News Desk - An Ultimate War Era Journalism Tool (or is it?)
Is it? idk, honestly. But one thing for sure, this is a tool you can use.
“What?! Another tool that basically does the same thing?”
umm... yes and no..
I know, i know.. there are already plenty of tools out there. Some of them even have features that are pretty similar to one another.
But hold ur horses, ladies n gentleman. this one is made specifically with War Era journalism in mind.
Hear me out
If u're one of those people who looked at the game's welcoming screen:
“Join the world as a citizen and forge your own path. Become a soldier, entrepreneur, trader, or politician in this immersive world where your strategic decisions reshape history.”
...and decided:
“Nah, I'll be a journalist.”
Or maybe journalism is just your side role. Maybe you like writing articles. Maybe you enjoy digging through events. Maybe you just like fishing for drama and turning it into a news report.
Whatever your reason is, I think this tool might actually make things a little easier.
Ever tried writing a battle report and got annoyed because you had to manually calculate the start date, duration, total damage, number of participants, total budget, and everything else?
Ever tried digging through the event timeline, only to realize the in-game timeline navigation is kinda lame and slowly starts testing your patience?
Ever wanted to look through old battles from a particular country, but doing it manually is just a pain?
Ever wanted to find some old articles, only to realize there is no proper article search in-game, so you either have to hunt down the author or keep smashing that Load More button?
And maybe there are a bunch of other things you could use, but you're too lazy to ask AI to dig through the game’s API and compile all those reports for you.
Yeah. News Desk is basically my attempt at solving those problems.
So, let's see what it can actually do.
First Stop: Timeline / Home
This is the first thing you'll see when you open News Desk.
So what's actually here?
Global Events
At its core, this is basically the War Era event timeline, but presented as something closer to a collection of brief reports.
But there's more to it than just scrolling through events.
You can filter events by:
Country
Continent
Region
Sub-region
Sub-Continent
Event type
Date range
There are currently 25 different event types available for filtering.
You can also decide how many events should be rendered per load.
Want more? Just hit More.
There's also Copy All Listed, which does exactly what the name says. It copies all the currently rendered events so you can paste them somewhere else.
And if you only want one particular event, you can copy its brief report directly from the event card without having to manually highlight the text.
Pretty handy when you're trying to build a report.
Featured Articles
Obviously, this is supposed to look like a newsroom. So we need a featured section.
It shows recently published articles with the umm.. relatively high positive scores, as long as they have an image.
Because come on, even Bloomberg puts pictures on its featured articles.
Click the title and you'll be taken straight to the article.
Easy.
A nice little place to find some of the better stuff people have published recently.
Articles
Then there's the Articles panel.
Nothing too mysterious here. It shows the latest articles uploaded to War Era.
You can browse them, search them, filter them by language and category, and sort them by score or date.
Basically, another way to keep an eye on what's being published right now.
But if you want to go deeper into the archives, that's where the Library comes in.
Library
The Library is, well... A library.
It's where all the articles live, Yes, all of them.
The First Index
The very first time you open the Library, News Desk has to index the entire War Era article database
From the oldest article available all the way to the newest one.
So yeah, it might take a little while.
Not that long, though.
It's only 40,000+ articles.
Totally normal.
Once that's done, you're good.
Cached Locally
The indexed articles are stored in your browser's storage/cache. That means you don't have to wait for the entire thing to be indexed every time you open the Library.
New articles will still be added as the database gets updated, so the archive keeps growing with War Era.
Categories
You can see counters for each article category and switch between category listings.
Search
There's also a search engine.
You can search by keyword or by author name.
(author search)
(keyword search)
Sorting
Sort articles by:
Date
Score
And yes, both can go ascending or descending.
Date Filter
Want to see everything published during a particular period?
Set the date range and there you go.
Language Filter
Of course, there's a language filter too.
Copy All Listed
Just like the Timeline, you can copy all the currently listed articles.
Instead of getting the entire articles, you'll get their brief information, ready to paste wherever you need it.
Because the Library is supposed to be an archive.
