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Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how did you use it?

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Fri, 2010-10-22 21:02
#1
AdamJury AdamJury's picture
Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how did you use it?
So, Bump in the Night was the first release where we offered both a Landscape and Portrait layout. Simple question: Which of the files did you actually use, and how? Did you read one of them, but use the other for reference in game? Print one of them, but read the other onscreen? Other presentation-related suggestions are welcome! If you haven't seen Bump in the Night yet, info here: http://www.eclipsephase.com/did-you-hear
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Sat, 2010-10-23 00:09
kindalas kindalas's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
I use the landscape files on my computer and the portraits for printouts. Except for the maps those I print as landscapes, but I've been experimenting with making multi page printouts of the maps to be taped to the table. If I had to chose which single one I could use it would be the landscapes because the maps look better and that helps my players enjoy the game.
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Sat, 2010-10-23 04:06
Daniel Daniel's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
I was very happy to see Bump in the Night being released in both Landscape and Portrait layout. The one I actually used, both for reading and printing out as a reference to be used in game (I haven't gamemastered it yet) is the landscape version. The advantage for reading on a screen is pretty obvious. However, I also tend to have more horizontal than vertical space at the gaming table. So far, when I gamemastered scenarios I had bought as PDFs, I usually used the two-pages-per-sheet printing option so that I can work with landscape sheets during the game. The problem with that solution is that, depending on the layout, the text on the printed pages sometimes turns out to be a little too small for my eyes. Hence, I really appreciate the "native" landscape layout of Bump in the Night.
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Sat, 2010-10-23 10:37
Albertorius Albertorius's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
I've used it in landscape with the iPad. The texts reads better... and the maps and images look just gorgeous.
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Sat, 2010-10-23 16:14
Colin Chapman Colin Chapman's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
I went landscape; just a lot more user-friendly, imo. Colin
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Sat, 2010-10-23 16:59
Prime Mover Prime Mover's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
Planning on using landscape on laptop or pc.
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Mon, 2010-10-25 09:42
Gee4orce Gee4orce's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
I'm not particularly bothered about the orientation - they both worked well for me. However, what I would REALLY like to see is a more optimised version for the iPad - the current EP PDFs (especially the Core Rulebook) take maybe 1-2 seconds per page to render fully on the iPad. This makes flicking between the pages a bit of a chore sometimes. There must be ways to improve this, without completely getting rid of the background images and illustrations. I like the colour coding between 'fluff' and 'crunch', and don't want to loose that. Also, I think the column widths are a bit narrow - or the margins a bit wide - to allow comfortable reading at 100% zoom. iPad has become my one and only way of reading gaming material these days - over and above print even - so anything that can be done to improve the experience even a little would be a great help.
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Mon, 2010-10-25 12:38
AdamJury AdamJury's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
Gee4orce wrote:
iPad has become my one and only way of reading gaming material these days - over and above print even - so anything that can be done to improve the experience even a little would be a great help.
I don't see such long load times on my iPad -- unless I flick through a bunch of pages 1-by-1 quickly instead of using the scrollbar. The time to render is actually, from what I can tell with experimenting with lots of PDFs and lots of settings, almost entirely based on the text-rendering time, not graphic-rendering. I've read 500MB press-ready PDFs on my iPad and they render in roughly the same time as Eclipse Phase does; and it's one of the fastest rendering PDFs I've seen.
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Mon, 2010-10-25 13:54
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
AdamJury wrote:
Simple question: Which of the files did you actually use, and how? Did you read one of them, but use the other for reference in game? Print one of them, but read the other onscreen?
Portrait. I find portrait-formatted PDFs easier to read, and I do not often refer to books during a game. I try to keep as much of the game mechanics cached as I can during the game to help the pacing of the game.
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Tue, 2010-10-26 04:30
Gee4orce Gee4orce's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
Interesting, but that's definitely not what I've experienced. I've got a lot of other gaming PDF and EP is about on a par with, say, Shadowrun for rendering speed - but something like Mongoose Traveller literally renders as fast as I can flick the pages. That book is text heavy but illustration light, so that's why I thought it was graphics that's causing the slowness. I'm using iBook as my reader, although I haven't really seem much speed difference using GoodReader either.
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Tue, 2010-10-26 17:11
AdamJury AdamJury's picture
Re: Bump in the Night: Landscape or Portrait or Both, how ...
Man, I think GoodReader blows iBooks away for speed. But, absolutely, PDFs that don't have complex backgrounds will take less time to render; there's simply less work to do. It would be _ideal_ if Apple properly supported the PDF layers functionality. :-)
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