 November 8, 2007 - 2:52am | I think you should go with a 200x200 standard. It will print better and will be more flexible for online use as well. Too much resolution is always better than not enough. Best to future-proof this a bit. 200x200 (per 5x5 square) is also the standard set by the Dunjinni mapping software, which is probably the most active website for user created gaming art. Granted, spaceships aren't on the 5x5 scale, but it is a familiar resolution size for a familiar unit size. |
November 8, 2007 - 2:56am | Another suggestion to hone the project and have some standards... Have tokens (chits) be produced in the PNG format with transparent backgrounds. This way the format is lossless and can be easily modified for a variety of backgrounds. This is also a standard used by people who would really put these to use in a virtual table-top environment. |
 April 30, 2008 - 10:54am | Someone (I can not remember who because the posting was lost) on the site requested a scale mock-up of my Wolf Enterprises Ship Designs which ended with the Battleship at 2000 pixels for electronic game play. Ok, I enlarged the image to 2000 pixels and it took up my entire computer screen. I am sorry to say that project just aint gonna happen, that dog won't hunt. Feel free to enlarge my posted images to 2000 pixels if you wish but It just was completely un-realistic to continue to pursue as a project as the size comparison chart would not fit on my screen let alone on this site, Sorry, it just won't work at those scales proposed. |
April 30, 2008 - 4:29pm | It was me... unfortunately, going back and redoing the post would be time consuming, especially if you're not onboard. My purpose is to expand the usefulness of the "chits" to "virtual chits" usable in Virtual Table Top programs. But, to make some points of clarification: 1) If people want to print out an image, you need at least 200 dpi to get a decent image (preferably 300 dpi.) So, chits produced at 200 dpi just don't print very well if you want to go larger than 1 inch. Additionally, a full color image printed at 1 inch generally doesn't look that good anyway, which is why traditional chits for printing at that size are usually just black and white. 2) Blowing a 200 pixel image to 2000 pixels would look horrible. If you don't want to do it, that's totally fine. But doing that sort of enlargement, post rendering, isn't realistic. A 200 to 400 pixel enlargement would look bad. 3) I'm not sure I understand why an image bigger than your screen is a problem unless you're hitting some kind of technical wall that your computer can't handle (which is probably unlikely if you computer is less than 10 years old.) The images would also "fit on this site" just fine unless the file upload is a lot smaller than I think it is. The whole point of showing scale through resolution is that when you use a Virtual Table Top, you can easily zoom in and zoom out on an image. So using "chits" that have scale is very doable and useful. Take a look at this video of Maptool (a free virtual table-top program) in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giLeonpfwKE Now, imagine for a moment that the background is some kind of star map. And on the map are all kinds of ships (like the Elf that's moving around on the screen.) So, when you zoom out, you can see a 2000 pixel ship that fits neatly on the screen... or you could zoom in, and half the ship can fill the screen. You can get as close to or far away from the action as you need. And yes, 2000 pixels a little high, probably twice what's necessary to get the effect I'm getting at, but producing a high-res base image future-proofs the usefulness of the image. As for the size of the file... I just played around with a 2000x1000 image, and as a PNG with a transparent background it's only 1 meg. That's really not all that big. Most digital cameras these days take pictures much larger than that. Take at look at this ship rendered for VTT use: http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=10342&PN=1 The large PNG version is 1280x958 and is 677k (it's in the zip file at the end of the post.) Based on the scale I proposed, that would be a "large ship" (around 260 meters)... or roughly 5 Assault scouts end to end. But it would be smaller than a base "Battleship" (400 meters.) |