And as an archive should, you can find pretty much everything that's ever been published here
Article Reader
"But wait, does News Desk only show article titles and brief information?"
Oh, hell nah.
News Desk also has its own Article Reader.
And yes, I know there are already other tools done this.
But, hear me out.
Better Readability
The News Desk reader doesn't simply extract article content from the API metadata and throw it onto the screen.
It processes the content and turns it into something much more comfortable to read.
It Actually Respects the Author's Formatting
Font styles, paragraph alignment, text styling...
They're preserved.
So you're not just looking at a giant wall of left-aligned text that looks like someone dumped raw data onto the screen.
If the author bothered formatting their article, News Desk tries to respect that.
Entity Resolution
This one's particularly useful. The reader resolves entity mentions made by the author.
Normally, this kind of thing just ends up as an empty placeholder in some other readers.
Here, resolved entities are clickable, so you can jump straight to them in-game.
Text Zoom
Don't like the default font size?
Make it bigger.
Too big?
Make it smaller.
Read it however your eyes like it.
Image Viewer
Images inside articles are also interactive.
Click them, zoom in, inspect them, or just admire whatever ridiculous thing someone decided to put in their article.
Your choice.
Bookmarks
Found something you want to read again later?
Bookmark it.
Your bookmarked articles can be accessed from the bookmark section.
Copy Article
You can copy the article's content without having to manually highlight and drag through the entire thing.
Because nobody enjoys doing that.
Original Article
And of course, you can still access the original article in-game.
"Yoo... this is all about articles! Where are the battles?!"
Easy, easy.
If you want to keep an eye on battles, whether they're ancient history, just concluded, or still happening right now...
We've got you covered.
Battle
The Battle tab provides listings for both Ended Battles and Active Battles.
Ended & Active Battles
Active battles are listed separately from ended ones.
The Ended Battles section also doubles as a battle archive.
By default, the freshly concluded battles appear at the top.
Search
Want to find an old battle?
Use the search engine.
You can search by country or region.
More
Need more results? Hit More.
Same old trick.
Copy Listed
You can copy the brief information of all currently listed battles, just like you can with the Timeline and Library.
Very useful when you're preparing a report and need a bunch of battle summaries at once.
Sorting
Sort battles by:
Date
Damage
Ascending or descending.
Region Filters
You can filter battles by:
Continent
Sub-continent
Region
Sub-region
And other geographical divisions
So if you're looking for battles that happened in a particular part of the world, you don't have to dig through everything.
Date Filter
You can also specify a date range and see which battles concluded during that period.
"That's it?"
Wait.
Click on a battle.
That's where things get interesting.
Battle Details
Every battle has its own detailed page.
You can see things like:
Total damage
Damage dealt by each side
Budget spent
Total participants
Total hits
Start date
End date
Battle duration
Basically, everything you need to get the numbers for a proper battle report without having to manually calculate half of it yourself.
Round Breakdown
There's also an aggregate breakdown for each round.
So instead of only looking at the final result, you can actually dig into how the battle progressed.
Money Spending Report
There's a dedicated page for the battle's spending.
It includes:
Total mercenary contracts
Contract budget
Contract payouts
Total budget
There's also an aggregate list for individual contracts, including:
Won
No bids
Active contracts for ongoing battles
And of course...
Copy Report
You can copy the generated report.
Because, let's be honest, this is one of the things a journalism tool actually needs to do.
For active battles, there's also an Order Tracker, where you can see who issued the orders.
-
"Okay, what else?"
Well...
There's also Market Intelligence.
Because apparently journalists don't get to ignore economics.
Market
The Market section is there to help with economic reporting.
There's a 24-hour Market Overview with:
Updated commodity prices
Recent item orders
MVI listings
And other market information
Then there's the full analytics section.
And predictions.
And market signals.
If you click on an item from the signals section, you can open its own little item dossier and dig deeper into what's going on with it.
There's also production data.
You get the idea.
It's the market stuff.
There's also a Job Market section for anyone who needs that kind of information for their reporting.
