Mission Reports - any suggestions?

[DaMachinator]

I need some tips on writing Mission Reports.

Of note: 

• I am in general not a great writer... 
• Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast).
• I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature.
• I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

[Vanamonde]

Mission reporting advice request moved to the mission reporting subforum. 

[adsii1970]

I do mission reports and mine are about as dry as the Mojave desert. If you click on the link below, you can see what I mean. You can learn everything NOT to do. Oh, yeah, I will be updating that once the summer semester is over.

[Geschosskopf]

On 7/5/2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

I need some tips on writing Mission Reports.

Of note: 

• I am in general not a great writer... 
• Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast).
• I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature.
• I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

1.  Don't let lack of writing ability slow you down.  It's never stopped me   It's the story that matters, not the writing.  I mean, there are some folks here who have limited command of English but it doesn't matter because they're stories are interesting.  But if you can't tell a good story, it doesn't matter how well you write.

2.  Well, there are 2 ways to fix dark pics without adjusting the brightness.  First, don't take pics at night.  Second, put more lights on your ships so they show up well in the dark.

3.  I rather like your story.  It's written in a clear, humorous style.  The only thing is, the very beginning of a career game doesn't have much market appeal these days.  It's very hard to attract much attention with that unless there's something very different about how you're doing it.  Otherwise, even with various mod parts, it's still pretty much doing the same old things that everybody always does at the start of new career.  Nobody really likes doing that themselves so they don't much like reading about other folks doing it.

Folks seem to like grandiose projects the most.  Thus, it's a good idea to have your story open near the start of such a project, with only a few paragraphs devoted to all the grinding that went into getting to that point.  That way, folks can immediately get into the interesting stuff, like how you're going to colonize Duna or whatever.  Of course, you have to have a major project in mind when you start the game.  The other option is to do your career radically differently from what everybody else does.  This is a lot harder because either you have to think of a new way to play, or you need to have some compelling story going on to explain why things are different, or both.  Usually both.  So again, you need to decide what the main purpose of your game is going to be before you start it.

4.  That's not something I can help you with, I'm afraid.  I have the same trouble.

[UnusualAttitude]

Yup, Geschosskopf pretty much said it all. I agree that writing ability should not be an issue. Indeed, if you were a great writer, then I would strongly suggest putting your talents to use elsewhere than on the KSP forums...

An original idea is good. It doesn't have to be revolutionary, it could just be an original take on an old problem, or introducing some interesting characters of your own creation (consider not using the hashed-to-death original three Kerbals, Gene, Mort, etc...). Something that makes your report stand out from the rest.

And above all, persevere. This may sound a little cynical, but if your report is at all interesting and you stick at it (posting regularly for a couple of months or so), people will eventually take notice and start coming back for more. The KSP Mission Reports forum is a really nice place with lots of good folks who tend to be mainly very encouraging. After all, we are providing (sometimes) entertaining content for free!

[DaMachinator]

On 7/5/2016 at 10:32 PM, adsii1970 said:

I do mission reports and mine are about as dry as the Mojave desert. If you click on the link below, you can see what I mean. You can learn everything NOT to do. Oh, yeah, I will be updating that once the summer semester is over.

What link?

On 7/5/2016 at 8:27 PM, Vanamonde said:

Mission reporting advice request moved to the mission reporting subforum. 

Thanks, wasn't really sure where to put it.

Edited July 7, 2016 by DaMachinator

[Just Jim]

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 11:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

I need some tips on writing Mission Reports.

Of note: 

• I am in general not a great writer... 
• Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast).
• I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature.
• I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

1) Do not sell yourself short.  I didn't think I was any good either, or that anyone would be interested in something I wrote...

2)  Most of the time I'll advance the game a little to get the sun at it's best angle. And I try to use my lighting as strategically as possible.  Don't just plunk a couple lights on a ship, experiment and see what works best.  I often spend hours setting up a scene just to get half a dozen screenshots.  Also, don't be afraid to start a second sandbox game to blow stuff up, so you don't jeopardize your career game.

3) I read what you wrote, and it was starting off pretty good.  But I highly agree with @Geschosskopf.  In my story, I skipped over the first 5 years in the opening paragraph.  Unless the grind is a key element, find an excuse... any excuse... to skip over it and get to where the real story begins.

4) As for names, other than a couple shout-out exceptions, all my names are game generated.  Sometimes the game itself is your best friend when you can't think of a good name for a character.

[Ultimate Steve]

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

• I am in general not a great writer... 
• Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast).
• I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature.
• I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

1. Me neither. Yet I do it anyways.

2. I take lots of night shots. I don't know why, but most of them are fairly visible. I think.

3. Normally I just go with it, and maybe re-write earlier posts if I need to (I haven't done that yet).

4. Ships, or Kerbals? If it is ships, then abstract nouns are your friend, especially if you make a super epic ship.

[DaMachinator]

18 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

4) As for names, other than a couple shout-out exceptions, all my names are game generated.  Sometimes the game itself is your best friend when you can't think of a good name for a character.

