots as some of the other reports. I do find myself taking more screenshots in Civ IV than I did in Civ III, though.

I am a slow player, and an Epic usually will take me the full time allotted. I usually start on a weekend when I can play 4-6 hours in one setting, which gets me through the Ancient-Classical ages, sometimes all the way to 1AD. Then, due to work, etc, I may leave it for several days, and come back to play an hour here or there on weeknights. Hopefully, later that month, I will have another weekend at home when I can play another 4+ hour session (or two ) to get through the Industrial ages (depending on the victory type I am going for), and finally finish it up.

What that means for my reporting, is that during the breaks between playing is when I work on my report. I don't like to get started playing on a work night, if I only have half an hour or so available, but I will use that time to write a section of the report, review the screenshots, and plan my strategy for my next session. I write it in a Word document, putting in #Filenames where I will insert the screenshots, and inserting @ signs for where I want to put smileys later! .

Once the game is finished, I should have about an 80% complete report, I print it, proofread, take out or trim down sections that turned out to be irrelevant or redundant in hindsight, and cut and paste it into FrontPage. Because I have been writing it along the way, many of my comments on strategy, assumptions about the map, or future plans, may turn out later to be way off base. I leave them in, but will usually put comments (in italics) afterward to explain why I thought that (if there is a good explanation ).

I do lack the 'thread' of a storyline this way, the report has natural divisions but doesn't always have a consistent theme, and in fact my mood toward the game can change dramatically over a couple weeks, from one session to the next. But, it's the method that works for me, like Sulla said, you have to find something you are comfortable with. If I just took the screens and tried to write it all at the end, I would a)forget what was happening when I took the shot, 3 weeks ago, and b)probably not have 4 hours to type the report all at once, as I am usually playing through that final weekend before closing!