Politics
There's a Politics tab too.
It gives you a political overview for each country.
I'm not going to explain every single feature here.
Just go look at it yourself.
Rankings
There's also a Rankings tab.
You know what rankings are.
It's rankings.
Moving on.
Community Wall
And then there's the Community Wall.
This is where you can post things, share information anonymously, spread rumors, stir up some drama, or basically do whatever people normally do on a community board.
As long as you don't violate the guidelines.
And hey...
Look who's posting something.
/user/6a12c5410e0c549a7b8c2953 ✎
They've been one of the testers and have helped with the development of News Desk by giving feedback and suggestions along the way.
Why don't we hear what they have to say?
COOL!!
And don't forget to check /user/6a12c5410e0c549a7b8c2953's articles!
A Few More Tools
News Desk also comes with a few supporting tools to make the whole journalism process a little less painful.
Name Resolver
There's a Name Resolver, which I also made.
Basically, you give it a plain-text name, and it'll resolve it into the proper War Era entity URL.
So instead of manually looking up the entity and messing around with the URL yourself, just give the Resolver the name and let it do the work.
Paste the generated URL into War Era News Editor, and that plain-text name will turn into a clickable entity in your article.
Pretty handy if you're writing an article and need to turn a bunch of names into clickable entities without doing it all manually.
War Era Writer
There's also War Era Writer, made by /user/6a146313f0de273b8b1c27f6 .
If you're writing articles, you probably already know what this one does.
Time Machine
And Time Machine, made by /user/69baf405edc9a346931b27c5 .
Useful for all the time-related stuff on the map you probably already guessed.
I've linked all of them inside News Desk so you don't have to go hunting for them yourself.
Table Maker
There's also Table Maker.
This one is an internal tool that lets you turn things like:
Plain text
Bulleted lists
Numbered lists
Markdown tables
Tab-separated values
Comma-separated values
...into an actual table that can be saved as an image.
So if you're making an article and need a table, you don't have to manually build one from scratch.
Just throw the data in.
Let the machine suffer instead.
"What's with all the Copy Report and Capture Report buttons?"
If you've been paying attention to all the screenshots so far, you might've noticed something.
Copy Report and Capture Report are basically everywhere.
So... what's that?
Well, it's pretty much self-explanatory.
(copy report output)
Copy Report lets you take whatever is currently displayed on your screen and turn it into clean Markdown text that you can easily copy, read, edit, or process somewhere else.
Need to grab a battle report?
Copy Report.
Need to grab a bunch of events from the timeline?
Copy Report.
Need all those article details in a format you can paste somewhere else?
Yep.
Copy Report.
(capture report output)
Then there's Capture Report.
Same idea, except instead of turning the report into Markdown text, it captures the report as a PNG image.
So if you need the data as an image instead of a wall of text, well...
There you go.
Pretty handy when you're making a news article, sharing information with someone, or just want to keep a nice little snapshot of whatever you're looking at.
Basically:
Copy Report = Markdown
Capture Report = PNG
Profile
You can also enter your profile into News Desk.
It doesn't really do anything particularly revolutionary.
But if you're registered and your name appears somewhere in News Desk, it'll be highlighted.
That's about it.
It's a small thing, but I thought it would be nice.
Settings
There's a settings panel too.
You can:
Replace your API key
Toggle textures
Adjust volume
Read information about News Desk
Check information about the author
And yes...
You need to enter your War Era API token.
You'll be asked for it the first time you open News Desk.
You only need to do it once, unless you decide to change it later.
And Yes, There's a Light Theme
For those of you who enjoy looking directly into the sun while using a computer...
There's a light theme.
You can toggle it right next to the clock.
You're welcome.
Well.... that's about it
If you're the kind of person who enjoys digging through War Era's history, writing reports, following battles, watching markets, collecting information, or simply being the local guy who somehow knows what happened three weeks ago...
give it a try. here:
News Desk
hopefully, you'll find it useful.
cheers!
~ /user/69bd432766cd740733175da7