Map Size?

[Griogre]

I'm new to modules, so I'm trying to make sure I understand some things about map size. Any comments would be welcomed.

I made a small FG module from an electronic D&D module I owned. My question is about the map. I cropped the map and converted it to a png file. I ended up with a map 613x445 pixels that was 520KB. I have a dial up player, so I decided to make the file size smaller, so I changed the number of colors from 256 to 16 but kept the 613x445 pixels. This brought the file size down from 520KB to 81KB.

Ok, my understanding is the 613x445 pixels effects the size of the image inside the players video card and the 81KB effects the players bandwidth. Am I missing anything?

Any thoughts on what a good size in pixels for a map is?

[richvalle]

Well, depending on the map, going from 256 colors to 16 will effect how good the map looks. If it is black and white, you obviously won't lose anything.

You might want to see what the file size is if you make the map a .jpg. I think the file size is generally less but you will lose more quaility as you zoom down with a .jpg vs a .png.

The devs are testing map sizes that are 4000 x something. I know one person has had problems with maps > 3000 but anything smaller should be good.

rv

[Griogre]

Thanks for your input, the map was mostly tan and brown so the color reduction had a tiny difference, but not enough to bother me. I found it funny that after I did the color reduction, I tried shapening the image and gained back most of the files size.

That's good to know about the jpegs, I was trying to stay away from them because they are lossy, while the pngs aren't, but if I had a map scaled to my tokens, then using a jpg makes sense.

[Cypher]

I would also suggest going .jpg instead of .png.

Another thing to consider is to break your maps up. Instead of doing a map of an entire level, and then masking it, I'll break the map into several images of the rooms. This allows a larger image of a room to use as a battlemap.

[DarkStar]

As far as you don't intend to have transparency on that map (odd idea?) I'd also suggest going for JPG. Just don't save it under MS Paint, use IrfanView, GIMP, whatever - it will allow you to compress the images, by choosing the image quality you want to have (with preview before you save). I prepare my maps with a program like Dundjinni, saving them in BMP format, to be able to choose the pixels in a single map square, then open it up in IrfanView and save as JPG, usually with 50% quality, which gives me a fine size.

[deckyon]

There is one more thing you can do. It will rely on your players honor, but you can create a self-extracting zip file and upload it to a website for download ahead of time. I should have done this when I made some changes to my campaign, as it took some of the people 10 minutes to log into my game the first time, but they also had to receive a custom ruleset, which took up about 7 megs. Not the best solution, but a solution nonetheless.