Dynamically resizing desktops

[phantomwhale]

Gutted - it looks like there are no dynamically resizeable frames for FGII ?

Was hoping to use the background from the pages of the Deadlands books as the FGII extension background, but just moved it onto my larger screen and can see the tiling in effect !!!

More of a sulk than a question (it looked SO good !) but is there anyway of making this work ? Or any plans to support resizeable backgrounds going forward ?

Ben

[StuartW]

Frames *are* generally resizeable, but not all of them. You need to specify how you want the tiling to work: the is some information on this in the ruleset development guide section on resources (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/modguide/resources.xcp).

[phantomwhale]

Yeah, probably not explained that so well. I meant it's a shame to not be able to provide a single image for a desktop background and have it stretched to meet the dynamic size of the overall window.

The deadlands background is fairly intricate, with the US map faintly over most of it, so finding a point to add some dynamic tiling will be pretty hard for my limited photoshop powers :(

[tdewitt274]

I'm using the wrong term, but use it as the central image (like the SmiteWorks dragon) and then have a generic background. This will automatically center. If you have it too big for smaller screens, it should still work because most images use the center as the primary focal point.

[StuartW]

I think the term is 'decal', but that is exactly what I'd suggest too. Back to the original post, it would be good to know if SmiteWorks had any plans to support stretched frames, rather than just tiled ones.

Stuart

[Bidmaron]

I can't visualize what you guys are wanting. Stretching graphics is generally very difficult to get looking nice (filling in missing resolution is something even the heavy hitters like Photoshop only do marginally well if at all, based on the image).

[phantomwhale]

A picture paints a thousand words, I guess.

Attached is the background found on all pages of the Deadlands rulebook.

Whilst not all images are suitable for down and up scaling, most images I've used for Windows desktop backgrounds seem to scale fairly well, especially when kept in aspect. Indeed, the attached copy was downscaled in MSPaint and looks fine.

That said, I understand the point about rescaling images, and imagine that is why Smiteworks went with the quite sophisticated tiling approach instead. But in my case, the image has a defined border, and getting anything more or less just won't look half as good. Whereas I imagine this image, rescaled to any reasonable screensize, would look much better.

I've toyed with various sized "decal" versions of it, but I wasn't very happy with it (it looked like an amateur Windows 95 wallpaper at too high resolutions ! Not as bad on very small resolutions) and so far prefer just keeping the basic Savage Worlds background with a "Deadlands" logo decal in the centre. Which is fine, but not as satisfying as the total background change I was envisioning.

[Bidmaron]

So, what you want fg2 to do is take that high res image and cram it down into the size of your window? If I understand what you are saying about making your own decal version, I'd suggest that if you can't get a decent-looking decal with the horsepower of photoshop or gimp or something, it's probably not reasonable to expect fg2 to dynamically downsize the image with any better success. Then you have the issue of how you handle window sizes that aren't aspect-proportional to the original -- do you want it clipped or distorted? What's to keep you from using an imagecontrol in a window that does auto-scale to the window and then just adding your controls over the top of this imagecontrol? I think that would work. You'd have to write an extension for whichever window(s) you want to do that with. I haven't tried this, but I can't think of why it wouldn't work.

[phantomwhale]

Bidmaron - I think you misunderstand my request ?

I want this for the overall background - not any window background (although appreciate these are handed in the same way, so adding the functionality to just one and not the other would be unlikely).

The problem with the decal approach has not been getting a decal that looks good, it's that the nature of the image means that if you had it floating in the middle of the screen, with a plain border surrounding it (as you would get on high resolution moinitors) it would look very poor. In fact, it would look a bit like another desktop window, so probably be more confusing - suspect the same would go for any rectangular decal.

On a smaller resolution it would not be so bad, but the "bordering" elements of the image would be lost, leaving it a little vague as a backdrop.

There is no great feat of graphical processing going on with this image - like I say the attached version was done with very primitive scaling tools (no photoshop workhorse here !) and it looks fine. It's simply an image that would not be appropriate for the desktop background in any other form that fully stretched / shrunk to meet the edges.

So whilst this is something FGII cannot do, it means it's simply an image I shouldn't use for my extension. Which is a restriction on me, hence I was interested to see if it's an insurmountable one (looking a future FGII versions) or not.

[Bidmaron]

Why not put it in an oval border using a graphics program? Then it wouldn't be confused as a window and I think it'd make a nice decal.

[Bidmaron]

Why not put it in an oval border using a graphics program? Then it wouldn't be confused as a window and I think it'd make a nice decal.

[Griogre]

I think Bidmaron's idea is a good one. You can also make your decal "too large" so its clipped so more of it appears on larger resolutions. You can see how in 800x600 the guys axe and boot is clipped but show up in a bigger resolution.
Shaintar 8x6:
https://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m222/Griogre/Shaintar8x6.png

Shaintar 8x6+
https://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m222/Griogre/Shaintar8x6Plus.png

[phantomwhale]

Yeah, that's the sort of approach I thought I'd try.

The oval decal idea does look quite good in photoshop (thanks for the suggestion, Bidmaron ) ! Not totally decided if I'll go with that or just a logo yet.

In practice, I can't add the oversized decal to the existing Savage Worlds background though. Not sure if I've hit some theoretical limit or undocumented problem here - in any case there is still an open question in a separate thread : https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13938

[Griogre]

It's been long time since I messed with this but I'd double check your bottom rectangle co-ordinates, since it looks like you are in the transparency, then check the bottom middle for overlap.