ww2steel Posted August 25, 2006 Share Posted August 25, 2006 Hello, I decided today that instead of waiting to finish my epic, great wall of China style book and trying to sell it I am going to try perhaps a better approach. I have about 400 pages and 300+mb of data pertaining primarily to the armor, vehicles, and guns of CMBB. I was wanting to release a grand vehicle guide that I arranged with Battlefront over 2 years ago. The two problems- they wanted me to foot the bill for printing several thousand (full color) copies before sales began, and that the types of data am collecting continues to expand greatly in scope to 'just about everything a tank can do in just about any situation'. Given that both of these are fairly prohibitive to completing/ releasing the book I have been working on for about 3 years now (since whenever CMBB came out) I have decided to do it this way: I will progressively be releasing more and more data as I can carve away greatly on file size. Just one of my two German armor books is about 90% complete... at 115mb. I am changing the picture formats and should be able to get it down to a more readily downloadable 50+-mb. If I get a fair number of donations, I will continue to release this data. By donations I am talking about a small amount. $5, $2, whatever. Everything is absolutely appreciated. My website service alone costs me $280 annually (though I do use it for a few other things, mainly to show people my projects!). You can download it for free. If you think it's worth anything, please kick something back to me. Nothing new has been posted recently, but as I make big additions to what is downloadable I will post it here! I am working on a large Hungarian vehicle file recently. My CMBB page. See ya, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 07:17 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted August 25, 2006 Share Posted August 25, 2006 I am impressed Mike and look forward to seeing the first part. On the basis I would like FYIO how much for you to bury the project : ) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 25, 2006 Author Share Posted August 25, 2006 Bury the project as in not release the data? Any chance you are doing or have done something similar? What is FIYO? Mike [ August 25, 2006, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 25, 2006 Author Share Posted August 25, 2006 ...actually I just doube checked. Combined with a small amount of CMBO stuff it is 967mb and 452 files! Mike [ August 25, 2006, 11:12 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 26, 2006 Author Share Posted August 26, 2006 I just finished the first version of my Hungarian vehicles and armor for download from my website. It is free to download, but please donate, these take time and money to assemble and make available! My CMBB downloads Enjoy, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 07:18 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sigrun Posted August 26, 2006 Share Posted August 26, 2006 Originally posted by ww2steel: I just finished the first version of my Hungarian vehicles and armor for download from my website. It is free to download, but please donate, these take time and money to assemble and make available! My CMBB downloads Enjoy, Mike The book doesn't work, it appears to be made as a MicrosoftWord97 document? "Unable to convert graphics filters" or something. Apart from that your entire book idea sounds pretty good. I'd certainly like all the WW2 armor data tabulated in such a way, and would happily pay for it (if it works). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tankibanki Posted August 26, 2006 Share Posted August 26, 2006 It works for me. The pictures take some time to load here. I think it would be better as a pdf, but I guess I could just do that myself for my own usage. It's nice to have all the data available, however I'm not THAT interested in the Hungarian units (I presume this is kind of a test, to see if it's justified to do the same for different nations). Have you seen this site? http://cmbb.jemian.com/ You can find the penetration and armor data there, too. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 26, 2006 Author Share Posted August 26, 2006 Hi, I saved it in this Word format because when I did so by accident the size dropped from 79mb to 2.2mb. For some reason if it is saved as an older Word format it makes even jpg pics into .bmp format inside the document, causing a huge file size. Cool website. I was not aware of its existance, but I also had no reason to look. There are three reasons I released the Hungarian units first. One, primarily, it's only a 25 page file, and my biggest problem is file size. The German and Soviet files like this are each 100+ mb. The second reason, is that if I get like 200 downloads and no donations, then the 'more desirable' stuff will stay firmly on my hard drive, to be released in a 'you must pay' book; but I don't think this will be a problem. Third, I am interested to see if people want the secondary countries' data tabulated out. I personally have little interest in them (well, maybe just not enough to spend the time to compile this sort of thing). I'll see if I can figure out a better method to get you pics! A pdf would be great! Is there and way that I can build one without having to pay (if I remember it was kind of expensive) for Acrobat? I will be researching this today, as I have no experience with building a .pdf. Thanks for the feedback, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: