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folechno

Beyond Godlike Posts: 2966 Joined: 09 Dec 2007 gold

folechno’s Guide to Writing a Strategy Guide: Part 2

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 2:36 am

Part 1 was done by Ghost and can be found here:
Ghost's Guide to Guide Making: Part 1

Welcome to my guide on how to make a guide. This covers everything you will need to know, including all the parts of the guide, what should be part in said parts, and even how to add screenshots and embed videos.

Advice about making a guide
Before you start entering your guide into the DS guide maker, first check other guides here on DS about that hero. Compare what those guides have and what you would include in your guide. If you do not present anything new and just repeat information contained in the other guides, there is a low chance that your guide will be published. You need to make your guide stand out from the others, you need to make it better, more detailed. Also, you should have tried the build yourself, tested it against others to determine if it the best build for the role that you are giving the hero.

Where your guides can be found
The location of the guide maker will be found in different places depending on where you are on DS.

If you are on the Home Page, the Strategies section, the Hero Section, the Item Section, the Hero and Item Ideas sections, the Downloads section, the About section, and the Help section, you will see “My Strategies” as an option in the black toolbar under the DS logo.

If you are in the any of the Forums, you will see it on toolbar at the very top of the page.

Upon clicking on said link, you will be directed here (and before you ask, that title is privileged information, when the guide is published, I will unblock it):

As you can see, all the guides that you have had published, are pending approval, or are working on will show up here. This applies to your Hero Ideas and your Item Ideas as well.
Making a Strategy Guide
Before you make a guide, it’s good to plan out what you want to say and how you want to present the information, so you will need to know what a good guide will have in it.

Parts of a Guide

Title – This is the first part of your guide people will see. Try to make it catchy, something that will make people want to read your guide. A Goblin Techies guide with a title like “Do Not Run, We Are Your Friends” will be clicked on more than one with a title like “The Way I Play Techies.”

Intro – The second part of your guide people will see. This should introduce your guide, outline the guide, highlight some topics you will cover. Just a basic introduction and will, with the title, convince people to read your guide.

Skills – Here you can comment on each of the hero’s skills. You might want to add some info about the skill, whether it is a nuke, a farming skill, an aoe effect, if it can destroy trees, what you can use the skill for etc.

Skill Build – The skill build is the order that you learn each of the skills.

Item Build – The item build is the set of items that your hero would get. You can have up to 25, not that you need more than 10. Also, you will be able to post a short comment about each item that you add. In the comment, you might want to include some short reasons as to why the item is good. For example, if a bracer is your first item, then you could have the comment “Stats, HP for early game, helps survival.”

Early Game – This is where you are given more artistic freedom. In the Early Game, Mid Game, Late Game, and Conclusion sections, you can write whatever you want, in any format you want. Since the Early Game section is the first section after the Skill and Item Builds, some authors take a chance to justify their builds. For example, in coco616’s Mirana guide, he discusses why Boots of Travel are better than Power Treads, why Mjollnir is a good orb for her, and why you shouldn’t get an Arcane Ring. Additionally people include some pros and cons about the hero, what defines the hero, what makes the hero truly powerful.

After the introduction, you get into the actual Early Game section. This is where you will cover game play for what you determine is the “Early Game.” If you will use Elune’s Arrow during the early game, you might want to explain how to use it, some good places to arrow from, basic info that would be helpful to understanding what the skill does and how to use it. You might want to cover some good lane partners, any combos that would lead to a first blood, heroes you want to watch out for. Basically, anything that it would be helpful to know during the early game. There is no set format, you are free to make the guide as you wish.

Mid Game – Same thing as the Early Game section. You will have more skills, the enemy will have more skills. You will be working on getting your core items and killing people.

Late Game – Same thing as the Early and Mid Game sections. The game will be coming to a close. You might want to talk about how your hero can help in the final push to take down the Throne/Tree, which heroes to watch out for as they will be really powerful.

Conclusion – In the Conclusion, you want to wrap up your guide. Briefly cover and information that is really important about playing the specific hero. You can also include additional items above and beyond the core build you have laid out. If you have different builds you can include those here. Most of the things in the Conclusion could just as well be in the Late Game section.
Generally it is good to have a Thank You section, where you mention people who helped you, any links that you are using, Drew, the mods, and the support team for maintaining this site etc.

