A guide on Factbooks.

Lennart

Lennart

TNPer
Lennart's Incomplete Guide on Factbooks​

So you want to make a good looking factbook. You want to condensate your nation's major business in a fancy way, so people don't run like hell from it for being (or looking) too long or boring.

That's great because, truth be told, most factbooks in NS are never read, by almost anyone. Maybe only the overview is read, and only if that's a short, interesting one. After that, the NS system organization makes sure that you don't check the rest of the tabs/links unless they have shocking names like "boobs", "pics of my kitten" or the overused reverse psychology "don't click here".

But I want to make a lot more than just a short introduction. What can I do?

Well, you need two things.

I. The content.

The first thing you need is, perhaps, the most important thing anyone needs before writing anything: Something interesting to say. I won't go on about this because it's something somewhat subjective, but if you want my opinion I will say I don't enjoy more than 10 lines revolving around geography or climate... Of course it may be important for Roleplaying reasons (and I will tell you what to do with that kind of thing later) or may be sprinkled with your own sense of humour, suspense, terror or whatever you like, because most people won't read more than 10 lines of plain, boring and "official" stuff, anyway. They don't even do that IRL if they're not paid.

And also thank Max or the Admins they only added a "flag up" feature and not a "tl;dr" feature.

II. The looks.

This is where I come in. A good marketing idea draws attention and keeps interest, and you need that for your factbook, especially if that's an elaborated, complex factbook. You need eye candy, maps, flags and an intuitive way of linking your content.

II.a. The basics.

Factbooks use a version of bbcode (just like these forums), without a couple of nice functions but still good enough (along with the new in-game NS forums) to leave NSwiki to die abandoned and forgotten (muahahaha). It seems to use these formating tags:

Code: 
[b] (bold text), [u] (underlined), [i] (italic), [color] (obvious)

[nation] (display nation. +short] displays nation without category, +noflag] displays no flag, there was even a +noname] feature during a short time, but it was very wrongly used for spamming and it doesn't work anymore :[ )

[region], [list], [size] (for letters), [font] (obvious), [img], [url], [center], [align]=(left, center right or justify, for text but also for images), [floatleft], [floatright], [background], [background-block], [box], [hr] (a horizontal line), [table]

Use them wisely, those tags will help your FB look alive and not just a boring note you made up.

A nice thing about colours is that you don't need to learn HEX codes (those #0F0F0F thingies), but just write the color name so this:


Code: 
[color=midnightblue]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=steel]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Aqua]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Aquamarine]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Azure]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Beige]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Bisque]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Black]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Blanchedalmond]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Blue]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Blueviolet]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]
[color=Brown]Elysium was pretty meh[/color]

Turns into this:

Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh
Elysium was pretty meh

And the same goes for background tag, and for the wonderful background-block tag.

If I were you I would also choose a cool font because using these:

Code: 
[FONT=Arial]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Black]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Century Gothic]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Comic Sans MS]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Courier New]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Fixedsys]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Franklin Gothic Medium]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Garamond]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]
[FONT=Impact]Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?[/FONT]

Will make your texts look like this:

Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?
Ben Affleck is Batman, where's your god now?

And there's literally hundreds or colours and fonts out there, just try different ones as you like. The only thing I cannot assure is that the bbcode version on wich FBs run accepts all of them, but you will definitely have some leeway. And you will like the sensation of your FB looking absolutely unique and different just by some little tricks like these.

Most of these things you could learn them visiting the factbook of Testlandia and its source code, so I won't go on over this unless any of you wants help with something (which you should just ask in the thread, and we'll work on it).

II.b. The funny things.

So you visited my factbook (or maybe Malanasia's?) and as you see, there are not only colours and fonts there: there are tables and boxes in it, it is like a simpler, nicer version of Wikipedia. I will give you my code in the next post, but I will try first to explain how to do it conventionally.

