Downloadable Rulebook

[Aries]

Everything is usually about precedent when it's about legality.

Check out the link.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/downloads

This by the way is Hasbro's own products here.
Just as ASL is in the end owned by Hasbro.

This puts the last word on whether or not, Hasbro could sell free downloadable copies of their ASL manual.

It's just a matter of if they want to or not.

It's not about electronic rights.
Nope, I can see from this link, they are not concerned if someone comes to possess a manual to one of their games.

Now of course, this might impact MMP selling a few copies of the paper manual.
But after finally seeing this link, the matter is now settled in my mind (you all may arrive at your own decisions on your own of course).

There is NO reason Hasbro couldn't greenlight a decently prepared pdf file copy of the manual. Not one reason remains.
They do it freely for all these other games.

 

[Doughboy]

Hey Axis and Allies Europe doesn't look half bad.

But seriously, having a simple ASL pdf is not really all that useful. To be useful the ebook needs to have a lot of work done with hyperlinked key words and reference jumps to open upcharts and so forth. This design work in itself will take some serious effort to be useful.

A better approach would be to layout the rulebook as a helpfile such as the ones that Microsoft authors. You can easily find an example of this in most Microsoft applications when you launch the help feature in your app.

For example, in Word 2003 when you click the Help menu you can click the Word Help feature that starts the Helpfile. Its rather ingenius really as the table of contents are laid out with subtopics which are hyperlinked to the relevant documents. By clicking on the hyperlink a new window on the right edge is spawned open to deliver the more relevant details of your search.

Obviously, this takes a great deal of authoring to word smith this together and it questionable whether he cost to do this right is justifiable at within a gaming budget.

Of course this is my initial observations, perhaps someone out there with more experience with these authoring tools can provide some insight?

Everything is usually about precedent when it's about legality.

Check out the link.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/downloads

This by the way is Hasbro's own products here.
Just as ASL is in the end owned by Hasbro.

This puts the last word on whether or not, Hasbro could sell free downloadable copies of their ASL manual.

It's just a matter of if they want to or not.

It's not about electronic rights.
Nope, I can see from this link, they are not concerned if someone comes to possess a manual to one of their games.

Now of course, this might impact MMP selling a few copies of the paper manual.
But after finally seeing this link, the matter is now settled in my mind (you all may arrive at your own decisions on your own of course).

There is NO reason Hasbro couldn't greenlight a decently prepared pdf file copy of the manual. Not one reason remains.
They do it freely for all these other games.

 

[Aries]

Yeah pdf would be readable, but not much else.

Fully linked would be very helpful.

Frankly, I would rather be given a decent reason to buy a more or less modest laptop so I could buy a well done electronic manual, and just do away with the paper one.

I spend more time looking for what I want to read in the manual, than actually reading it.

 

[GJK]

My WIP eASLRB is done as an ebook (Windows help file). I also did the SK rulebook and I love it. The file opens quickly, resizes nicely and the searching is instant, unlike the delays you get with large pdf's. Search terms are highlighted so you can scroll through the long pages just looking for the highlight and yes, you can have it jump to other reference points. I use an older version of "Help & Manual" to make mine. There's a newer version that will allow Flash animations, which would be great for doing the examples. The program is a tad expensive though, so I'm waiting for a newer release to come out so that the price on the older version drops.

And yes, Pdf's will do pretty much the same things that I listed - but just seems slower to me.

Also, there are Linux/Unix and Mac shareware/freeware apps available for opening the Windows help files (never tested them though, so I don't know if all the same functionality is there or not).

 

[Leftie]

It seems to me that almost everyone on these boards that wants an Electronic Rulebook has managed to aquire one anyways. Do you think that a PDF book would bring more new blood to the game?

I spent 2 weeks searching the net and finally settled on a first edition book off of ebay. I wonder how many other new ASLers will go through the trouble. How many do you think will take the fact that the book isn't readily available as a sign of a dying wargame?

 

[vyshka]

The only difference I see is that the rulebooks posted
were never sold as separate products, but the ASL rulebook
is. It would be great if they sold an electronic version
though.

It seems to be a more common thing these days to have pdfs
available of rulebooks. I think GMT does it for all of their
games.

 

[TopT]

What is WIP. I am looking into trying to create my own eASLRB and again trying to decide what would be the best or easiest method. Could someone enlighten me and tell me the process. Thanks.

 

[Doughboy]

I use an older version of "Help & Manual" to make mine. There's a newer version that will allow Flash animations, which would be great for doing the examples. The program is a tad expensive though, so I'm waiting for a newer release to come out so that the price on the older version drops.

Hi GJK,

who puts out the "Help & Manual" application, is it a Microsoft product?

regards

Doughboy

 

[Reepicheep]

who puts out the "Help & Manual" application, is it a Microsoft product?

