Request: A way to extract/copy text descriptions

[B0rsuk]

Dominions3 really needs a way to copy the ingame unit, spell, item, nation and whatever descriptions.

The descriptions are excellent. But when me and my friend play Dominions (separate SP games) we have to manually type every cool description or random event message. This makes bragging inconvenient.

Aside from bragging, the feature would boost Dominions3 marketing. I have reasons to believe Dominions3 relies on viral marketing and word-of-mouth (keyboard etc) stuff to spread. Extractable text descriptions would make spreading the word and convering people much easier. There are screenshots, I know :=/ .

If descriptions were available in external files, I bet a lot of people would make translation for their native language. This would further boost sales of the game.

One potential disadvantage: someone could compile an electronic manual which could help pirates. But what's stopping someone from scanning all the 300ish pages of dead tree Dominions3 manual ?

Bragging is very important, by the way.

[Sombre]

It would be somewhat helpful to modders too, who may only want to change a few words to reflect the changes they've made.

[Edi]

I've got all descriptions available in a text dump file, but I'm not going to make that publicly available without permission from Illwinter.

My list also has all typos fixed that I could find, so we might actually get a fairly typo-free version after next patch, depending on whether JK and KO use them.

[Gandalf Parker]

There are ways to extract them. I do it all the time on linux using the strings command

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

If you're just interested in bragging rights, there are several things you cand do with windows... I can go into more detail wherever necessary.

Press "Print Screen" on your keyboard to capture your entire screen, and stick it in your clipboard. Then copy and paste it into your graphics program of choice. Be sure to save as a jpeg.

Or, if your running in windowed mode, press Ctrl-Alt-PrintScreen to grab only the active window, and not your whole desktop.

And finally, there is FRAPS. Fraps can display your framerate and capture screenshots. The free version will save any screenshots as bitmaps (.bmp)- you'll need to convert them to a more compact image format before uploading to the web.

[Gandalf Parker]

The other neat thing about FRAPS is that you can actually record your combats. Including zoom-ins and side-panning. You could be your own little movie producer. There are a couple of YouTubes showing Dom combats.

Since Dom3 allows the use of third party programs to do many things, personally I would rather do that than have the devs pile things into the game itself (which usually shuts down the use of a third party program to do that and thereby limiting your choices)

[Baalz]

Another related feature that would be nice is a way to paste text into the "send message" text box. It'd be nice to be able (without launching a whole other instance of the game) see the map while I'm trying to compose a message to coordinate an attack, or offer gems/items for trade, etc.

[B0rsuk]

I don't have windows so I'm not interested in windows tips.

Ok, let's see. I've found --help and --stats switches...

[Gandalf Parker]

are you linux?
strings dom3.exe

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Are you interested in screenshots? If you've got linux, what distro?

While I've used linux, I haven't bothered with taking screenshots in it. I hear GIMP has a screenshot feature, and KSnapshot which is included with KDE. I could dig up a little more information/ share what I've found if I knew what you're working with.

You know, for a OS distro thread, I was surprised to find you hadn't mentioned what you use in the first post.