Tips on making game manuals
Community Forums/General Help/Tips on making game manuals
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| Hi, I've had an online user manual for my game live for quite awhile.. but its bland and ... terrible ? here it is http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/tinytanks_manual.html anyone have any tips or whatnot for making it better? |
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| First impression is, the pictures are missing, showing what you are talking about. Also another font and formatting could help a lot. Chapter headline could use the font of your game. May some background music, but that could also be annoying if too loud or aggressive. An index with links... Use the colors of your game if possible. Use pictures of the game as background or headlines. May an animation showing some special stuff. Just some thoughts. |
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| great tips. Thanks looks like ill be working on this for a while. |
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| Background music is a no no, never ever add that since they are probably quite happy listening to itunes etc. anyway...music would mean they close your page asap! |
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| Find game manuals that you like, and study what it is that you like about them so you can reproduce (derived from the saying "an artist is as good as his references."). |
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| I like the old snes and nes manuals, but not sure how to put that together well in digital form. I've starting messing with some ideas.. heres the first few pages of menu descriptions. Ive got to convert from plain image to linked pages and all but im just trying to work out something that is visually pleasing first. what do you think of this type of "look" http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page1.png? http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page2.png? http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page3.png? http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page4.png? http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page5.png? http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page6.png? edit : removed direct loading images.. sorry Last edited 2012 |
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| Then i made this one.. but perhaps its too busy ?? http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/page8.png? Last edited 2012 |
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| ok I finished the image work.. have one strip image thats under 1mb see it here http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/allpages_small.png? I dont know html very well, but there must be a way to make links that will load the image starting at a Y offset.. or load the image in slider window and set the slider window at a certain Y offset.. This way I can use the one image and have links to each section of it. Any tips on the html would be appreciated. Thanks Last edited 2012 |
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| http://tinytanks.empowergames.com/manual/tinytanks_manual.html my end result.. |
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| Tiny Tanks is an awesome online game but really did need a manual. Cudos RifRaf! :D |
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| Two things. One is that the default hyperlink blue doesn't blend well with the green background especially for people with substandard eyesight; try changing those link colours. The other is that, at the bottom of each page, you really should have PREV/NEXT links as well as the BACK link, or at the very least make each "page" of the manual link to the next one if the reader clicks on it. Standard webdoc navigation convenience these days. |
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| Thanks Adam, I changed the color, and hover color, and removed the underlines on the hyperlinks. ill see what I can do about the click for next page idea as well. |
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