A few weeks ago, Captain Bashir joined the Supremacy development team and began work on producing a .pdf game manual with the help of myself and .Iceman.

We now feel that the manual is ready for release to the masses, so i've created this post to announce it and provide the download link.





The manual contains help, general information, and tips on playing the game as it currently stands. This manual is primarily aimed at people who have never played Supremacy or Birth of the Federation (BOTF) before. Seasoned players may still pick up some game tricks from the manual, however.

As with the Supremacy download thread, the link above will be maintained in this first post, so please visit this first post of the thread to check for updated manual versions. We will include information on new or updated game features in future manual versions as game updates are released.

Please provide constructive feedback on the manual to help improve it in future. Gameplay hints, issues you've had with the game and how you resolved them, or even questions that you would like answered in the manual will all be useful pieces of information that we will be able to add in future, so if you think of anything please post about it here and we will consider adding it to future manual versions.

Enjoy.

OMG, what a nice job you did Captain Bashir. (and thanks also to MOE and .Iceman.)
That really looks great. Now I can figure out how to play the game after all these years.

NICE WORK!!!

Really professional and useful as well.

Regards Wolfe

Thanks to all. I am really glad to be part of such an exciting project.
BTW, MOE and .iceman are not only brilliant but also hard workers.

Aww thanks mate. I think our hard work is more of a sign of addiction than genuine ability though.

Good work guys, i would like make a French version of this manual. How do it?

Starfleet Command
Much of the work is in the screen shots. I will look up your email address and email you the screen shots and instructions on how to do this in Word. Let me know if you have Microsoft Word. I used Word 2007 which is a much better piece of software than previous versions. Then I used a program called Nitro PDF Professional and converted it. There are some tricks to converting it though. I'll do my best to get it to you soon but it may take about a week because of some other things I have to attend to right now. I'll check this forum for your answer.

Captain

Releasing multi-language manuals will be harder than releasing one simply in English because the text will be updated on a much more regular basis. I think translating the images is less important than translating the text itself though - the images won't be translated until the game itself is translated afterall, and we've only really explored doing that in French so far.

If you're willing to do the translations though starfleet and learn how to do the .pdf stuff, once the translation is complete, i'll add download links to the post for you and do an announcement about it as well. The translated versions can go in the same folder as the current manual as long as they are called French Manual.pdf or something along those lines.

If you're going to do a French translation, then you might also want to advise the other translators on *how* to do it guys. I'll send them all a PM now though to notify them of the manual to see if they will be willing to do it themselves.

Hi Captain Bashir,
If you could also send me the screenshots, I could start translating the manual into greek

It now came back to me a problem I had faced with the Greek translation about a year ago:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2475&p=48611&hilit=greek#p48611

The LCARS fonts are missing almost all the Greek letters (besides Omega, obvioulsy used for the Omega particle ). That was one of the reasons I never finished (or rather started) the translation... But with the manual there will be no problem.

Oh i'd forgotten about that. I can't believe it was a year ago though!

Did you ever managed to add the new characters to the LCARS font? If you did, send the font file to Mike and he will be able to add it to the game for you. With any luck, he'll put it in the next update so you can start translating straight away.

Apply justification to text throughout the document

The index could be better constructed (it's missing the research matrix option, for example)

Page 3
The font for the title "Introduction" is not used anywhere else, not sure if it's intentional
'BOTF,' -> 'BOTF', [placement of comma]
"Ships can be renamed" should be placed in a new bullet

Page 4
The Addition... -> The addition...

Page 6
There's a Starting a Single Player Game title, but it is used for SP, MP and Load (in the index they're split)
right lower corner -> lower right corner

Page 8
terra forming -> terraforming

Page 9:
Moons
Gas Giants
There isn't a Deuterium Refinery, and the Deuterium Plant isn't powered ??

Page 12
Missing periods at the end of EMBASSY and MENU entries (or remove the others)
Uniformization of the bullets
- SYSTEM colony management panel
- EMBASSY diplomacy management panel

Page 18
advanced Starship Design bureau -> Advanced Starship Design Bureau
transports -> transport ships

Page 21
new colonies -> new colonies'
Missing a period at the end of the text

Page 22
Confortable column, oceanic -> Oceanic (twice), Dessert -> Desert
Max Planetary Pops are the old values
Starting Pop are the old values
each empire starts with pop in two systems ???
Food Production and Manufacturing values for Federation are off-centre
Cardassian -> Cardassians

Page 23
Morale also affects Credits received per turn

Time flies... What can I say

I'll try reinstalling FontForge (the program used to edit fonts) this weekend and I'll give it a shot.

