Unit Information Box

[Lowlander]

OK, a long overdue 2D map zoom has enhanced the game.
What about expanding the Unit Information Box from the standard 368 X 121 as the

Hard
Soft
Assault
AA
Defence
Hard Target
Speed

are often obscured with unit insignia etc.

But the real reason for my request is that all unit art which is displayed within this area is restricted by the need to fit inside this box.

I.E. 180 X 80 pixels, would recommend 240 X 100.

This is OK for small AFV's BUT larger AFV's such as Panthers, Tigers, KV and JS tanks are so compressed that the detail is lost !!!.
I need a administrator or designer to contact me as I have found a quick simple way of producing highly detailed unit art but the larger vehicles would have to be downsized which is a pain and time consuming.

[-72-]

Interesting situation- as I know that you've mentioned to me that you have played around with mods from time to time -I was wondering if you had done any playing around with this?

The reason I am asking is that I know that the blank boxes will take pretty much any size -yes, ok granted I know that you are not talking about blankboxes... but I wonder what happens when you make the unit boxes a different dimension? I imagine that the text still has a set place to be but the fact is really that I have never actually done it (I did the opposite -I have adjusted the size of the blankbox so that things stopped tiling -but that is another story.

The thing is LL - no matter what you have, it has to be public domain images in order to be useful to the company... resizing things (not talking about tanks or even PzC just generally) goes along with the territory - I think pretty much all series have to deal with it -part of the solution is the software -even when talking about a particular company's software. There is a reason some of this is high dollar -mainly it would be the results. Personally I use the Adobe design suites (CS6 - none of that cloud business.).

Anyway- if you have done some experimentation with some of that let me know what your results are if you could. I am not in a position to promise a solution but I would like to have a look at what you have.

If you got time drop me a line at the usual email address or at info at hist-sdc dot com

Steve

[PzKw43]

The John Tiller games are well researched but the graphics are based on his East Front game from 1997. The graphics upgrade in Panzer Battles should have been added 5 years ago to all of the new games. He needs to develop a new game engine with graphics for 4k monitors which will be standard in a few years.

[BigDuke66]

What is the difference? Unit art in the boxes of PB looks similar to what I see in the PC series.

At best you could add big versions of all the art and allow it to open in game with a key combination.
Right click already switches to a different view inside the unit boxes, if you now combine it with a key the big version of the unit art could be loaded.
I'm not sure how available it is but I saw some art form the unit boxes muhc bigger and better quality in a PDF from the Austerlitz game, so I wouldn't wonder if big versions of most if not all the art are laying somewhere in the digital world.

[-72-]

The pdf that you were mentioning was something that Bill Peters threw in to the files with several of his later titles ('later' meaning since 2009). I am guessing, although I can't prove it at this point, that this was also put together from the artwork created for the game. What I mean by that is I am not sure how large that the original artwork was -it might have been bigger than what was in the pdf, or at the very least, probably less lossy (just a suspicion).

Anyway, you got me curious now, I am not sure what it is that you would do with this sort of thing? ... resize it to your own liking -I guess you can kind of do that already in Austerlitz, Leipzig, Bautzen, and 1814 - no idea where you would find others (I will qualify that to mean 'others' being larger versions of what is used in the stock graphics).

You are right, though, the name of the game is the ability to re-size... It can be the same thing with some of the huge versions of maps -Quebec from FiW was a great example - that thing -I swear that it was made out of something like 140 screenshots of 1600 x 900 px (actually those might be larger than that since I think I actually took them on my desktop which has something like 2200 px on the wide side of things.).

Now -part of the resizing when it comes to maps I am pretty sure are caused by artifacts of 8 bit bmp files... can't prove it (won't prove it with the Quebec map ... not going to mod it and then take all of the screen shots again simply to see what happens ...) -thing is that it works in reverse when creating enlargements - where things can become badly pixellated.

Ok too I find the 4k monitors thing interesting, but I guess the thing to keep in mind is that this is not really the day job for anyone at JTS -certainly not Tiller himself -nor anyone I know there ... I am not sure how far that extends out too - but I also don't want to come off like I am not interesting in seeing what you can do in circumstances like that ... but yeah if you go that far- why keep it as a bmp when you can switch formats (even in keeping with the same style) and use pngs.... just a technical statement and something I learned while working with graphics ... certainly not anything I heard anywhere within the company itself...

[BigDuke66]

Not sure if we already have to focus on 4k material because my guess is that even the best art we have today won't be that big and so won't benefit from it.
But there is a reason why another zoom level is added to the Civil War & Napi series, or why France 14 got a major graphic overhaul.
And so supporting HD resolutions by enhancing and enlarging the graphics would be a good move.

[-72-]

What I was trying to say is with a monitor using 4000 px horizontal resolution would have to take a different approach than simply magnification.

It was not intended as any sort of 'teaser' because that was just me thinking about the problem and possible ways to approach it.

What is relevant, though, is space management in bmp files. As I said, I like png files because it offers true transparency and allows for more natural shadows, which a bmp won't let you do (a bmp has to have a solid color -so if you try it then the 'green screen' shows through [although technically 'green' is whatever the background's main color is.]). But png's are not used so what they can or cannot do is not relevant.

I guess the one thing that I would say is that, while using bmp files, there is no reason not to use those based on 24 bit bmp's. I don't know if it is a 'teaser' or not -probably not.

I will say, that I don't classify myself as a 'modder'. :)