April 30, 2008 - 6:00pm | It was me... unfortunately, going back and redoing the post would be time consuming, especially if you're not onboard. My purpose is to expand the usefulness of the "chits" to "virtual chits" usable in Virtual Table Top programs. But, to make some points of clarification: 1) If people want to print out an image, you need at least 200 dpi to get a decent image (preferably 300 dpi.) So, chits produced at 200 dpi just don't print very well if you want to go larger than 1 inch. Additionally, a full color image printed at 1 inch generally doesn't look that good anyway, which is why traditional chits for printing at that size are usually just black and white. 2) Blowing a 200 pixel image to 2000 pixels would look horrible. If you don't want to do it, that's totally fine. But doing that sort of enlargement, post rendering, isn't realistic. A 200 to 400 pixel enlargement would look bad. 3) I'm not sure I understand why an image bigger than your screen is a problem unless you're hitting some kind of technical wall that your computer can't handle (which is probably unlikely if you computer is less than 10 years old.) The images would also "fit on this site" just fine unless the file upload is a lot smaller than I think it is. The whole point of showing scale through resolution is that when you use a Virtual Table Top, you can easily zoom in and zoom out on an image. So using "chits" that have scale is very doable and useful. Take a look at this video of Maptool (a free virtual table-top program) in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giLeonpfwKE Now, imagine for a moment that the background is some kind of star map. And on the map are all kinds of ships (like the Elf that's moving around on the screen.) So, when you zoom out, you can see a 2000 pixel ship that fits neatly on the screen... or you could zoom in, and half the ship can fill the screen. You can get as close to or far away from the action as you need. And yes, 2000 pixels a little high, probably twice what's necessary to get the effect I'm getting at, but producing a high-res base image future-proofs the usefulness of the image. As for the size of the file... I just played around with a 2000x1000 image, and as a PNG with a transparent background it's only 1 meg. That's really not all that big. Most digital cameras these days take pictures much larger than that. Take at look at this ship rendered for VTT use: http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=10342&PN=1 The large PNG version is 1280x958 and is 677k (it's in the zip file at the end of the post.) Based on the scale I proposed, that would be a "large ship" (around 260 meters)... or roughly 5 Assault scouts end to end. But it would be smaller than a base "Battleship" (400 meters.) Ok, I understood what you meant about rescaling, I did not attempt to rescale a 200 pixel image to 2000 pixels. The software stock I am using is extremely high res so that is why I am having difficulty dropping them below 200 pixels. The problem isn't resolution at 2000 pixels you can see the seems of the metal plates (lol) the only problem is that 2000 pixels is massive. My battleship which is rendered at 100% is 8 inches long and will expand easily to 2000 pixels with no distortion....however, it will not fit the screen. Here's the carrier at 2000 pixels (I sincerely hope this doesnot mess with the site graphics) Its at a lower resolution because the site will not allow uploads larger than 1.67mbs  |
April 30, 2008 - 6:03pm | Just as I suspected, the site automatically rescaled the image in order to fit on the site format. This thing was huge and went way beyond my viewable computer screen. So what you see here is well under 1400 pixels. Thus the problem. |
 May 1, 2008 - 7:49am | A couple quick comments: 1) You may want to move this dicussion to a fourm topic in this project instead of comments on the main page  .2) AZ, you don't have to post the images directly into the comments. Just upload them to the downloads section and post a link or reference them. Then we can go grab them and look at them in their full glory. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
May 1, 2008 - 5:37pm | No problem, just replying to the post made and showing and illustration of the mess created by a 2000 pixel image. I don't know if I would want to clog up the download section with that large of an image either. I tried to go edit the post and remove the image but its stuck. If Bill would like to pull it, I don't have a problem with that. |
May 1, 2008 - 9:14pm | If Bill would like to pull it, I don't have a problem with that. Woot's the manager of this project so he can probably clean all of this up... and when some standard is set, then it could be posted. I would suggets that traditional chits be mono-chromatic at 200x200 (so a 1x1 chit will print cleanly.) And "virtual chits", "tokens", "virtual minis", or whatever you want to call them could be produced at 50 pixels per 10 meters of scale. That puts basic fighter tokens at 100 pixels long, the assault scout at 250, and the largest ship (the Battleship) at 2000. |