Thanks .Iceman for your sharp eye.

I don't have the parent file for the manual with me on this trip (nor the PDF converter since I do not have ADMIN rights on this laptop to install it) or I would fix everything you mentioned right away. I promise it will happen Tuesday.

In the mean time, two questions:

1) Give me detail on what you mean by the "consistent justification." MS Word does not appear to allow indenting in text when there is an illustration or picture to the left of the text. Also, I have a personal pet peeve about texts and manuals where a diagram or table is on one page and the commentary about the diagram or table is on another page and you have to flip back and forth, trying to look at the table and then relocating where you were reading on the other page. These two points have made indenting in the manual difficult, the second issue relating to text orphans and bleeding to another page. In one instance I can't do it, and in another I resist doing it because I think text on the same page with the illustration is preferable. There may be a solution if I am misunderstanding what you mean.

2) In the "first look" file you sent (via MOE) on manual observations there were two figures for the starting population in systems. Since the original BOTF would start you with more than one populated system when you created a new game at an advanced tech level, I jumped to the conclusion that this is what you were referring to. It was not too far off an assumption since Supremacy isn't finished yet. Can you elaborate on what the two figures were for

Again thanks
CB

Nice manual guys though you have one mistake, under race insignia you have old emblems. Otherwise very nice.

Hehe, I reported that too, but MoE said you had changed them... someone is out of synch here.

I only meant you have the text aligned left, and it could be aligned both left and right (we call it justification here, can't recall the english word for it) - just so that the right end part of the text isn't irregular in formatting. Sorry, I guess it's the teacher in me being anal about these details




Those 2 figures (if I'm understanding you correctly) are starting pop / max pop Starting pop is 44.5% of max pop for the system.
It's actually not your "fault", as those are the values I sent you. My files still have the old values, as I'm not convinced it was a good change.

Keep up the good work!

Eh? Then which ones are your new ones, Zeleni? The ones he used are the ones that are on Sharepoint, which i've checked and are exactly the same as ones I have on my computer. I updated them the last time you sent me some emblems, so either I somehow updated with the exact same files, you forgot to send me the latest ones, or you sent me the wrong ones.

By the way, do you have a Sharepoint account? If you do, the emblems should go in This Folder. If you haven't i'll ask Mike to set one up for you.

...

One more thing to add to the manual:

Page 12
Add White to the Sector Colorization panel. White sectors are owned by minor races.

Hey all,

This is so cool, getting all this help from all over the world.

So Zeleni, just post here which insignias in the manual have updates. On the sharepoint site some of them have an alternate image for the same race. Maybe I just need to pick the other one. BTW Nice, nice work on all of them, alternate or not. I told MOE I wanted to know what drawing program you created them in. Care to share the secret?

.iceman, we "Yanks" call it right and left justification and it won't be a problem at all (I think). Look for it on Tueday night or Wednesday AM. Of course I'lll fix all the other stuff too.

Matress, good pick up on the minor race sector color. It shall be done.

On another note, from all the posts I take it that there isn't much point in sending my screen shots for Supremacy for manual translations since the translators are going to need to create manuals with their respective languages visible (didn't know this could be done). I just need to send instructions on screen captures if they don't happen to know how? I suppose a checklist of all that was used might also be helpful. Then again at this point everyone might be half done already. Another thing occurs to me. Would it be true that since Mike's program editor was "broken" they wouldn't be able to insert the new language right now?

So a message to all "communications officers." What if anything, would help the most?

Captain Bashir.

Translating the ingame texts is pretty easy because when the editor worked, it had a button next to the text where you can select a language (From hundreds listed) then simply enter the text in the next box that appears. The only reason we're having problems is that the editor currently doesn't work, and Mike has told me he won't be able to fix it in time for the next update. The editor doesn't work because it was updated with the rest of the game in the May update becuase Mike is working on a brand-new editor.

Translating the buttons etc is going to be another matter though because there is no way to do this (Currently) in the editor. But as i've explained before, it's easy enough to translate the en.txt file as long as you keep the programming stuff the same. I'm hoping that Mike will change the system so that it has a button ingame for players to select their language and for the game to recognise different language versions of the en.txt file (So we can have fr.txt, de.txt, and so on that relate to the different languages), as this way we won't need to release multi-language versions of the game, we can just release one version with all of the files included. We could even include the manuals with the game too instead of maintaining a separate download. Of course this would mean a larger download for everyone, but I think people would prefer a one-size fits all system in the long run, especially since internet speeds and bandwidth are less of a problem than when we first started the BOTF2 project five years ago.

