Technical Difficulties

[Griselda]

FTP is back up! We are still having trouble with a few things:

1. The forum email feature is not working. So, you can't subscribe to topics at the moment, or wait for email to tell you that you have a private message.
2. The user upload feature is not working. However, you can now post attachments directly to you forum post.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll edit this thread if anything changes.
-Griselda


Original message follows-
I just wanted you to know that our upload server is operational and available for members to use.

Information and Guidelines for Use

Upload server

Enjoy!

-Griselda

[KingOfPain]

I am glad many of you are taking advantage of the RB upload server to compliment your game reports with images. Now that Epic1 is over I am able to take a look at the usage status to see how we can improve the server to, well, serve us better, and to gauge what amount of storage we will need so that we need not worry about having to delete files later on.

First thing I did was to look at the total storage space used for the Epic1 reports and then divided it by the number of users (only those who used the storage for Epic1 reports). The average storage used came close to 2MB per user. This does not look good at all since, with the current storage limit, you would have to start deleting files after 5 game reports. Even if I would raise the storage space to 100MB per user, it would only be enough storage for about 50 game reports. I am guessing fewer than 50 because as you improve and gain more knowledge of the game you would probably use more images to illustrate points of interest.

There are two solutions to our dilemma. The first solution requires that we all use some self-constrain and lower the size of our image files. It is not my intention to hinder anyone in having fun playing and writing up the games. I want you to use as many images as you feel necessary to illustrate and compliment your write-ups. However, there are a few things we can do to lower file size and make our storage last much longer.

Before I go into some examples how to cut down on file size, I want to clear up a misconception that after you have done a little cropping and re-save with compression you would naturally end up with a smaller file. The screen I grabbed and saved by CiV4 in jpg format was 170KB, however, opening this file and saving it in Photoshop with a compression of 7 (range of 0 -12, medium quality) came in at 215KB. Civ4 might be using a higher compression than the setting you normally use with your graphic program. If you will not be editing the image at all, it might be better to use the original save. Users having files near 300KB and over should take a closer look at this, and experiment!

Different software will compress files differently, both in savings and quality. Experiment with your software at various settings; compare the saving in file size and quality to the original. Spend 15 minutes or so to find out what your software does. The exercise can be as simple as using a random image file and re-saving it after each simple edit – as I will show below.

Since we are going to compare edited image, I will use the re-saved file for comparison.

All tests, unless specified otherwise is saved at medium (7 of a range from 0 to 13. 0 being the highest compression and lowest quality).

Note: Saving at Photoshop’s compression 7 is better quality than necessary for most web applications. Most of the images on the RB sites use lower quality setting.

Original file size = 215KB
Saved at compression setting 1 = 94KB = 43%
Saved at compression setting 3 = 148KB = 68%
A saving of 57% to 32% by using higher compression

Scaled 90% = 171KB = 79%
Scaled 80% = 147KB = 68%
A saving of 32% - 21% by scaling image down

Bottom UI cropped = 175KB = 81%
A saving of 19% by cropping out the bottom user interface

Bottom UI cropped, Cropped to 90% on the horizontal (920 pixels) = 159KB = 74%
Bottom UI cropped, Cropped to 90% on the horizontal, Scaled to 90% = 129KB = 60%
Bottom UI cropped, Cropped to 90% on the horizontal (920 pixels), Scaled to 80% = 112KB = 52%
Bottom UI cropped, Cropped to 90% on the horizontal (920 pixels), Scaled to 80% Compression 5 = 95KB = 44%
Bottom UI cropped, Cropped to 90% on the horizontal (920 pixels), Scaled to 80% Compression 3 = 72KB = 33%
A saving of up to 67% without notable image degradation or loss of game info just by using a couple of simple edits.

You don’t have to understand the number if you only remember the three simple things you can do to reduce file size dramatically:
Scaling – Scale the images down
Cropping - crop out all non essential areas such as the UI when it’s not showing any useful info – focus on what you want to show.
Compress – Use an image and save it under various compression setting. Decide on a compression setting that is the best compromise on image quality vs savings.

Try to sharpen the image slightly before saving.

As to which image below is acceptable for your purpose I will leave it up to you, but, realize that it will be all too painful when you have to delete images from previous write-ups.

Image sample - no sharpen tool applied



I hope you find this short article helpful. Feel free to comment, or ask questions if I am unclear on something.

Meanwhile, I will work on getting us more storage

KoP

[Kylearan]

Hi,

first, thanks for making web space for pictures available! I don't need it, but I've read a lot of reports using it which otherwise would be without pictures, so as a reader, I appreciate this a lot.

Regarding your article, I'd like to add that I usually resize my screenshots, even if I only use parts of them, to 75% of their original size. This is still enough to read the text, and not only saves space, but also prevents the reader from having to scroll horizontally on lower screen resolutions. The latter had been a problem for several reports.

However, if you resize your screenshots to 75%, you can no longer compress them with compression level 3 or below in most cases, as the text then becomes unreadable. Most of the time, compression level 5 is still enough though, and the overall result is that my pictures are between 40kb and 120kb in size.

What I haven't looked into yet is the sharpen tool, maybe that will help me using even lower compression levels. Thanks for mentioning it!

-Kylearan

[LKendter]

Another thought is to avoid repetitive pictures. Some of the reports had multiple pictures on the same basic thing. After seeing the 5th picture in a row of fighting a barb animal I find myself ignoring pictures for that user. IMHO the picture should try to show things such as location of your second city and why, a crazy 40 units stack of doom, or other somewhat unique events.


I will repeat my comment about cropping: if your pictures are so wide that the user has to scroll you aren't just eating up a ton of space, you make the report unreadable. There were so many reports to read, that I was skipping reports where the picture widths were to wide for the screen.

[playshogi]

I've completed Adventure 2 and it certainly was challenging. But the real hard part is writing the report so I want to know if it is OK to start uploading my screenshots now. I'm assuming no one can find them until I give the location, but I'm not sure about that. So, .... is it OK?

[Griselda]

I'd recommend that you use some sort of code to your screenshot names. So, instead of "adventure2pic1" you might choose another naming system that will make sense to you but be harder to guess. The upload script will add your name to the screenshot name, so you don't need to worry about putting that there.

In Civ3 Epics, players with their own domains would notice people "snooping" around their sites trying to guess the URL of their report to read it early, for example. That was easily solved when players used a more unpredictable naming strategy.

[Soul oWAR]

Could I use this for my rb11 sucession game?

[Griselda]

Civfanatics has its own upload system for files for their forums. Just scroll to the bottom of the Civfanatics forum page when you're logged in, hit "upload file", and you're all set.

[Griselda]

Uploading is temporarily down while we look into database problems. Previously uploaded screenshots will still show up.