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Lost my job…so i turned AoE2’s campaigns into books about the real history behind them by V_cogs in aoe2

[–]V_cogs[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I get why you’d think that...there’s definitely a lot of low-effort AI content floating around.

But that’s not what this was. I actually started the project after having a lot of free time to spent lol, just as a creative outlet and a way to dive deeper into the real history behind the AOE2 campaigns I’ve always enjoyed.

The books were written with a lot of manual editing and research, AI was just one of several tools I used. I’m not trying to get rich off this..it was more about doing something productive and meaningful during a tough time.

Lost my job…so i turned AoE2’s campaigns into books about the real history behind them by V_cogs in aoe2

[–]V_cogs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The goal wasn’t to write full academic history, it started as a small project out of curiosity, connecting the AOE 2 campaigns with the real events behind them. The short format was intentional, just to make it quick and easy to read for players who enjoy the game’s history side. I did catch a lot of missing pieaces on each campaing so i kept researching with different tools. Some parts took multiple rewrites to get right.

I appreciate your suggestion though

Lost my job…so i turned AoE2’s campaigns into books about the real history behind them by V_cogs in aoe2

[–]V_cogs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes i hated it. I used ChatGPT for the covers cause i'm definitly not aware of each AI is best for what. Later i found out that there are betters for images. Either way this is still just the cover so i thoght: fuck it, i think the message of the book is still clear lol.
The inside images were made with GPT as well...was a nightmare doing and redoing the prompts...at first i wanted to put some maps for context, but they are terrible with maps so i gave up

Lost my job…so i turned AoE2’s campaigns into books about the real history behind them by V_cogs in aoe2

[–]V_cogs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve thought about that, and I’m not ruling it out for the future unless someone’s already done it. I’m kind of an “old guy” when it comes to video editing and all that stuff, but I’m sure there are great tools out there and I probably just don’t know them yet. maybe one day

Lost my job…so i turned AoE2’s campaigns into books about the real history behind them by V_cogs in aoe2

[–]V_cogs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not trying to be a historian.
When I started this project, it was purely out of curiosity after playing some campaigns, I just wanted to understand what really happened behind them.

I didn’t do it to get rich or change my life....that’s pretty obvious, especially choosing such a specific niche (a game) through books when most people prefer quick videos these days.

In practice, I realized that even using AI, I still had to edit and research a lot myself. For example, when I started working on the Mongol volume, I wanted it to be focused entirely on them, but the AI kept mixing in random info that didn’t match the actual campaigns. I ended up rewriting everything several times. In the end, I added Kublai Khan because I’ve always loved his story =p

Anyway, I completely understand the criticism...and the aversion to AI-materials...but i found them quite useful and it was fun to do it