An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Battle Reports & After Action Reports (AAR's)

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stockwellpete
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An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Post by stockwellpete »

Is that possible, chaps? I would love to be able to do it, but I would need a watertight step-by-step guide to follow in order for me to get it right at first. And I like the idea of putting "arrows" and "symbols" on the screenshots to clarify points in the commentary. Or is it all very difficult and technical? :?
hidde
Brigadier-General - 8.8 cm Pak 43/41
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Re: An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Post by hidde »

Feeling inspired? :wink:
Is possible...I use an utility called ScreenHunter to capture screenshots. There are loads of those and there might be better ones but it's free and functional.
Arrows, symbols and such I add using something called Creatly. Also free.
Then you have to upload the screenshots to a media hosting site, in my case ImageShack. There you get a link that you use for showing the screenshot here.
It's not very complicated but quite tedious...oh, and I also have to resize the screenshots, using Paint on my comp. The new forum layout don't give as much space to show
pictures as the old one :cry:
If you wish, maybe I can try to write a little more in detail later. I'll be working this and tomorrow night and if it's quiet I have the time.
But first I would like to finish the next turn of my AAR.
ianiow
Lieutenant Colonel - Fw 190A
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Re: An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Post by ianiow »

I only figured how to do it last night. This is what I did.

1. During the game I pressed 'Fn' and 'prn sc' together to take the pic.
2. Press the windows symbol to go to desktop and load up the basic 'paint' program that comes with windows.
3. Under the 'home' tab select paste and the screenshot should appear (remember:the screenshot will disappear if you copy/paste anything else into the computer memory). At this point you can crop/edit and save it as a jpg.
4. Go to photobucket website. Download your photo (probably from your My Pictures folder) and the photo will appear along with its URL address.
5. On the FOG forum, make a post as normal and where you want to place the pic just 'paste' the URL address. (you dont even have to fiddle with the /img button because photobucket already put the /img into the title).

Simples.

edit: Im not sure about adding arrows and symbols yet but I assume your can do that with the 'paint' software.
stockwellpete
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Re: An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Post by stockwellpete »

OK Anders and Ian, thanks very much. I will have a try over the weekend and see if I can post a screenshot. I think it is a good skill to have and it helps to bring our games to life. I am thinking it might also be a useful tool for the scenario builders to share ideas with. :wink:
stockwellpete
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Re: An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Post by stockwellpete »

jonno, I hope you don't mind me c+p'ing your post here as it would be good to collect all the different ways of doing AAR's in one place. If you get time to add the steps that you wre talking about then that would be good too. :wink:

"How I do my image....
PrtScr - Print screen
I then open GIMP - an open source image manipulation tool - like photoshop but free...
in GIMP: File -> Create -> From Clipboard
I use this to copy parts from the first screen i saved over the new image - to do a manual fog. This can be a little fiddly - and if you don't care about fog then i wouldn't worry. I can add the steps if anyone in interested...
I save the file as a .png good format for saving on the web

I then copy the file to my Google+ photos- i have an album called fog - open the album and upload the file
There are other ways of sharing - i use Google, as it is easy - just create an account.

You then need to share the photo with public. This can be done photo by photo - so you don't have to share everything
Click on the photo you have uploaded to view it - then right click and copy image url..

Then just paste this into your post...

Jon"
Tomokatu
Lance Corporal - Panzer IA
Lance Corporal - Panzer IA
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Re: An idiot's guide to doing AAR's?

Post by Tomokatu »

I did some AARs for WWII:RTV and WWII:ToW (and ToF)
My workflow on a Win XP PC (yes, still using XP) is
1 - Alt/PrtScr to take the screencap
2 - Alt/TAB to an open instance of PaintShopPro, CTRL/V to paste the screenshot in.
3 - Do the graphics, arrows circles, text as required.
4 - Save as a .gif (restricting he color range)
5 - Paste in a message to a forum (That was usually Matrix where attaching images in a forum post is permitted) I shall have to look into getting an off-forum image repository.Image
The older I get, the better I was.
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