| Lossless | PNG | GIF |
|---|---|---|
| Lossy | JPEG |
Uploaded images should always be of the highest quality possible. To this end, lossy formats are considered inferior to lossless formats. For this reason, PNG and GIF images are always preferred to JPEGs and will supersede any existing JPEG images when available.
The GIF format is only capable of storing images of up to 256 unique colours. Therefore, do not use GIF format unless you can prove that the source image is less than or exactly equal to 256 colours. If in doubt, always use the PNG format because this format has no restrictions.
Screen shots
When taking a screen shot using the Print Scrn key, the game will automatically capture the contents of the screen and save it to a compressed JPEG image file. Never use any images generated by the game. When pressing the Print Scrn key, your system should also simultaneously dump the contents of the screen to the system image clipboard. The image on the clipboard should be a 1:1 uncompressed copy of the screen contents and therefore fit for use. Use an image editing program to paste the image from the clipboard into a new document and then save that image into the lossless PNG format with appropriate compression settings.
Follow these steps when taking screen shots:
- Capture the screen using Print Scrn key.
- Using an image editing program, paste the contents of the system image clipboard.
- Carefully crop the relevant part of the image as close as possible.
- Save the image in the lossless PNG format.
- Optionally use Pngcrush to maximize compression (brute force mode) and strip unwanted chunks. Example Windows command line:
ren *.png *.png.bak && pngcrush -e .png -brute -rem iCCP *.png.bak.
Environment screen shots
In order to take the best possible shot of a scene, increase your graphics quality level to preset number 5 with low texture turned off. Brightness and contrast must be set to zero so that you take a display-neutral picture. If your scene includes pictures of players, try to ensure that as fewer people as reasonably possible clutter the area and turn off all user names so that players are not identifiable. All of these settings can be found in the system settings dialog from the game menu.
- Always ensure that the fixed UI border art is cropped out.
User interface screen shots
When taking screen shots of user interface elements, be aware that most windows are translucent; that is: part of the background shows through. Try to position the window over a black or dark grey background to prevent distorting the image with distracting background detail.
Many windows have transparent regions such as rounded corners. In addition to cropping to the edge of the window, please remove any background pixels that are not overlapped by the window so that they are transparent. Both PNG and GIF image formats support transparencies.
Extracting images
There is no need to take screenshots of 2D interface elements. These can be extracted directly from the game resource files with an image editing program.
The table below shows where different types of images are stored within the game folder. Most images contain a collection of sub-images which need to be extracted individually. Please take care when cutting out the images that you need. The size of each sub-image is given in the table.
Once you have extracted some images, please name them as indicated in the image name column and add it to the specified category.
| Type | Location | Filename | Size | Image name | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Items | DUI\Image |
ITEMIMGN_40X40_00_000.tga |
40x40 | Item name |
Category:Items |
| Debuffs | NGImg |
MAGICSTATUC_ICON.TGA |
22x22 | Skill name (debuff) |
Category:Debuffs |
| Mercenary portraits | NGImg\SolPortrait |
SoldierN_Enable.tga |
73x89 | Mercenary name portrait |
Category:Portraits |
| Skills | NGImg |
SKILLICONN_40X40_00_000.TGA |
38x38 | Skill name |
Category:Skills |