The fast way to explain how to do that is by saying which tags (an a trick) I used:

Table. It's more difficult to explain it than to use it, but unfortunately, NS factbooks tend to mess up tables and this is one of the things you probably should copy from my code or ask me how to do it.

This is an example for a table with 2 rows and 2 columns, so there are 4 cells.
Code: 
[table]
[tr]
[td]1[/td]
[td]2[/td]
[/tr]

[tr]
[td]3[/td]
[td]4[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
This forum seems not to display it, but the FB will.

Floatright. Everything inside floatright tags will be placed on the right. It works with tables and images AFAIK.

Img. A flag and a map are almost mandatory, and they must be hosted by a third party web (I use tinypic). Since you want to leave space for writing on the left, you should resize your images width... between 100 and 200 pixels I think it's fine.

Box The tag box is an easy one, you should try it, but don't abuse it.

The trick: linking to a Factbook extension

What is a factbook extension? Well, at first it was a resource for prolific writers to go beyond the maximum of 25 (or so) dispatches a nation can have. It is simply a new nation they created to keep writing. They normally placed the same flag and name it "Xs factbook extension" where X is, unsurprisingly, the name of their main nation.

But I don't use it just like that. I use it to link to more specific content. Remember when I suggested there is a right place for your climate, geography and all that information that not everyone expects to find when just getting in touch with your nation? it should go into your factbook extension, in your alternative nation's factbook.

why? because if you write more than just one dispatch, when you click "factbook" under your nation, you will get the dull, boring list of green topics: "overview, the awesome crap, history, the war of cats, blah blah blah". And you don't want that to happen, do you? you want to get a wiki preview like this: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=avalon/detail=factbook/id=main , and if you click on "flag" you want to be redirected to something like this: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=aval0n/detail=factbook/id=134750 . definitely not to a green topics list.

Look at them, the second one is written in a nation called Aval0n... not Avalon (maybe the same flag or motto got you lost). So I can explain every aspect in those "external" drawers and link to them from Avalon's overview. That's a little trick I learnt from Herrebrugh in the DSA. And now I'm sharing it with you.


-------------

And that's all for now, I'll post my factbook code in the first reply below, I only ask you not to use my flag or coat of arms in your FBs xD that would be weird.

Feel free to make any suggestion, correction or ask any doubt about factbooks in this thread, and remember we will nominate the best factbooks on October 7th and we'll be voting for the best from October 10th!!!!
 
Ok, this is just the overview of my FB, the other parts are not that interesting, really xD. I guess if anyone wants to share their code, this is the right place too.

Code: 
[floatright][box][background-block=lavender][font=georgia][align=justify][table]
[tr]
[hr]

[center][color=midnightblue][b][Size=120]Isle of Avalon[/size][/b][/color][/center]
[center][color=midnightblue][Size=120][i]Ynys Afallon[/i][/size][/color][/center]
[center][color=midnightblue][Size=120][i]Awesöme Island[/i][/size][/color][/center]


[/tr]

[hr]
[tr][td][center][IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/2reodwn.png[/IMG][/center]

[center][size=85][url=http://www.nationstates.net/nation=aval0n/detail=factbook/id=134750][color=blue](Flag)[/color][/url][/size][/center][/td][td]

[center][IMG]http://i40.tinypic.com/2d9bur.png[/IMG][/center]

[center][size=85][url=http://www.nationstates.net/nation=aval0n/detail=factbook/id=134756][color=blue](Coat of Arms)[/color][/url][/size][/center]

[/td][/tr]
[/table]

[table]
[tr][center][b][color=lavender]*[/color] Motto: [/b][i] "In serving each other, we become free" [color=lavender]*[/color][/i][/center]
[/tr]

[tr]
[center][b]Anthem: [/b][i][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxOZMpuGBjI][color=blue] A past and future secret[/color][/i][/url][/center]
[/tr]

[hr]

[tr][center][IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/noug6e.png[/IMG][/center]
[center][size=85](Map of the Isle of Avalon)[/size][/center][/tr]