Since the buttons can be translated relatively easily even without the editor, it might be an idea if people started to translate the en.txt file. If the buttons are translated, they can make their own images for the manual. HOWEVER, I don't want people to do this until the next game update, as some of the text entries for the buttons are missing from the files. Starfleet.command noticed this, and Mike has been notified of the problem.

To my knowledge, the translation of the game is progressing the fastest in French. Starfleet.command has been sending me batches of files where he has translated parts of the game, eg romulan structures.txt, klingon ships.txt, etc. I can easily input these translations into game once the editor is working again/the new one is released.

See? Told ya.
Maybe SP should be cleaned up, once and for all, to avoid future confusions? Especially on releases.



Can't recall, does the sector also get colored white? I mean, where there's enough population.
Or is it just the star's name? BTW, both sectors with independent minors and unowned sectors get their name in white (minors' should be changed to something like gray IMO).

BTW2, the "Area of Influence" expansion with pop count could also be explained in the manual.

There is no secret Bashir, emblems are drawn in Adobe Ilustrator and tweaked in Photoshop. Hmm i think i know what is going on with new and old emblems i will now post whole collection of new emblems. This is not an update it's whole set. Please matress delete all (absolutely all) emblems on sharepoint and your hard drive and replace them with this .zip http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=bea5 ... f6e8ebb871

EDIT- Bashir, this zip contains all emblems created so far, all emblems outside of this zip are obsolete!

MOE I think I see what you are saying.

There is a file called en.txt that is uploaded by Supremacy when it starts that has most of the text in it. However, some of the text in the game is hard-coded and is not affected by this file. Mike needs to change it so that it all is. Translators can change the text in the en.txt file manually using a text editor as long as they don't change anything other than the text. A backup probably needs to be kept because I am going to guess that the automatic updater in Supremacy might overwrite it. They can use this method to alter the game and help create screen shots for the manual.

Later versions of Supremacy will have a language selection option that will access other files like fr.txt or ge.text for French and German instead of en.txt. It will be a setting.

Zeleni: Downloaded the zip file. I am not familiar with the .7z extension. Will Windows unzip this? Also, is the shiny effect on the ensignias done with photoshop or the other program or did you just draw it that way?

.iceman: I will add that too. We might as well get everything into the manual that is currently in the program. As Mike adds features, some of this detail may get overlooked in the sheer volume. This is partly why I wanted to start a manual now. As we go, I want to strike the balance between the beginning of the manual being a quick, get-you-going, lay-of-the-land overview, with back-up detail in later sections as reference. Would you agree? At least for myself, I would want to know the basics of getting around first, and then punch into program nuances as needed later. But also a manual isn't a manual unless it is a complete reference.

CB

You can unzip it with winrar or winzip or you can download 7z it's free. Shiny effect i add in Pshop it's very easy prcedure a combination of masks and opacity.If you are interested i will show you the trick.

You can download Winrar (For free) from Here. I'm not personally a fan of Winrar because I think it's got a rubbish interface (The Winzip interface beats it hands down), but Winrar can handle far more file types than Winzip can, including 7zip.

Yes, the updater will automatically overwrite any changes you make to the en.txt file (Or any other file for that matter). Just copy-and-paste the file somewhere else, then make the changes to the copied file rather than the original.

A language setting that allows the game to access other files is NOT definite; this is simply how I *hope* MIke will set the game up. Otherwise there will be a single, gigantic file with ALL of the button translations in it, which could make it hard to find specific text to translate or change. We'll have to wait and see what Mike does with this one.

...

I just downloaded the emblems Zeleni - i'm going to have to delete some of them because these emblems contain alternate images AND the non-trek extras. I'll do that in the morning though as it's 1.35am now. You'll be happy to know that i've deleted the emblems from both Sharepoint and my computer to prevent future confusion though. I have encountered a small problem with deleting stuff from the Sharepoint image library though. I can delete the images, but I can't simply delete the folder they are in, so i'll have to manually remove every single file. I'll do that tomorrow.

By the way, did you run these images through PNGGauntlet? If not, i'll run them through it for you to squeeze the file sizes down.

Matress: All emblems are trek related so there aren't non trek insignia, in your place i would keep them in game folder for future players maybe they include them in the game. No i didn't run emblems trough pngGauntlet cause we would lost on quality, 100 emblems uses only 8,5mb of space so in may opinion there is non need for gauntllet.

Manualy deletin all emblems fro spoint is hidious job, sorry to hear matress.

Part of the problem is that Sharepoint is designed to work on Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, and Internet Explorer 8 for Vista. Internet Explorer 8 on XP, and even the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox aren't fully compatible with Sharepoint and Microsoft don't plan on fixing the compatibility bugs before christmas.