So far, I haven't used any external characters. The characters in the story are the Space Center named people and the astronauts I have and obtain through rescues or hiring. My naming problem lies in finding memorable names for vessels and satellites. Once-and-done things like sounding rockets can have any name as i'll never need them again. Things like CactEye telescope probes and exploratory probes need names I can remember.

I also don't like silly names. I like descriptive words that fit the vessel. Like Oculus for a telescope or Caduceus for a Moho probe lander. (If you can find the connection between Moho and "caduceus" you get a prize.)

20 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Also, don't be afraid to start a second sandbox game to blow stuff up, so you don't jeopardize your career game.

If stuff blows up, it goes into the story. No reverting unless the game crashes and reverts it for me or a game bug occurs. See: The last chapter. That wasn't just something I stuck in, the guidance script I wrote DID crash. I forgot to declare a variable in a function before SET'ing it.

Edited July 7, 2016 by DaMachinator
Too much whitespace.

[DaMachinator]

12 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

2. I take lots of night shots. I don't know why, but most of them are fairly visible. I think.

They look good ingame, but when I pull them up in an external program they're barely visible. I may start adjusting the brightness on photos just enough to make them visible.

Edited July 7, 2016 by DaMachinator

[Ten Key]

2 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

They look good ingame, but when I pull them up in an external program they're barely visible. I may start adjusting the brightness on photos just enough to make them visible.

I'd be willing to bet it's the background. I have plenty of screenshots that were taken in dim lighting, and while they look fine on a black background (like on the Imgur site) they lose most of their detail when placed on a bright background. 

Like, for example, the blindingly white background we have here on the forum. 

I've had some luck with adding a dark border to the pictures, but unfortunately the effect you're seeing is a physical limitation of the human eye. There's really not a whole lot you can do. 

 

 

[DaMachinator]

This is in the Windows 10 photo viewer with a grey theme applied to window tops and the start menu bar.

The Win10 photo viewer is black with white line icons.

Edited July 7, 2016 by DaMachinator
words

[Just Jim]

27 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

 My naming problem lies in finding memorable names for vessels and satellites. Once-and-done things like sounding rockets can have any name as i'll never need them again. Things like CactEye telescope probes and exploratory probes need names I can remember.

I also don't like silly names. I like descriptive words that fit the vessel. Like Oculus for a telescope or Caduceus for a Moho probe lander. (If you can find the connection between Moho and "caduceus" you get a prize.)

Ahhh, I see what your saying.  Coming up with good ship names is something I take a lot of time with as well.  They can be difficult.

 

29 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

If stuff blows up, it goes into the story. No reverting unless the game crashes and reverts it for me or a game bug occurs. See: The last chapter. That wasn't just something I stuck in, the guidance script I wrote DID crash. I forgot to declare a variable in a function before SET'ing it.

I didn't mean accidental explosions, I meant if you want to blow something up on purpose.  If you're doing fan-fiction style mission report, and need a couple extra gratuitous explosions.  If you've read my story, you know I like to blow stuff up a lot.  Most of the time I use a sandbox game for the explosions so I don't lose my precious career kerbals. 

[adsii1970]

My link is here:

The problem with me is that I have worked so long with government documents because of my profession, everything I write tends to be just as cut and dried. They say you are what you read, so besides nonfiction, government documents, and the like so my writing ability, compared to the work I've read on @Just Jim's thread just blows me away.

If you want to learn what to do, then listen to him. If you want to learn what doesn't work, then by all means, read mine.

 

[adsii1970]

3 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Ahhh, I see what your saying.  Coming up with good ship names is something I take a lot of time with as well.  They can be difficult.

[Edited  by adsii1970 for relevant content]

Actually, it is not that hard if you start with a couple of base parameters. What I did for most of my craft is follow a pattern based on several real world navies (U.S., U.K., French, and the Imperial Japanese).

If it is a ship of discovery, I'll name every ship of a particular class by a "Kerbalized" name of a famous explorer or scientist. It does not need to be a Kerbal that is currently alive and may be completely fictitious according to the existing game storyline. The way I see it, a brief explanation of the name could make an interesting addition to the mission logs - somehow. Anyhow, here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

• I have a submarine exploring the oceans of Kerbin named Kusteau Kerman.
• I have a science mission going to the Mun with the name of Galikeo Kerman.

If it is a satellite, I try to name it after it's mission title. For example, Eeloo Discovery is a satellite that is bound for Eeloo with a very basic science package and camera. If the satellite has a lander, then it becomes Eeloo Lander and so forth.

I have a shuttle I am working on and the prototype is named Courage (basically it takes a lot of it to fly in a shuttle designed by me...). Another person to ask would be @ZooNamedGames, as he has a whole fleet of shuttles and no shortage of names...

[DaMachinator]

28 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Ahhh, I see what your saying.  Coming up with good ship names is something I take a lot of time with as well.  They can be difficult.

 

I didn't mean accidental explosions, I meant if you want to blow something up on purpose.  If you're doing fan-fiction style mission report, and need a couple extra gratuitous explosions.  If you've read my story, you know I like to blow stuff up a lot.  Most of the time I use a sandbox game for the explosions so I don't lose my precious career kerbals. 