When in doubt... Google!

http://www.ec-software.com/

 

[Fred Ingram]

What is WIP. I am looking into trying to create my own eASLRB and again trying to decide what would be the best or easiest method. Could someone enlighten me and tell me the process. Thanks.

WIP = "Work In Progress"

 

[GJK]

When in doubt... Google!

http://www.ec-software.com/

Right. Version 3.60 has some nice features - including Flash animations and output to various formats (pdf, HTML, others). See http://www.ec-software.com/hmtour1.htm for more.

 

[tmanmerlin]

e-book

I would rather pull my eye-balls out than have to read any ASL rules on-line.

Having worked on computers all day, when it is time to relax (ASL, etc..) I just want to see paper and cardboard.

Just my 2 cents, I'm sure there are others like me, ha ha, get it, others like me!!!

I have printed out a lot of errata but to be honest, I am just as confused as I am when reading ATS rules, not that the rules are confusing, it's just knowing which rules to use ( in both ASL or ATS there is a lot of churn)

In agreement that a hyperlinke ASL living (or is that alive??) rulebook would be great, but for me, I need a break from the monitor radiation.

 

[GJK]

That's understandable tmanmerlin, but trust me, as disorganized a book as the ASLRB is, it is so nice to be able to keyword search and quickly find all references to your search term in all the chapters.

And on the opposite side of things, I hate having to dig out the rulebook when I'm online playing VASL - it's nice having the eASLRB open and ready right there for you.

 

[Doc Ozzie]

PDF format suxors.

I hate PDF.

 

[MajorH]

...perhaps someone out there with more experience with these authoring tools can provide some insight?

I prefer a well sized and properly linked PDF to the Microsoft Help format, both as a developer and as a user. I used the MS help format prior to TacOps4, then switched to PDF for TacOps4. I found Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the simple reader) to be much faster and easier to use for the tedious grunt linking work than the several MS Help tools that I bought. Acrobat also cooperated much better with my MS Word master document. When using Acrobat with MS Word, the author can take advantage of some automatic linking features that can convert certain MS Word text styles into PDF table of contents links at compile time.

The big plus for me as a developer was that I could use the final PDF file as a standalone user guide and as an in game help file on both a PC and a Mac. The cross platform Mac capability was a huge time saver for me because the "Apple Guide" (Mac system equivalent to Windows "Help") tools and format were even tedious and unstable to work with than the MS Help stuff.

I also value the superior printing capablilty that PDF provides (if the PDF file is done properly) for those who prefer a hard copy manual over MS Help.

My personal preference is a user guide that is done with letter sized pages, that includes a linked table of contents, plus a linked sidebar table of contents. For an example see the TacOps4 user guide which can be downloaded via the following link. Note that the graphics in this downloadable version of the user guide have been down sampled (reduced in quality) to reduce the size of the download to 2.5 megs.

ftp://ftp.battlefront.com/pub/guides/TacOps_v4_User_Guide.zip

 

[morrigu]

Hi all.

I think every format has its advantages and drawbacks.

PDF looks the same on every machine and platform, is "hyperlinkable" and reflects the original looks of the rulebook.

Windose Help Format - apart from being a MS product, which makes it inferior anyway - is indexable, has a nice "tree" to navigate the rulebook and offers some fancy features like Flash movies and stuff.

Plain Text - not very nice, but readable on everything from high end PCs to Toasters.

I personally have all the rules in a database, with one entry per rule (including rule title, rule text, rule number, optional rule flag, ... you name it). Currently I use a PHP script to access that Database and render it into HTML code (with some nice extras like hyperlinked rule-references that also display the linked-to rule as a little pop-up-bubble when you hover the mouse over it. The same feature goes for all the acronyms in the system). The Database/PHP combination (or Database/anything-else comination) makes for a very flexible presentation of the rules. I can turn on and off most features (like the popups). The only disadvantage is, that you have to run a Database Server (MySQL in this case) and a Webserver (Apache) to serve the content.

Or as the Perl programmers name it: TMTOWTDI (== Theres more than one way to do it).

Regards ... ollo

 

[andy]

Here's my take...

I'm a programmer who's been ranting about an eASLRB for a long time. Plain text, HTML, and MS-Help are fine, but here's why I prefer PDF:

1)Cross Platform (MS-Help is not, the others are). This means the Linux geeks can use it.

2)Hyperlinkable (Plain Text is not)

3)Tree based Table of Contents/Index (Not possible in Plain Text)

4)Print quality (when printing hardcopy, PDF is top dog)

5)DRM (Digital Rights Management), a PDF eBook can be sold in such a way as to make pirating very difficult. The other formats are a simple as copying a file to pirate.

6)Flash Animation. Adobe just bought Macromedia (makers of flash). I'm expecting Flash to interoperate with PDF.