Here are some useful threads that you might consider linking to in your guide:

Ghost's Guide to... DotA. v6.54b

Magic Spell's Weaknesses and Counters

DotAtionary v2.0 (online-version)

Image hero guide

Orb Effects [Updated]

What to get as a starting item

Power-ups/Runes Walkthrough

"Creep Blocking" Walkthrough

PLAY DOTA LIKE THE PROS!! PART 1: Fog of War (Escape Artist Houdini)

How To Make The Guide
Creating A New Guide – The firs step in making a guide is to create it. In order to do this, you will need to click on the “Build New Individual Hero Strategy” button on the toolbar under the DS logo.

Upon clicking on said button, you will be brought to this screen, where you will need to agree to a few things before creating a guide. This agreement, that you need to agree to, is just a confirmation that this work is your own, that you put effort into making the guide, and that it is easy to read and understand.

After agreeing, you are presented with the following screen, where you pick which hero you are making a guide for. I am using my Nevermore guide as an example.

After selecting a hero, you will need to choose a title for the guide and then create an introduction.

The next step is to determine the skill build for your hero and then comment on each of the skills. To enter in your skill build, click the Start button to begin the process. Then click on the first skill name in the box and click add to add the skill to the build.

Then you will need to choose a skill for level 2. Notice that Necromastery is no longer an option since you can’t learn lvl 2 Necromastery at lvl 2. The builder knows which skills you learn at each level.

Continue adding skills until the entire build is full.

Note that this does not work for Kael since he has 7 lvls of Quas, Wex, and Exort and has not stats. If you making a guide for Kael, make sure you include the skill build in the Early Game section.

Below the skill build, you will see each of the skills, with a box underneath. This is where you can comment on the skills.

After the Skill Build comes the Item Build. This is more or less the same process, but you can comment on each item as you add it.

You can add up to 25 items, but you shouldn’t need that many.

The next step is the Early Game. There is a big box where you can enter anything you feel like.

Using the icons will make your work so much easier.

Useful Icons
Bold/Italic/Underline/Strikethrough – They alter the selected text so that it is bold, italics, underlined, or stricken through.

Blocking – As the icons would suggest, they will format the selected text so that it is on the left, in the center, on the right, or justified (meaning that it will be a wall of text).

Cut/Copy/Paste – They cut out the selected text so that you can paste it somewhere else, copy it so that you can paste it somewhere else, or paste the cut/copied text into the selected location.

Bulleted/Numbered List – Causes the selected text to become a list to which you can add onto by going to the last line and hitting Enter/Return.

Hyperlink/Remove Hyperlink – When you select text and click the Hyperlink icon, the following window will pop up:

There is a box labeled “Link URL.” That is where you paste in the URL that you want the text to hyperlink to. The box label “Target” will allow you to choose where the link will open up. The choices are In This Window, In A New Window, In Parent Window, and In Top Window. The Title box allows you to give your link a title. This means that when a reader mousse over the link, they will see the title.

The other 3 tabs have additional options, but won’t be particularly useful. You might consider browsing if you are familiar with HTML code or can program. However, you won’t need any other options other than the 3 mentioned above.

Insert/Edit Image – This will allow you to add in a picture. Upon clicking on the icon, the following window will appear:

The box labeled “Image URL” is where you will enter the URL of your image. You can enter a title and a description of the image in the boxes labeled “Image Description” and “Title.” The Title will appear if you scroll over the image. You will see the image as it will appear in your guide in the “Preview” box at the bottom.

The second tab, called “Appearance” looks like:

The Alignment option will determine how the text around the picture will appear. The options are:
Baseline/Absolute Bottom - the words will appear on the bottom right hand corner of the image
Top/Top Text – the words will appear on the top right hand corner of the image
Middle/Absolute Middle – the words will appear on the right in the middle of the image
Left – the text will be left justified on the right side of the image, the text will wrap so multiple lines can be on the side if the image is large enough
Right – the text will be left justified and the image will be on the far right side, text will wrap around so multiple lines will show up if the image is large enough

The “Dimensions” will allow you to set the size of the image when it appears in your guide. You should leave the “Constrain Proportions” box checked so that it will maintain the proportions of the image. Otherwise, the image might be distorted, appearing stretched or shrunk. The “Vertical Space” and “Horizontal Space” allow you to give space above and to the left of the picture. The number you enter in will be in pixels. The “Border” box will surround your image with an all black border with the number of pixels you entered.