[hr][tr][td][center][b]Capital: [/b][/center][/td][td][center][url=http://www.nationstates.net/nation=aval0n/detail=factbook/id=134906][color=blue]The Citadel[/color][/url][/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center][b]Demonym: [/b][/center][/td][td][center]Avalonian[/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center][b]Government: [/b][/center][/td][td][center]Mythical Monarchy[/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center]-Ruler: [/center][/td][td][center][url=http://forum.thenorthpacific.org/single/?p=8074824&t=6957120][color=blue]King Lennart[/color][/url][/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center]-Legislature: [/center][/td][td][center][url=http://www.nationstates.net/nation=aval0n/detail=factbook/id=134899][color=blue]Round Table[/color][/url][/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center][b]Currency: [/b][/center][/td][td][center]Silver Coin (1SC=1,97N$)[/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center][b]Languages: [/b][/center][/td][td][center]English[/center]

[center]Welsh[/center]

[center]Avalonian[/center]

[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][center][b]Allegiance: [/b][/center][/td][td][center][url=http://www.nationstates.net/region=the_north_pacific][color=blue]The North Pacific[/color][/url][/center]

[/td][/tr]
[/table]
[/align][/font][/background-block][/box][/floatright]



[tab=60]The Isle of [b]Avalon[/b] (Welsh: [i]Ynys Afallon[/i], Avalonian: [i]Awesöme Island[/i]), also known as the [b]Kingdom of Avalon[/b], is a Mythical Monarchy in [url=http://www.nationstates.net/region=the_north_pacific][color=blue]The North Pacific[/color][/url]. The capital and seat of government is [url=http://www.nationstates.net/nation=aval0n/detail=factbook/id=134906][color=blue]The Citadel[/color][/url], being also the most populated city.[/tab]

[tab=60]Avalon has a free-market economy with relatively low corporate taxes compared to other NS countries, while maintaining a well founded welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens. Recently, it was ranked in the 5% most developed country in the world by the World Assembly's Human Development Index and stays amongst the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita. The country is also highly ranked for press, economic and political freedom. Avalon is a member of the Regional Assembly (RA) of The North Pacific and pursues a policy of neutrality through non-alignment and is consequently not a member of any military, raiding or defending organization.[/tab]
[center][color=midnightblue][size=200]?[/size][/color][/center]

[size=160][font=georgia][color=midnightblue]Etymology[/color][/font][/size]

[tab=60]Geoffrey of Monmouth called it in Latin [b]Insula Avallonis[/b] in the [i]Historia Regum Britanniae[/i] ("The History of the Kings of Britain"), and was also, more oftenly, refered in Latin as [b]Insula Avalonia[/b]. For instance, the leaden cross in King Arthur's tomb which reads:[/tab]

[center][i]Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia.[/i][/center]
[center]("Here lies renowned King Arthur in the island of Avalon").[/center]

[tab=60]In the later [i]Vita Merlini[/i] he called it [b]Insula Pomorum[/b] the "isle of apples". The name is generally considered to be of Welsh origin (though an Old Cornish or Old Breton origin is also possible), derived from Old Welsh abal, "apple", or aball, "apple tree" (in later Middle Welsh spelled aval, avall; now Modern Welsh afal, afall). In Breton, apple is spelled "aval"/ "avaloù" in plural. It is also possible that the tradition of an "apple" island among the British was influenced by Irish legends concerning the otherworld island home of Manannán mac Lir and Lugh, Emain Ablach (also the Old Irish poetic name for the Isle of Man), where Ablach means "Having Apple Trees" – derived from Old Irish aball ("apple")—and is similar to the Middle Welsh name Afallach, which was used to replace the name Avalon in medieval Welsh translations of French and Latin Arthurian tales). All are etymologically related to the Gaulish root [i]aballo-[/i] (as found in the place name Aballo/Aballone, now Avallon in Burgundy or in the Italian surname Avallone) and are derived from a Common Celtic [i]abal-[/i] "apple", which is related at the Proto-Indo-European level to English apple, Russian ?????? (jabloko), Latvian abele, et al.[/tab]

