Imperium One - Off to a Flying Start

[Therlun]

somehow i dont understand your problem with the pictures...
you wrote you did need several hours just to recrop them?

i never saw resizing and cutting screenies as such an issue.

what do you use for taking screenshots, and working with them?

[Maniac Marshall]

I use good old MS Paint. Part of the problem with Imp 7 is that I "glued" several of those pictures togeather after croping them using Photo Studio, which took me considrable ammounts of time while trying to get them to fit right. You might have noticed some of the ones with the blue strips. Those were the ones. I was TRYING to avoid those blue strips

I did that because when we were at our previous forum, (we moved here AFTER I did the picture editing) there was a 20 picture+smile limit per post, and I was trying to avoid having a 25 reply report.

The only way I know to do pictures is this: Do a print screen and save while playing. After the game is done, reopen all those pictures and cut out the dosbox area, then paste it back to paint and resave. Upload all those screenshots to a host sever, then paste in all the links into the report.

Doing the pics for Imp 1 wasn't a big problem. There were only 38, and it only took like an hour or so. Probably less than an hour even. But for Imp 7 there were like 8 times that many pictures, and combined with the "glueing" togeather using a program I'd never used before, it took, at a guess, 8-10 hours.

If there is an easier way to do pictures, I'd love to know what it is. I'm pretty much just a hack when it comes to this sort of thing.

-Maniac

[Therlun]

i guess it was only the missing experience then... and perhaps the wrong program.

i would recommend you use another image tool first.
photo studio made a bad impression on me when i downloaded and tried it, and while your ms paint might be better then mine (i use win98 [i dont need dosbox for moo1 ] ) it still is a terrible program.

i can recommend pixia (freeware):
http://www.foto-freeware.de/pixia.php
(the site is in german, but the program is dual language)

recroping and copying and pasting imageparts should be easy (and fast!) when you get the hang of it.

-taking screenshots is:
press print key ingame, alt-tab, select "file->open from clipboard" in pixia. save image. (like you did before i guess)

-recrop is: image->make resized duplicate. ->save the duplicate

-and for cutting: take a selection (10th button from the right), press ctrl+c, activate the picture you want it in, press ctrl-v.
move it where you want it, resize the "cut" if you want with the boxes in the corners.
right click on it and select "paste". -> save the image.

-if you want only a small part of an image to be a new image the order is "trimming".(selection and right click)

i hope i did not insult you by expalaining obvious things.
i know how lost i was when i first tried to work with images....

[Maniac Marshall]

So there is something easier than streaching the little "rubber band" thingy arround the part of the immage that you want to keep that you have to do for paint every time? Thats a big part of what takes me so long.

I think annother thing with Imp 7 was all the hunting through 300+ immages to find the next one to crop .

I find that on my comp hitting the windows button = superior to ctrl+F10, alt+tab or ctr+alt+del (which on 98 isn't an option anyway) to get out of dosbox as I never get the can't use keyboard commands in dosbox problem, which I sometimes do get with the other commands.

I'll look into that program later. Thanks.

-Maniac

[Factoid]

Hi Maniac,

So there is something easier than streaching the little "rubber band" thingy arround the part of the immage that you want to keep that you have to do for paint every time? Thats a big part of what takes me so long.

I think annother thing with Imp 7 was all the hunting through 300+ immages to find the next one to crop .

I find that on my comp hitting the windows button = superior to ctrl+F10, alt+tab or ctr+alt+del (which on 98 isn't an option anyway) to get out of dosbox as I never get the can't use keyboard commands in dosbox problem, which I sometimes do get with the other commands.

I'll look into that program later. Thanks.

-Maniac

The idea of all the cropping you did for Imp7 was what really made me go .

For me, I use the native-mode screenshots in DOSBox. These are 8 bpp (good) 320 x 200 (bad) PNGs (good). DOSBox 0.62 has a keyboard remapper so you can shift the screenshot key from Ctrl-F5 (huh?) to PrtScn or anywhere else you like.

I take many many more screenshots than I ever intend to use. This reached absurd heights for Imperium 4 where I took 1300 screenshots (and used 20). For Imperium 7 I took about 100 screenshots and used about 15. One use of the excess screenshots is to help date screenshots I am going to use.

The first thing I do is shift all the screenshots for a game into a separate directory, and take a backup copy of that directory. Then I look through the screenies (using IrfanView, possibly enlarging to look at details) and thin them out to a sane number (maybe 30 or 40 at most).

Only now do I resize 320 x 200 to 640 x 400. IrfanView has an excellent resize mode - virtually everything can be done by keypresses avoiding tiring RSI-intensive repetitive mouse movement for each screenie (I find repetitive keystrokes far less troubling, YMMV). Be sure to use resize mode rather than resample mode, Moo1 DOSBox screenies look far better AND are smaller.

I now decide which screenies make the final cut, in conjunction with writing the report. Screenies are renamed so I can find them without looking at them all. I still have the originals so more screenies can be added at any time if I change my mind.

I have used MS Pain(t) after this to add text or date captions so I also am very keen to look at Pixia. ANYTHING must be better!

The result is 640 x 400 8 bpp PNGs that look as crisp as native Moo1 graphics, they are also less than half the size of your Imp7 screenies, so faster to download (and upload).

I'm not at all saying my way is any sort of "best" way, I think it is less harrowing than what you went through for Imp7.

Cheers,
Factoid.

PS - Tried Pixia - not a good fit for me. I hate that it turns 8 bpp screenies into 24 bpp (no choice??), and also resamples when resizing, perfectly reasonable for most images but not what I want in this case. Pixia is clearly a better paint program than MS Paint but maybe not a better Moo1 screenshot manipulation program. YMMV.

-F.

[Therlun]

the problem is finding a good image program that is free...
the best free programm is probably gimp, but its also very complex.
i posted pixia because it is much more easy to use.

gimp is a semi-professionel image program converted from linux.
it will be able to do ANYTHING you want, if you know HOW to do it...
i have litte experience with gimp, since i use an older version of paint shop pro for my images, which fits perfectly to my needs and skills right now.
for gimp you need two files (gtk2 and gimp for windows). get them here:
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html


i often do little changes to my images like:
guardian blasting my scout(i'm still amateur :P ):


a moo1 map:


or a heavily modiefied master of magic map:

[here is an original mom map: Link ]

what is your problem with 24 bpp images?

[Factoid]

Hi Therlun,

what is your problem with 24 bpp images?

Uploading and downloading them with my sucky 56k modem.

Also I don't like the fuzzing, rather prefer the crisp edges matching the original. It is a matter of taste, and very much my problem, not yours. My complaint with Pixia is mainly philisophical, I don't like programs that make gratuitous changes (like 8 to 24 bpp). Gimp is likely to be much more to my liking but Pxia was certainly worth trying, thanks for the recommendations.

Your MoM map is a beauty, very nice indeed!

Cheers,
Factoid.