Blurry loading screen.

[Spartipilo]

Hi! I made this loading screen (Using PowerPoint xD) for a map I'm making.

I read around that its size had to be changed to 512x512, converted to BLP, imported, and then Warcraft automatically adjusts it to the screen size, but that way the text and images gets reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally blurry.

File Image

Blurry Loading Screen

HD Loading Screen

How can I preserve in the 'Loading Screen' the quality picture has in the IMG file? (I know that the quality is reduced a bit)

(BTW I know the picture seems a bit (a lot) noobish, i'll try to make a better one later)

Warcraft 3 default loading screens, and some custom (like Dota) seems REALLY great, beautiful and detailed. I'd like mine to see that good =)

Also (I know it's not in the title, but it concers me) How do I set an Image for the map when it's created. I don't want it to show the minimap, nor a big "?" Sign.

 

[Adiktuz]

Post a screenie of it while being used as a loading screen too... ^_^

import the image as war3mapPreview.tga

 

[Saif]

If you want the text to be shown, HD Loading Screens could take around 20 minutes but if youre an expert on it probably 10 minutes, you must split the image to 4 parts. Usually it may eat up a lot of space which is equivalent to 1-2 MB of your map. I remember reading it somewhere.

 

[Adiktuz]

or just increase the resolution of the single image load screen...

 

[Spartipilo]

Mmm...

@Adiktus: Done. Uploaded the Blurry screen.
@ Saif: I have no idea on how to do that, i'm not expert at all xD
@Adiktus: ¿Increase the resolution of the single image load screen?... What does that mean? How do I do that?

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I searched for another Tutorial:
THIS tutorial is for creating a Low Definition loading screen, with not many details.
THIS tutorial explains some ways to make a loading screen, one of them is the High Definition (same used in DotA), and works (Uploaded the picture in the main post).

The thing is that the HD way requires 4 pictures, each picture size is about 500-800. Is there a way to compress these files to have a lower size? Lets say... 250, or 300 each?

 

[Adiktuz]

It means redoing the loading screen using a larger/better setting...

as for the 4 pic method, well you can try to find image compressors, I believe there are some out there which efficiently reduces size without sacrificing quality...

 

[Spartipilo]

I was able to reduce the total size from around 2.100kb to 1,690kb =/ But if I mess with the colors (Grayscale, 256, etc) doesn't work =/ Does a WC3 Fatal Error. The most I was able to do was use RLE Compression, wich doesn't help very much...

Another option is using another background image with less colors and stuff leaving the top corners as they are

 

[Shadow Daemon]

Why would you save your texture as TGA? Yeah, it preserves quality of the original, but too weighty. I'd better use that map space for the other imports.

I managed to get ~325 KB loading screen (4 textures and 1 model) with decent quality. What I've done:

1. Proportionally resized original image to 1028x768.
2. Cropped 4 pixels to standardize image size (1024x768).
3. Divided image into 4 pieces (two 512x512 and the other two 512x256).
4. Converted all pieces to BLP.
5. Imported & tested in game.

I used IrfanView to do steps 1-2-3 and BLP Laboratory for step 4.

 

[Spartipilo]

oooooooooh.. the tutorial said that the LoadingScreen2.mdx used TGA and there was no need to turning it to BLP. I knew BLP had a smaller size, but though it wouldn't work

Thanks Shadow. Your image looks great!

 

[Adiktuz]

BLP is the main image file of wc3 so its just natural that it would work... ^_^