Your thoughts on high res Maps & Tokens?

[Tailz Silver Paws]

Hello folks. I have a question for my fellow content designers. I've been approached by a few people asking for higher res, greater detail, images for maps and tokens. So that they can zoom in and see the detail. At first not many people asked for higher res image material, but slowly more and more people have been asking for it.

My response usually is: "Lower res is better as it means less information to share over the network and thus less lag, especially for lower end computers and people with lower end bandwidth connections to the internet."

But with the growth of computing power in most peoples computers, and the growth of network capacity, and the growth in animated maps, animated tokens, etc. I'm starting to wonder if that argument is starting to diminish.

So I'd thought I'd pose this issue for discussion with my fellow content creators. What are your thoughts about going higher res and higher detail?

Do we still have the trade off between processing power, and bandwidth? Or is too big still too big?

[Zacchaeus]

If you are talking about usage in Classic then there is no changes to recommended resolution and size since it’s still a 32 bit application and bigger computers and more bandwidth doesn’t overcome that limitation.

For Unity it can be bigger, but bandwidth and network speeds will still limit things to some extent as will performance on lower end machines.

[LordEntrails]

There will always be a trade-off, but I do think the predominance now if for more capable computers and a more common expectation of broadband. Now, remember, for FGC their still is the process size limit. but, FGU doesn't have that.

That said, I think peoples expectations are rising, and so I think higher resolution graphics are a reasonable expectation from creators. I would still recommend when possible to provide both recommended and high resolution versions.

[Three of Swords]

As a consumer, I want high-res, high-quality images. If I need lower-resolution, I'll reduce it myself. But I'm computer-savvy, so it's not an issue. Other DMs are not. So including both high and low-res images is probably preferable.

As for bandwidth, keep in mind that FGC (and FGU, I think) use the host as the server. And while download speeds may be good, upload speeds are reduced by some internet providers. Using my provider as an example, I just did a speedtest and got 115 Mbps download speeds (I don't pay for the highest tier), but I only get 11.5 Mbps upload speeds (roughly 10% the speed). So a 20 MB image file being sent to 6 players still takes a while.

[celestian]

The problem with how modules are distributed right now is you can't have a high res map/tokens for FGU and a "standard" res for FGC. IT's all or nothing and you're forced to use the lowest of the two.

Personally, I think there should be a way to have both types of images if they are available so that folks can make use of FGU's features. FGU gets the high res versions with LOS and FGC gets the low res w/o.

[damned]

I personally will only use the low res versions.
I see no issue with providing both from the customer side except that it probably costs you more to make and more to package up 2x the images so the product would likely cost more...

[Trenloe]

Two things about images in FG (both Classic and Unity):
1) Sharing speed is based on the size of the image file. There are steps that a artist/graphics designer can do to minimize the size of the base graphics file and still keep good levels of quality. For example, run all images through Pingo/Pinga after they've been sized and optimized appropriately: https://css-ig.net/pingo "Web (Lossless)" and "Extreme" compression level usually gives a 10-20% file size reduction.
2) Number of image pixels (directly related to resolution) effect the memory used by FG. So, as mentioned above, this is particularly of impact on FG Classic, and people running FGU with limited memory (there's plenty of people like that out there).

So, *always* keep image pixel size acceptable, and remember to run image files through a post process optimizer to minimize the file size.

[readymeal]

I personally will only use the low res versions.
I see no issue with providing both from the customer side except that it probably costs you more to make and more to package up 2x the images so the product would likely cost more...

I think Damned you are bias here due to the poor Internet connection we are getting in Oz. If i was not in the East Kimberley for work, i would be using my 5G...currently i am barely making it on 3G as the only 4G network is slammed during peak hours..

[damned]

I think Damned you are bias here due to the poor Internet connection we are getting in Oz. If i was not in the East Kimberley for work, i would be using my 5G...currently i am barely making it on 3G as the only 4G network is slammed during peak hours..

Of course I am biased. We are all biased!

From my perspective you cant see all that high res detail - to see the detail means you can only see a tiny part of the map.
I think high res maps look amazing, but most of the time people just dont notice.

[RunningHill]

I guess that maps and tokens can be used in other VTTs than FG. Providing in different resolutions would be nice. Dont some like photoshop offer batch processing so you can change all tokens?
At least the time to change resolution is less than it takes to make the map or token in the first place. Don't think it will change the price very much. At least I wouldn't charge for making a map in two different resolutions.

Then I make maps I do hate lower the resolution for the file size be reasonable. Things get blurry that was sharp. Would prefer keep them in high resolution. Since I have 500/500 bandwith I have no problem sending players 20 mb images.
Providing both options would be nice and even greater if it was an option in FG to switch between high or low image quality.