Gratituous explosions are plentiful, especially when using explosive decoupling

[Just Jim]

47 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

The problem with me is that I have worked so long with government documents because of my profession, everything I write tends to be just as cut and dried. They say you are what you read, so besides nonfiction, government documents, and the like so my writing ability, compared to the work I've read on @Just Jim's thread just blows me away.

If you want to learn what to do, then listen to him. If you want to learn what doesn't work, then by all means, read mine.

Oh wow, thank you!   Actually, when I started Emiko, I also thought it was much too cut and dry... and boring.... so I totally re-wrote it into what it is now.  I didn't really have any direction in mind at the time, except I wanted it to read more like a young-adult's animated movie or cartoon than a mission report.  And once it got rolling, I built on this idea, and people seemed to really like it. 
In a lot of ways, Emiko Station is a weird mix of the old Jonny Quest cartoon and Despicable Me.... with a little Lovecraft sprinkled on top to spice things up.

I don't know if @DaMachinator wants to go in this direction, but it's something to consider.

Edited July 7, 2016 by Just Jim

[adsii1970]

55 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

I'd be willing to bet it's the background. I have plenty of screenshots that were taken in dim lighting, and while they look fine on a black background (like on the Imgur site) they lose most of their detail when placed on a bright background. 

Like, for example, the blindingly white background we have here on the forum. 

I've had some luck with adding a dark border to the pictures, but unfortunately the effect you're seeing is a physical limitation of the human eye. There's really not a whole lot you can do.

You can take that image and edit it in any good photo editing program. Simply increase your light as you *ever-so-slightly* decrease your contrast. If you do that too much, it will look like some of the old washed-out NASA images from Apollo 11.

Edited July 7, 2016 by adsii1970

[Geschosskopf]

58 minutes ago, DaMachinator said:

So far, I haven't used any external characters. The characters in the story are the Space Center named people and the astronauts I have and obtain through rescues or hiring. My naming problem lies in finding memorable names for vessels and satellites. Once-and-done things like sounding rockets can have any name as i'll never need them again. Things like CactEye telescope probes and exploratory probes need names I can remember.

I also don't like silly names. I like descriptive words that fit the vessel. Like Oculus for a telescope or Caduceus for a Moho probe lander. (If you can find the connection between Moho and "caduceus" you get a prize.)

Well, if you've read any of my stuff, you know I like silly names

But there was a time when I took myself more seriously and tried to give my (important) ships cool, respectable names.  The problem I had with that, however, was not breaking my willing suspension of disbelief.  For instance, I refused to use the names of Earthly animals or mythological figures because none of those namesakes exist on Kerbin, so to Kerbals those words would just be gibberish.  Ultimately I decided to use the names of great Maya kings from the Classic era as they sound like gibberish to all but the Maya themselves, but I ran out of them after a while.  That's when I started doing silly names.

[Daeridanii]

 

On 7/5/2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

I am in general not a great writer... 

The best advice I can give you is to write what you want to hear. It doesn't matter if no one reads it, as long as you are satisfied. (Not that no one will read it, I'm sure it'll be great!)

On 7/5/2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast).

Unless you're a pure stock guy, mods are your friend. Scatterer and Engine Lighting are two that come to mind, but there are also a lot of part packs, etc. out there that can give you just the lighting you want/need.

On 7/5/2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature.

Refer to my first response - change it, edit it, write it until you are satisfied. I did like it though - don't automatically assume that people won't like it.

On 7/5/2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

Kerbals and asteroids, and the planets tend to have pretty creative names. Also, a lot of sci-fi novels have good phrases you can incorporate into a title. Look at Kerbfleet: A Jool Odyssey. In addition, my mission report's title (in sig, shameless self promotion!) is entirely based off its main mod; Uncharted Lands. 

 

Hope I helped somewhat. Anyway, good luck.

[Andem]

On 7/5/2016 at 10:05 AM, DaMachinator said:

I need some tips on writing Mission Reports.

Of note: 

• I am in general not a great writer... 
• Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast).
• I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature.
• I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

1) I have two major writing flaws: I try to progress the story too quickly, and I get too detailed on some parts while ignoring another. The point is, You may never overcome those flaws, but do your best, have fun, and work with criticism.

2) Not really much to say here, you have to make that decision

3) What I'm reading so far is really good!

4) For ships, I suggest selecting a theme. E.G., Greek Gods, Trees, Birds, etc.

[DMSP]

@DaMachinator, you don't need writing skills, I mean look at me! I'm pretty sure I have none and I have a story going which (surprisingly) people like. Give it a shot! You never know.

For an idea, maybe try one of these: 

 

 

[DaMachinator]

15 hours ago, Daeridanii said:

Unless you're a pure stock guy, mods are your friend. Scatterer and Engine Lighting are two that come to mind, but there are also a lot of part packs, etc. out there that can give you just the lighting you want/need.

I already have engine lighting, but mostly because it provides a good visual indicator of distance to ground for night landings

When you've got multiple engines on your lander, you know you're close when the circles of light intersect.