Mike has told me that he wants all of the images put through PNGGauntlet, which is why I asked. The difference in quality is actually virtually indistinguishable, but the difference it can make is quite big. I'll squeeze the files and see by how much.

*Edit - i've now put the 99 images through PNGGauntlet. It managed to save 53.35kb in the process.

However, i've also found out *why* the insignia files are only 8.5mb - most of the insignia images are missing!

Did you intend for us to reuse the old ones where there are gaps in this download, or did you forget to include them? Luckily I haven't completely deleted the files from Sharepoint if you did intend us to reuse the old images. If it helps, i've compiled a list of emblems that are NOT included in the download:

• Algolians
• Alsaurians
• Ankari
• Antedeans
• Arbazan
• Ardanans
• Argrathi
• Atreans
• B'Omar
• Baneans
• Benzites
• Bilanaians
• Bothans
• Bre'ellians
• Brekkians
• Cairn
• Caldonians
• Coridan
• Corvallens
• Cytherians
• Dopterians
• Dosi
• Dremans
• Elaysians
• Excalbians
• Flaxians
• Grazerites
• Haakonians
• Hekarans
• Horta
• Iyaarans
• J'Naii
• Karemma
• Kellerun
• Klaestronians
• Kreetasans
• Kressari
• K'Tarians
• Lissepians
• Lurians
• Malon
• Meridians
• Mizarians
• Moropa
• Numiri
• Nuu'Bari
• Ornarans
• Pakled
• Paradas
• Rakhari
• Ramatians
• Selay
• Sikarians
• Skrreeans
• Tak Tak
• Takarans
• Talosians
• Tamarians
• Tanugans
• Tilonians
• Trabe
• Ullians
• Vidiians
• Vorgons
• Vori
• Vorta
• Xepolites
• Zahl

Five of the files had file names with typos but i've fixed that. I've also noticed that the files are prefixed with the letter 'G'. Is there a reason for this, Zeleni? I'll need to rename them all before I put them in the game.

Additionally, the Gorn have TWO images in the download - which one do I use?

The insignia images for races i've not heard of and that are not in Dafedz's shiplist are:

• Arkonians
• Eymorg
• Gaaran 300
• Kantare
• Serosians
• Voth

I sent him a PM about these races but he hasn't replied. He actually hasn't been on the forums in a few months so i'm not really sure what to do about these images.

There is also an image included for the Krenim. The Krenim are in as a random event instead of a race, because Dafedz felt we didn't know enough about the *original* Krenim race to add them as a minor race, but they were important enough to have them in the game *somehow*. We decided random events would be the best way to accomplish this for them. We could therefore use their insignia image for the random event image instead.

I successfully installed Fontforge and managed to create all of the greek letters (copied the ones that are the same from the English and appropriately "deformed" the rest ) but I'm having problems. Windows doesn't recognize the new font and neither does Supremacy

You can see the end result here:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1208001/Helv ... aComp1.otf

I will ask for help from the guys at the Fontforge forum and report back

Delete all emblems from sharepoint they are obsolete. Not included emblems are missing emblems, yes once we had those emblems but they are now obsolete because i want all insignia looks the same and have same effects.




You did right thing, rename freely.

Without sufix alternate.

T

I think serosian race is in the database. Rest keep in game folder.



Do as you wish, only please don't resurrect emblems on sharepoint.
Sorry for late reply i was excepting reply in insignia thread.

Ok, i've gone through all of the images now.

The Serosians are NOT in the races list so are indeed one of the "extra" images, Zeleni.

I have one more thing to mention as well. The Antican image is the same design as the insignia for the Mirak from Starfleet Command 2: Empires at War. Whilst I seriously doubt anything would come of it, it's possible that if Taldren, 14 Degrees East, or whoever it is that controls the game noticed this, they might question our use of the design. You *might* want to change the image for this reason.

I've now gone renamed the images as necessary and removed the insignia images of races that aren't currently in the game (I saved them in a separate folder on my computer though) and zipped the remaining files up.

These are the Insignia image files as they currently stand, Captain Bashir. Download them and use them in the manual. Zeleni has not finished making them which is why there don't appear to be enough of them to cover all of the races:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ywarotmwn5k

If anyone wants to jump the gun and add these latest images to their game, put them into your Supremacy/Resources/Images/Insignias folder. Let them overwrite the existing files if asked.

Warning

The updater will plague you about performing an update after you install these images because the updater will incorrectly view the change as the presence of "outdated" files. You will need to cancel these updates to keep the new files. There is an option to turn the updater off in the game options, but this will also prevent you from receiving legitimate updates.