[Solved] Loading screen size

[Chaosy]

hello.
I just manged to convert an image to a loading screen. However different sources tell me different things.

@one random thread
re-size to 512x512

@tutorial http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/general-mapping-tutorials-278/simple-loading-screen-139768/
"800x600 or 1024x768"

which one is correct?

I used 512x512 and it worked but since the re-size the quality is horrible. If I re-size to 1024x768 that would be much better

 

[deathismyfriend]

It depends what your pc is set to for loading but I would go with 1024 x 768.

 

[Dr Super Good]

To prevent aspect ratio distortion you should add bars to the side of the image. Also the actual image needs to be a power of 2, not "800x600 or 1024x768" which might come in handy during its creation. BLP in WC3 only supports images that are powers of 2 which is why you need to resize. This means 512*512 or 1024*1024 is valid but 800x600 or 1024x768 is not valid for a WC3 blp file.

WC3 will stretch the loading screen to the full size of the display if I recall correctly. Since most displays are wide screens these days you should choose the appropriate ratio of image, inserting boarders as required to prevent distortion.

512*512 will result in quite a blury loading screen due to the lack of high frequency content caused by interpolation. You should be able to use 1024*1024 with it still working (one would expect) which will result in a considerably less blury loading screen at a cost of 4 times the storage requirements.

If your loading screen uses a very small selection of colours, consider using pallet compression for smaller results than conventional JPEG compression. Obviously if the artwork uses a large number of colours you will have to use JPEG compression.

If using a 512*512 image use a reasonably low value of JPEG compression (10-15 at most) since artefacts will be highly visible otherwise. If using a 1024*1024 image then you can afford to raise compression (25% or more) as artefacts will be less noticeable. This allows you to trade higher resolution with lower 8*8 pixel quality, which may or may not result in images that look better at minimal size increase.

 

[PurgeandFire]

@Chaosy: btw, the tutorial later tells you to resize it to 512. It just recommended the size of the initial loading screen image to use.

I would use 512x512 for most maps. 1024x512 if you can afford it. 1024x1024 if you care that much about the loading screen, or if you have that much space in your map (or if it's single player... but still consider that it takes up a heap of file size).

 

[Chaosy]

right, I will just keep it as it is then.

thanks everyone. rep +