Maps available

Gandalf Parker · #1 January 8th, 2004, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by licker:
I can't remember the answer to this question so I'll ask it again...

Why are the .tga files so fricking huge? 30mb is a hella big file for a damn map no? I mean not all of us have the broadband

Give us time to level out on the huge TGA files. With Dom1 all maps were few colors and 640x480 or some size like that. Dom2 dropped all the limits and we are having fun with it.

One advantage to the way Im doing things though is that I re-use TGA files and write new .map files which are just text. For instance that same directory has .map files generated daily to give random opponents to each race.

The .map file for MiirunstX will probably be added to the daily re-random file so you only need to download that huge TGA once.
Hmmm I will go add a zip of the Miirunst game now.

Kristoffer O · #2 January 8th, 2004, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by licker:
I can't remember the answer to this question so I'll ask it again...

Why are the .tga files so fricking huge? 30mb is a hella big file for a damn map no? I mean not all of us have the broadband

Hmm, it is probably not too difficult to make a smaller Version. I'll take a look, as I have some spare time.

Gandalf Parker · #3 January 8th, 2004, 11:26 PM

OK now http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion/Dominions2/ has a zipped file added for Miirunst if people have the ability to unzip files.

Kristoffer O · #4 January 8th, 2004, 11:43 PM

The illwinter one is also zipped. 8 meg IIRC.

I have experimented with rescaling. At 1/4 much of the nice information on the map is lost. Also all capital dots disappear entirely (impossible to guess where they should be). For the mapfile to be consistent they must keep their actual position relative the other capitals. Thus they must be rezised so it is possible to see where they are. Then a new white dot may be placed on the smaller map. 1/2 might be better.

PhilD · #5 January 8th, 2004, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by licker:
I can't remember the answer to this question so I'll ask it again...

Why are the .tga files so fricking huge? 30mb is a hella big file for a damn map no? I mean not all of us have the broadband

I read this and thought I'd do something useful for the community for once: load the various .tga files into Gimp, and do some scaling to make them easier to download for those without fast connections.

But it seems that, when doing this, the white dots that mark the centers of provinces tend to not remain white, which will most certainly mess the game up big time. So I'd have to convert said dots to white again, and that means it cannot be done quickly and with no effort...

Maybe the original authors could offer their maps (TGA files) in a variety of resolutions? I mean, the Ringworld map (just a random example) is nice, but with a 5000x1250, the .tga file is about 11Mb. A .5 scaling would reduce this by a factor of 4, and .25 would leave less than a Mb... unfortunately, I just checked, and doing it from the current file doesn't make it look too good, even without the white dot problem.

So, I'll suggest map makers try to provide a "smallish" Version of their files. Most likely you guys are working with some image manipulation software that would let you do it nicely, right?

Gandalf Parker · #6 January 9th, 2004, 02:18 AM

What about dropping the colors. Do the TGA actually use alot of colors between the 256 and the 16 million territory? Thats one of the things I usually recommend for JPG's on peoples web pages. The view doesnt tend to change all that much. You need the 16 mill setting to do alot of fancy things in decent paint programs but usually once the image is done you can pull it back to 256 with a big save in size. I just dont know if TGA makes a difference in that plan

[ January 09, 2004, 00:23: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Tiltowait · #7 January 9th, 2004, 03:27 PM

And here I thought everyone had unlimited bandwidth

I made em big cause when you zoom in to the level of playability they look better in the higher resolutions. Least, I like em better.

Anyways, I would be happy to scale em down a bunch, I have enough mid-creation Versions of them that it should be no problem. I've been using Macromedia Fireworks and Gimp (I'd love to get gimp 2.0, but was slashdoted yesterday).