The Worlds of Kaomaris

A duel light between me and Vortan (i want my revenge!).

And if Vortan agrees i'd like to give my new Souther_Westeros map a try out before the big Westeros x-game kicks off later this week.

Thanks in advance!

As I think I said - any map will do and as this could be my only chance to play on your invite only map its fine.

Here ref... here boy... come on... there's a good ref

OK, I'm on it. Does the Feudal map sound good to both of you?

GM Han

Hi,

The South Westeros map please Hannibal.

Thanks!

Or did Sal mean that he'd like it to be on a new Southern-Westeros map to try it out? Is it up there for me to generate a game from?

GM Han

PS: George R.R. Martin. Wow. My top favourite, number #1. Just ahead of Dylan, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Bryson, Fry and Hamilton. GRRM rules! Roll on August.

Cross-posted a minute apart. I'd be delighted to GM anything that involves Westeros. I'll go look in map-central.

GM Han

Oh my! How are we supposed to play on that little red cross I cant even make out the provinces

What on earth is going on - Are we sure the shutdown didn't hurt anything?

Nah, it's an X-Game. You don't know were the provinces are in respect to each other, but with the improved functionality of the SAOF you can be sure of finding neighbours for your attacks. Blind Duel: The ultimate challenge!

(For new members, there was actually an X-Game like this a while ago. It didn't work very well...)


korexus.

I've found the problem,

IT'S ALL SAL'S FAULT!

The map file is *huge* for this game, far more than our poor buffer can cope with! By reducing the dimensions to 50% in each direction, I made it small enough to load (though still 10 times bigger than the other maps) but of course, doing that knocked out all the ini data.

Sal, what the hell kind of programme did you use to draw this map?!!


Chris.

Update:

I've edited the ini so that the map will display properly, but I'm not thrilled about having a quarter megabyte of our bandwidth disappear every time someone views the map...


Chris.

The map is bigger for sure (1100x850 pixels) and the file size is twice as big as most maps (2.7mb) but 10 times?

Anyway, i don't want to ruin the site so just delete the map.

By the way i don't understand why we don't have maps in jpg or better yet png format? Then the map would only be 600kb.

Actually i don't really understand the problem. The Business District map is even bigger (in both dimensions and file size) and that map works just fine.

We do store them in png form, I converted yours before uploading it. Business district is one of the biggest in the Lobby at 43kb, yours is 248kb (down from 710kb). It must be possible to reduce this. What programme did you use to make the map?

Chris.

paint shop pro 11.

Ugh! What's wrong with paint?

By a combination of removing the border and yelling at the server, I have managed to get the map to display at full size. The file size is still big (210kb) but displays pretty much as Sal intended, I think.

In order to do this I had to up the server's maximum file buffer (which is at 8MB as standard) I'm not entirely sure what the long term effects of this will be, but if our web host yells at me I may have to shrink the map again in a hurry!

Sal, if you could manage to make the map in a more bandwidth friendly style (our current size range is 18 to 88kb with most being around 30kb) that would make life much easier.

Maybe we need a new map making tutorial, anyone got time on their hands?


Chris.

No idea, you will have to ask Bill.

Funny thing, i was trying to see if paint saves a smaller file. But strangely enough the Business District map when saved in paint became 66kb (from 43kb) and when saved in PSP it became 26kb.

Yeah i noticed that taking the border off drops the size from 589 to 196.

I think i can shrink the map a bit...i'll give it a go.

Switching a file between programmes will always make the fil size bigger. The .png algorithm is the same regardless, but eah programme stores some aditional information about how the file was created etc. If you transfer between programmes, you end up saving multiple versions of this overhead, making the file bigger. That's one of the reasons I can't shrink the map just by copy/pasting it into paint.

The main reason the map is probably so big is the intricacy. Png format is great because it stores information about how much of a colour is in a given place (rather than bmp which stores every pixel seperately). The scroll work on the border and the curly fonts don't compress well. Gif would probably smaller as that saves the image as a set of fractals (which can have several colours as long as they're in a repeating pattern) however, editors change the image when saving in .gif format in order to create these patterns, so the fill option doesn't work too well with .gif images.

Overall the main advantage of paint is that it's too simplistic to tempt you into doing anything which is going to take up loads of space!


Here endeth the lesson.


Chris.

Saladin wrote:Yeah i noticed that taking the border off drops the size from 589 to 196.

I think i can shrink the map a bit...i'll give it a go.

Let me know how much you've shrunk it by. If it's just a squash to fit method, I can update the database instantly without need for another ini file.

Chris.