Crommy's Guide to Story Writing - Getting from PCM to the forum
Week 2 Welcome to week 2. For many of you, you will already know all of this, but for the rest, this is a good guide to get you started.
The Fundamentals of a Story So what does a story need? The essentials are:
Writing about the races/story
Screenshots
Results
We'll take a look at each one in turn to show how to do it:
Entering Writing onto the Forum: The first and most simple part. We need to begin by opening a new topic. Click on discussion forum at the top, underneath the PCM.Daily banner.
Then click on the correct forum, which is PCM 07: Stories
Then click on new thread
This will take you to this screen
To post your message, you need to: 1. Write in a subject in the yellow box. This is normally the name of the team you are managing 2. Write in your actual story writing in the green box 3. Finally, hit the Post Thread button, which has a red rectangle round it here
Congratulations, you just made the first post of your story, and have completed 1 out of the 3 fundamentals of story making.
To make a new part to your story, you must:
Go into the thread that is your story
Click on new post
Write your new part in the message part (the green box above). You do not need to add a new subject
Taking Screenshots and Posting them The simplest way to take a screen shot in PCM, is to press CTRL and T. This will save it into your PCM directory, in the form a .bmp file. You need to then open this in paint (or a better graphics program if you have it), and then crop it. You do this in paint by selecting the Select tool (highlighted here)
You then choose the area you want, and copy it, then post it as a new picture. Then save it. The best file to use is the .png file. This gives the best quality image. Make sure you remember where you save it, you'll need it later!
Now you have your screenshot, you need to get it into the forum. You need to do this by hosting it onto a website. The best website to use is the Photobucket website. You will need to create your own profile, by registering. It's all free, the e-mail you sign up with won't receive spam. Once you've done that, log in. Click on the browse button, find your image, and click on it. Once you've done that, click upload.
Once it has finished uploading, it will ask you to add tags. Click on skip this step now. It will now appear as the top left image. You need to click on the box next to IMG Code. It will now copy this to your clipboard. All you need to do is poast it in the message part of your post (remember that giant green box in entering writing on the forum). And when you click post, you now have your image posted and ready
Tips and Tricks
You may want to re-size your image - you can do this using the graphic software (suggested), or Photobucket can do it for you
Once you've uploaded an image, you no longer need it on your files, so you can delete it
Do not use imageshack for uploading images. It is slow, and unreliable
Exporting Results You've now got everything, except you don't want to have to write out all those results. Well, there is an easy way around this. At the end of a race, click the button at the bottom that says Export
This will create an excel file with all the results in. It can be found here: \My Documents\Pro Cycling Manager 2007\Export
Simply open this excel file, and then highlight and copy the rows and columns you want. Don't worry about highlighting multiple columns and rows, the forum can handle it. You then go to the message part of the post, and simply paste. The results will now appear.
So, we have learned:
You can write your story in the forum by clicking new thread to begin the story, then clicking new post whilst viewing your story to make a new part to the same story
Take screenshots by pressing CTRL + T, then to crop them using paint and host them using Photobucket
You can export results to excel so you don't have to write them all out
That's it for this week, next week we'll show you exactly how to create a story, showing you how to pick a team, and what to write.
Until next week! Crommy
· Posted by Crommy
on April 12 2008 ·
7 Comments ·
15135 Reads ·
