Re: [FT] SSD question

htm
Message-id: 39eb926b.470e.0@dynamite.com.au
X-User-Info: 210.8.224.3
Sender: owner-gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Delivered-To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu

>I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
exhibition

>game?	I recently did a few using the bit mapped "ship bits" which can
be foun
d

>on the web.  These looked nice but the trouble was there were quite a
number
of
>pages of just ship diagrams and an additional page for orders.  This
seemed
to
>cause much shuffling of paper which distracted from the game.
>
>In my next game I'm more inclined to use the SSD and Order sheet from
the back

>of the FB1 book, and draw by hand the pertinent systems.  I'm wondering
if

>anyone else has suggestions or experiences as to the best way to handle
SSD's

>(keeping them neatly confined to one page)?

Here's what I do, assuming you are a Windoze user:

a) Use Windows Paintbrush to make a number of SSDs. This is done by:
1. Make a new document
2. Copy and paste from Shipbits to make the SSD
3. (IMPORTANT!) Cut the SSD
4. Paste the SSD *as a new document*. This means that instead of a
*huge* .BMP
file containing exactly 1 SSD and a lot of whitespace, you get a much
smaller
one with no whitespace.

b) You can then use these in a number of ways. I tend to use Graphics
Workshop
(Shareware) from Alchemy Mindworks to do the file conversion from BMP to
GIF,
then the GifBot(Freeware) from NetMechanic to reduce the file size.

Graphics Workshop at http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/alchemy.html

GifBot at
http://www.netmechanic.com/accelerate.htm

But for your purposes, I'd suggest:
c) Paste as many copies of the SSDs as you like in a new BMP.
You should be able to fit a 1500-2000 pt fleet on 1 side of an A4 (or
Legal
or Quarto) sheet. Then paste this into a Word document. On the following
page,
insert a table for the orders - one column for each ship in the fleet. I
find
that 12 turns (ie rows) is enough, usually, for a demo game.
Now print it on a double-sided printer for a single page, otherwise you
have
2 sheets per fleet - one for SSDs, one for orders.

I usually use Win 3.11 for this procedure, but it works on Win 98 as
well. And
often skip the table of orders, doing that freehand.

Mac Users can make SSDs that look like the ones in the book of course.