Of course you poke your eyes out reading on a PC. You can "Print What you Need". To those that don't have a laser printer or want color, I hear the complaint about what Kinkos costs. I say, "yes, but it's in print and not $100 on eBay".

For these reasons I think PDF/Flash is the way to go.

Aries: I like the fact that Hasbro has these rules online. I wish they'd put all the rules for AH titles online (free or for charge as eBook). The problem with ASL is that the possibility that Atari and subcontracted studio Paradox actually own the electronic rights, not MMP and not Hasbro. I believe that AH sold these to a French company with the rights being acquired by Atari. I think that's the issue MMP is working out right now. I'd love to hear from MMP, Hasbro, Paradox etc. about it firsthand though. I wonder if MMP thought it was more cut and dried when they made the eASLRB promise in the preface to the 2nd Ed Rulebook. Latest word is that, "most of the issues have been resolved". Whatever that means. Hell I'm not 100% sure which company owns the electronic rights.

We've debated taking the Nike approach and "Just Doing It" without charge. But the lawyers among us have said best case is a cease and desist order, worst case is a hornet's nest that might impact VASL.

 

[GJK]

The neat thing about Help & Manual - I can export the project as either WinHelp, Pdf, MS Word, HTML, RTF, or ebook (Windows executable).

It's just getting the thing in there and formatted all pretty and linked that's the fun part.

 

[Aries]

I'm a programmer who's been ranting about an eASLRB for a long time. Plain text, HTML, and MS-Help are fine, but here's why I prefer PDF:

1)Cross Platform (MS-Help is not, the others are). This means the Linux geeks can use it.

2)Hyperlinkable (Plain Text is not)

3)Tree based Table of Contents/Index (Not possible in Plain Text)

4)Print quality (when printing hardcopy, PDF is top dog)

5)DRM (Digital Rights Management), a PDF eBook can be sold in such a way as to make pirating very difficult. The other formats are a simple as copying a file to pirate.

6)Flash Animation. Adobe just bought Macromedia (makers of flash). I'm expecting Flash to interoperate with PDF.

Of course you poke your eyes out reading on a PC. You can "Print What you Need". To those that don't have a laser printer or want color, I hear the complaint about what Kinkos costs. I say, "yes, but it's in print and not $100 on eBay".

For these reasons I think PDF/Flash is the way to go.

Aries: I like the fact that Hasbro has these rules online. I wish they'd put all the rules for AH titles online (free or for charge as eBook). The problem with ASL is that the possibility that Atari and subcontracted studio Paradox actually own the electronic rights, not MMP and not Hasbro. I believe that AH sold these to a French company with the rights being acquired by Atari. I think that's the issue MMP is working out right now. I'd love to hear from MMP, Hasbro, Paradox etc. about it firsthand though. I wonder if MMP thought it was more cut and dried when they made the eASLRB promise in the preface to the 2nd Ed Rulebook. Latest word is that, "most of the issues have been resolved". Whatever that means. Hell I'm not 100% sure which company owns the electronic rights.

We've debated taking the Nike approach and "Just Doing It" without charge. But the lawyers among us have said best case is a cease and desist order, worst case is a hornet's nest that might impact VASL.

"Electronic rights" I sure wish someone would finally beat this one to death hehe. I personally don't consider a pdf file "electronic" in the same vein as a computer game program is an electronic piece of property.
I can see the owners of the elctronic rights getting in a snit if someone else tried to market a squad tactical game called Squad Leader that looked smelled and played like Squad Leader.

But a pdf file of a paper game product's manual is to my thinking, not an electronic property even remotely connected to a fully electronic game program.

I am sure a lawyer could get an enlarged blood vessel over it.
But as I see it, Hasbro has already left the door wide open by allowing others of its games manuals be downloadable as free digital copies.

Court as I mentioned is almost all precendent.
I can't see a judge wasting his time deliberating long on this one.
If Hasbro can give away downloadable digital file copies of any of their other games physical manuals, it is not overly worried about the process.

If Hasbro was to negotiate a deal giving electronic rights to any of their other physical games, the people buying those rights likely would have to just understand, that they weren't buying the rights to digital copies of the manuals from the actual physical versions of the games.

After all, if they ever do get around to making a computer Squad Leader (worthy or not worthy), the manual to the actual paper game is not going to have any worth to the computer game.
The rules to the paper game really are only the rules to the paper game.

I downloaded the free trial version for Help and Manual.
Out of reach for this old dog though heheh. Learning programs is not something I do all that easily.
I would much rather donate a few bucks to someone's beer money fund for their private electronic manual creation rather than pretend I will ever have the brain power to figure out that program hehe.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

I think that those freely downloadable manuals are quite short, and only part of the package that you purchase.

The ASLRB is BIG, and is a standalone product.

To me, that's a big difference.