ww2steel ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 26, 2006 Author Share Posted August 26, 2006 The current version is saved in office 2003 format. Older versions of Word will probably have problems, but I would quickly exceed even the high bandwidth restrictions of my server if I started posting the older Word files that are 80 - 120mb. Just this 25 page file saved in 97/2003 format is 73.9mb. I could save it as an html, but you'd have to manually set up your printer to get it to print right... no biggie I guess. I'm going to look more into pdfs. Thanks, Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teeps Posted August 26, 2006 Share Posted August 26, 2006 Originally posted by ww2steel: A pdf would be great! Is there and way that I can build one without having to pay (if I remember it was kind of expensive) for Acrobat? I will be researching this today, as I have no experience with building a .pdf. Mike, If you download OpenOffice (free, open-source office suite) it has word filters and PDF export built in. I've just emailed you a PDF of your book created in this manner so you can see the results. Cheers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 26, 2006 Author Share Posted August 26, 2006 Sweet! I'll use that. I will keep the Word version too, so people can add their own notes and customize their book, but for the people that do not have the latest copy of Word, the pdf is great. Thanks! Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tankibanki Posted August 26, 2006 Share Posted August 26, 2006 Looks like you have solved the PDF issue. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wicky Posted August 26, 2006 Share Posted August 26, 2006 Did you resize the screenshot images before incorporating them into word? I last saw a huge doc like that when someone had tried to cram a homemade book on a 100mb zip disk and not surprisingly there were a lot of problems with the file. Adobe Indesign is more the software you need but it is relatively expensive. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tankibanki Posted August 26, 2006 Share Posted August 26, 2006 The layout looks good though. Conversion to PDF should prevent those file problems even if the original file is a doc. Another free programme would be Scribus (for Linux). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted August 27, 2006 Author Share Posted August 27, 2006 Hi, the shot above is clearly a resize, but the book uses original size screenshots, though rearranged to fit in a more book functional method. Also I flipped the data block to a negative, so you won't use all of your toner on one book. I met with a guy today about my new shop (what the rest of my website is based on). It is fun picking it out... maybe a 40*50' will be big enough for my projects? Anyway... more books as soon as I can do 'em. Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teeps Posted August 27, 2006 Share Posted August 27, 2006 Originally posted by tankibanki: Another free programme would be Scribus (for Linux). Scribus is good, I use it for publicity for the charity I work for, and it runs on Windows too, but it might be overkill for what Mike's doing here. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mies Posted November 11, 2006 Share Posted November 11, 2006 Perhaps a little late, but I stumbled on this topic searching for something else. Should you still want to release your work in book form have a look here : http://www.lulu.com/ . It's a do it your self book publishing place where you can create your own book. Even if only for a personal copy. Haven't tried it myself because I haven't got anything to poor onto a couple of pages, but I have read some nice stuff about the concept. Mies 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
76mm Posted November 13, 2006 Share Posted November 13, 2006 You can also print to pdf for free using ppf995 (at www.pdf995). works pretty well, and should greatly reduce file size. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted November 14, 2006 Author Share Posted November 14, 2006 Thanks guys, it will have to come out in book form. My trial with the Hungarian Book (for which I did not expect much interest) has been downloaded 130 times with only one $3 donation towards me hosting it. Given the much larger size of the other files it seems hardly worth the time to convert my notes to a 'finished product'. Regardless, it is entertaining to do and a good way to study things I normally would not. (Like the Italian equipment I am doing now.) I still intend to do a book form, but the game might seriously be an antique by then. I may also distribute it by CD. Who knows. See ya, Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KG_Jag Posted November 15, 2006 Share Posted November 15, 2006 Mike, your donations have doubled or better since your last post. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
undead reindeer cavalry Posted November 15, 2006 Share Posted November 15, 2006 i second the www.lulu.com recommendation. check it out, you won't regret doing it. basicly it offers you a chance to publish your PDF as a paper book, even sell it, and it doesn't cost you anything. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ww2steel Posted November 15, 2006 Author Share Posted November 15, 2006 Thanks KG I am finishing up a good Italian book that covers everything they fielded. Should be out soon. Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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