The third tab is the “Advanced” tab and it looks like this:

The only useful option here is the “Alternative Image” option. This will allow 2 different images to be shown, one when you have the mouse over the image and one when the mouse is not over the image. Enter the URLs into the two boxes. The “For Mouse Over” image will be the one shown when the mouse is over top of the image an the “For Mouse Out” image will be shown when the mouse is not over top of the image.

In addition to the icons above, there are 3 menus that will also be useful. Those are the menus for Hero Icons, Item Icons, and the Hero’s Skill Icons.

Upon clicking on these, another window will pop up with the icons. You can then click and drag the icon to the location you want it.

Mid Game, Late Game, and the Conclusion are all like the Early Game section. Same box, same icons.

After you finish the Conclusion section, you will be taken to an overview of your guide. In this overview, you will see your guide the way a reader will see it. If the pictures or videos aren’t working now, then they won’t work after you submit the guide.

The final step in the guide making process is to submit the guide. There are 2 places you can click to submit the guide. The first is at the beginning of the guide overview and the second is at the end of the guide overview. From the Overview screen, you can skip to any part of the guide to edit it by clicking on the “Edit” button for that section.

How To Add Pictures and Videos To Your Guide
Pictures
Taking Screenshots – During the game or while you are watching a replay, hit the Print Screen button when you want to capture the screen. A message should appear in the middle of the screen saying “Screen Captured.” This means that Warcraft 3 has saved the screenshot. It will be under C:\Program Files\Warcraft III\Screenshots (or the Mac equivalent). The files are in the TGA format, which can be opened and viewed using Adobe Photoshop, where you can then make whatever changes you wish, add text, or completely distort the picture if you want.
If you do not want to use Adobe Photoshop, there is another way to capture screenshots. After you hit the Print Screen button and the message appears, switch over to Paint and “Paste” (Ctrl + V). The screenshot will be in Paint where you can then edit it as you like.

Uploading Files - To have pictures in your guide, they will need to be available online. The most popular image hosting sites are ImageShack and Photobucket.

Adding Pictures – To add the picture, use the Insert/Edit Image icon. For this, all you need is the URL of the picture. Upon clicking on the icon, it will prompt you for the URL. You can add a description and change some settings as well. When you click Insert, it will take care of coding and will add the picture to your guide. You CANNOT use forum code. If you try to use [img] and [/img], the picture will not show up.

Videos
Taking Videos – There are many ways to take videos. The method that I prefer is to use Fraps to capture the footage that you want and then edit it using Tsunami Mpeg Encoder, VirtualDub, or Window Movie Maker. For more info, visit the Fraps website, the Tsunami Mpeg Encoder website, the VirtualDub website, or the Windows Movie Maker website.

Uploading Files - To have videos in your guide, they will need to be available online. The most popular video hosting sites is YouTube.

Adding Videos – There are 2 ways to add a video to your guide. The first is to use the Insert/Edit Flash Movie icon. You will need the URL. This works just like inserting a picture, the function will make the code and input your video.
The second way is to use the embedding code that YouTube gives you to manually add the video to your guide. This code is found in 2 places. When you finish uploading the video, it will give you code with which you can embed the video. The second place to find the code is from the screen where you watch the video on YouTube. The code is on the right side under the video info.

Approval Process
After you submit your guide, Drew, the moderators, and the support team will read your guide and vote on whether or not to approve it. This process takes time, so be patient.
Here is what they have to say about it.

These following guides are good examples of how to write a guide, what to include, important things to point out etc.

Coco616's guide to The Priestess of the Moon

Ahh! Fresh Meat!

Steve-O`s Favorite Doctor

The Soul Keeper - Terrorblade(First Place Strategy Contest winner)

Twin Blades Of Death

I-Win Button - Shimrra_3's guide to Broodmother

Nevermore - quale's Unleash The Power

Kakee’s Pit Lord 360

The Assassin Within - shazzam66's Gondar

Thank you for reading. I hope you learned how to use the Strategy Maker and wish you luck in the guide making process.

"folechno's Guide to Writing a Strategy Guide" is intended for www.DotaStrategy.com only.
Copyright © 2008 folechno All Rights Reserved
_________________
My Guide to Writing a Guide Click Me Baby, One More Time

I inspired a posting rule ftw

Thanks to markues1775 for the awesome sig!

Last edited by folechno on Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:12 pm; edited 9 times in total