[size=160][font=georgia][color=midnightblue]History[/color][/font][/size]

[tab=60]The existence of Avalon itself has been questioned through time and many true and false stories have been written; most of them made up by lame fantasy writers who just wanted to avoid the whole world creation phase. Nowadays, no one has the time nor patience Tolkien had anymore and I won't even talk about the half assed anime "homages" either (LOL didn't know I could write "ass" in a factbook). [/tab]

[tab=60]The true history of the mysty isle of Avalon is that of a lonely island in the middle of nowhere, that was firstly inhabited by druids and settled by celt tribes circa 50 AD. as their refuge from Roman invasions. Those inhabitants established a kingdom that lasted until the early 6th century. They spent their days jumping and singing while naked and were also good blacksmiths. But they thought they could use swords to fish so the lakes and rivers ended up filled with lots of swords, the Lady of the Lake was annoyed and told them to go f*ck themselves (Ok the F word can't go unnoticed I guess. But I had to try).[/tab]

[tab=60]But the life of former Avalonians was not only fun, doing stuff while naked and throwing magical swords in lakes. The last years of their ruling were shrouded in decay, as the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Danes inflicted several defeats on Avalonian Army, until the last of their chiefs swore allegiance to King Arthur of Britain who was in turn called Lord of Avalon. He moved here, drank lots of cider and invented apple pie. Then died.[/tab]

[tab=60]Avalon shone under Merlin's magic and Arthur's power, but rapidly became an orphaned land again after their demise. Our old gods departed and the whole land of Avalon sank like Atlantis. The rest of the world forgot about us until fantasy novels became a profitable business.[/tab]
[center][color=midnightblue][size=200]?[/size][/color][/center]
[size=160][font=georgia][color=midnightblue]The days of Lennart[/color][/font][/size]

[tab=60]No one but Lennart expected Avalon to emerge again and take its place in the world map. Well maybe a couple of other people did, so I wish the best of lucks to you guys who tried to refound this and failed, but still tried to log in after I took control over it. It was fun.[/tab]

[tab=60]Anyway, the thing is Lennart claimed his right to rule over the re-discovered isle, and the only other inhabitant left alive was the Lady of the Lake (She lived in the bottom of a lake, no wonder why she survived the sinking). The Lady gave Excalibur to him: no stone, no anvil; Lennart took the sword out of a butter block which had been kept in the fridge for days. She instantly recognised the hero who was destined to make her a sammich.[/tab]

[tab=60]The rest of the population came in dinghies and they keep coming as of today, like 5-8 million people every day, or so it seems by watching the NS population growth rate.[/tab]
[center][color=midnightblue][size=200]?[/size][/color][/center]
[size=160][font=georgia][color=midnightblue]Governance[/color][/font][/size]

[tab=60]Lennart established the Kingdom of Avalon and named his friends knights. He took back the round table and called himself [i]primus inter pares[/i], which sounds a lot more honorable than what it really is. In fact Lennart does as he please and his knights look aside, drink cider and sing while naked. So everyone's happy, the Moon beneath the castle walls, as the nightingale sings... And Magic rules again :)[/tab]


[tab=60][/tab]
 
You should totally make this kind of thread for Herrecode.

Herrecode is fun.
 
r3naissanc3r:
I just wanted to point out this great guide I stumbled upon:

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=256878
Click to expand...
(ooops sorry, I tried to qute you and I edited your post instead lol)

Overused, if you ask me, part of the reason for sharing mine is because there's an awful lot of Ponderosed factbooks out there...

Also, I'm moving my tab code (http://forum.thenorthpacific.org/topic/7431492 ) to this subforum and pin it... It's an interesting update to this guide.
 
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