MOO 3 Game Manual

[Eaglezeye]

Any info out there on the game manual? I'm curious about how many pages it might contain. If it's a large document, how will they fit it in the new small game packaging? Or will they only provide the full manual in electronic format?

Wouldn't it be great if they posted the game manual on their website 24 hours before the game hit the stores? (With all references to the Harvesters deleted by Rantz, of course.) It would be the first time I completely read a game manual before starting the game.

[Mythox]

oh MOO3 i am waiting for the day that make u mein
i ll play till u will drive me crazy

[Grumbold]

I hate electronic documentation, so I'm hoping they will follow in the footsteps of games like Civ III and NWN by making sure that the packaging is large enough to fit a proper manual. The DVD size boxes make manuals challenging to produce but not impossible.

[wervdon]

I hate electronic books of any form I get enough eye strain just playing games on the PC

The NWN book though is 200 and something pages in a small box, the sacrafice though was flimsy paper CD covers instead of cases, which is ok...you can always buy CD cases

Answering the 2nd part, I really doubt they put the moo3 manual online as that would make it available to warez'ers as well.

[moomin]

One reason I bought both NWN and MW is that they came with nice manuals. I hate buying a full-price game and getting a sucky .pdf to read. That's beyond cheap.

Unfortunately, I seem to recall that QS has said there might be a manual for the US version, but here in Europe they'll skip it.

Which, frankly, does not make me want to rush out and buy the game on the day of release any more, let me tell you. Not that I would have anyway now, after all the brouhaha and Emrich's sacking.

[Grumbold]

If you can find a source for that quote I'd be really interested, moomin. It'll mean Ill have to import if I want the game, and I like to go rant at people who make these stupid decisions

[moomin]

I asked Alan that question waaay back when on the Delphi fora. That was what he said. He's not around anymore, but I don't have high hopes for this particular aspect of the marketing think to improve radically.

Not that I wouldn't be delighted, mind.

[Straybow]

Yes, I recall some QS person saying that the Euro version wouldn't have the printed manual. Probably worried about the cost of translating and printing for a half dozen or more languages. Idiots. At least make the version with English manual available—how many European gamers can read English at least a little?

[wervdon]

They have to translate to include a pdf manual too And if they are going to sell a game like moo3 with no manual then they are nuts

[moomin]

The whole translation manual stuff is just an excuse anyway. The real reason they have different versions for the European market is that they slap on more copy protection here - which makes absolutely no sense in the age of the intenet, since all warez releases are the US version anyway, these being out first.

[Straybow]

Printing separate language versions is different from cut-and-paste translation of paragraphs and captions in a pdf file. A good excuse in the eyes of a bean-counter.

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Straybow
At least make the version with English manual available—how many European gamers can read English at least a little?

Indeed.
The irony is, that usually the localised versions are ludicrous in the best case, really shìtty sometimes.
I usually *LOATHE* our local italian versions of the game.
Often I have more trouble getting or grabbing the needed game info from a poorly translated italian documentation than from the original US one.
The only one I found that had a just decent localisation job done here, was Trade Empires.

Besides, in the recent times, all the publishers who were claiming to delay their game because they wanted to simultaneously release the localised versions in Europe, ended to make the US version available the same at least 1 month prior to the localised one, so that's just bull.

Now that I became a bit more suspicious about getting games from day one (after the big disillusion that CivIII was - truly shelfware), I must face a conundrum:
if I wait too much to get a game, the italian versions would have come out, and the original ones would have been taken out of stock in the local shops - tragedy.

[Grumbold]

If you have the patience to wait that long, ordering the US version via mail won't take too much longer and if you pick a European supplier should not cost you too much in postage charges. I know what you mean about the dilemma though. If I wait and see if the UK version will ship with a manual included perhaps I can tell myself its time spent waiting for honest reviews of the US version to surface

[Skanky Burns]

At least with the internet, decent reviews can be had pretty much from the release-date in the US. Broadband users could probably "test" the game more than a month before release.

The Spanish translation of Civ3 has caused quite a bit of angst.

[moomin]

How so? I don't track Civ3 news anymore, but I find the mess with Euro versions interesting.