Reforged loading screen size

[NecroVirus]

Looks like we all need to redo our loading screens for our maps, mine looks like crap now. I can't seem to find any information on how to do so tho. My monitor is 1920x1200 and I highly doubt those dimensions are wise to use. Anyone know what needs to be done to adapt our loading screens to reforged?

 

[NecroVirus]

Here is my original warcraft 3 loading screen: Imgur

And here is the squished reforged version of it now: Imgur

What do I resize the image to in order to fix this discrepancy? I'm greatly confused because I'm reading they didn't touch how the loading screens are imported but they are now widescreen..

@Dr Super Good Maybe you could help me? I saw some recent posts from you regarding 4k loading screens but I don't need super high quality, I just don't know how to fix the stretching properly :\

 

[Macadamia]

Hello guys.

All you need to do is use a single texture model like the one I was already using in my map in 2004,
then convert your loading screen at your resolution (I use 1920x1080) with BLPLab, ignoring the power of 2 warnings.

I attached my old working model. Just import it in your map and convert your loading screen to the final name "FullScreen.blp"
Both files should be in the root of your map (so remove all folders after import.)
And voilà !

 

[Dr Super Good]

All you need to do is use a single texture model like the one I was already using in my map in 2004,
then convert your loading screen at your resolution (I use 1920x1080) with BLPLab, ignoring the power of 2 warnings.

Or use GIMP to export it directly as a DXT1 or DXT5 DDS file. Image must have dimensions a multiple of 4.

@Dr Super Good Maybe you could help me? I saw some recent posts from you regarding 4k loading screens but I don't need super high quality, I just don't know how to fix the stretching properly :\

Currently it stretches all loading screens to full screen. There are no aspect ratio settings like in SC2.

Since most people play at 16:9, one should make all loading screens 16:9. This will still look wrong and stretch on different aspect ratios but it will look correct for most people. 1920x1080 is the recommended minimum resolution. If your map is popular you might want to go for higher 16:9 resolutions up to 4k.

 

[Macadamia]

Thanks Dr Super Good, I had not thought about DDS, I believe it offers better compression ?
Sorry still kind of new around here

 

[Dr Super Good]

I believe it offers better compression ?

Yes and no. Technically the JPEG used by BLP1 could offer superior compression ratios. However DDS offers real time supported compression which is useful for unit textures and the like which need to be in video memory all the time.

Main reason to use DDS is that GIMP and other open source image editing software natively supports the format. One does not need to use buggy, poorly written and unmaintained tools like BLPLab.

 

[Macadamia]

Ok I sometimes hesitated, but as BLP Lab allowed me to do conversions so easily, I abused it within the last 3 months of my return.
Thanks for letting me know it could be buggy, from now on I will try to use GiMP to convert my textures to DDS and only keep BLPLab for converting from BLP.

EDIT :
How do I control the amount of compression when exporting to DDS with The GiMP ?
because right now the dds version of my FullScreen is 2.1Mb while the blp version is only 1.2Mb :/

 

[Dr Super Good]

How do I control the amount of compression when exporting to DDS with The GiMP ?

Both DXT1 and DXT5 are supported. The compressions ratios of each are fixed, as specified by Wikipedia. For loading screens DXT1 will offer a better ratio of he two as it stores less alpha information. The advantage of this compression is the texture remains compressed with that ratio while inside video memory which drastically lowers video memory usage as well as memory bandwidth usage, however this does not really matter for loading screens.

Unlike JPEG content, DXT1 and DXT5 may be subject to further compression as they are still compressible. For example a solid colour 4K texture will likely take only a few kilobytes of map space despite the file being several megabytes. This of course depends on image content and the compression used.

 

[Macadamia]

Thank you for the precious information Dr Super Good.
I think, from now on, I will try to use DDS format for buttons and textures.

As for the loading screen unfortunately, I had to revert back as I managed to obtain a 400kb file with a respectable visual quality in BLP whereas the DDS ones I have obtained from PhotoShop or The GiMP never went below 2Mb.

My whole map (with no loading screen) file is only 3mb so it would really make no sense to make its size nearly double just for a hardly perceptible improvement.

But his does not mean I don't understand the benefits of DDS in all other situations.

 

[NecroVirus]

Well for the third day in a row I have completely failed to get my loading screen to work. I'm tired of trying. The amount of time I've wasted on this I could have finished half a boss fight.

$25 over paypall/fb/whatever to the first person who messages me willing to import my loading screen to my map. I do NOT want to make another attempt. I'm livid.

 

[Macadamia]

Send it to me i'll do it for free.
I will need to know the resolution you want though

 

[NecroVirus]

If the whole world was like you Macadamia we'd all be living in heaven.

 

[Macadamia]

You're welcome, happy to see people happy