Jump to content

Logos


Cmdr Nova
 Share

Recommended Posts

I put this in the General Discussions forum, because I didn't really find anywhere to put it.

Personal sig logos. Like the one's the new Gammulan Council uses. At first it was cool, and I didn't care about the filesizes. Then, newbie Gammulans and Indies copy the idea. Here's a rundown on filesizes:

ISS Logo: 8.8k

GalCom Logo: 9.2k

Jaguar's - 36.7k

Lorddavid's - 40.9k

Razor_87FIS - 144.8k

Baloogan's - 286.9k(Combined from 3 logos: 126.9k, 18.8k, 141.2k)

I haven't seen anyone else gripe or notice this yet. But with my dead-slow net connection, I figured something was up. Like I said on the "Forum Problems" thread, long threads loaded up only halfway. The ones with large images (like the sig ones, and the ISS structure thread down on their forum) had a tendency to load to the same point after you'd refresh. (Probably didn't have anything to do with the forums, but it was something that put to my attention the filesizes.) It took me 5+ refreshes to fully load page 3 of the "Gammulan RPG Thread" today.

Here's the question. What happened to enforcing that (unwritten?) rule about only using official Tacops registered logos in sigs? I remember that happening to some newbies a few months ago, but now I don't know. I'm thinking the reasoning behind the new influx of these personal images is "....but the Gammulans do it....". Oh well.

Just wanted to bring this up and see some official opinions. (And I still love those logos that Jaguar, Advil, and lordDavid have. The others can't imitate the great!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had noticed this as well, particularly the Gammulan logos and Baloogan's.

You are right - it was originally enforced that the only logos allwoed for use in threads were the official ones. I have submitted (and received official approval) for the ISS fleet logo, which is why my fleet has begun using it. I believe Wraith may also have official approval for theirs. And I think Prime has approval for their Wing logos.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that people are getting fancy with their logos. The original specs for the animated GIFs that were to be used on the forum were...

Each frame separated by a 2.5 second delay

Race/Alliance/Fleet/Wing logos, in that order

The problem is that some logos are now using fancy animations and fades between logo frames. As a result, each step in these animations is adding another frame - and another lot of bytes - to the size of the image.

Perhaps if we got rid of the animations and just kept to the standard, as demonstrated by the SC's original animated gif (shown below), some of these problems could be relieved?

gclogo_web.gif

ADDIT: Another possibility, for those people who are creating these files - does the program you are using support palette and animation optimisation? I use the trial version of Gif Movie Gear, by Gamani Software, and this gives the option to reduce file-size by optimizing both the palette and the animation.

[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: DeSylva ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That is a very good point Nova. I have not thought about this too much before you mentioned it but I have noticed a *slight* slowdown on certain pages of the forum.

I agree that if everyone had a personal sig, it would be quite inconsiderate to people with dial-up connections, so until I hear more, I'll take mine down.

[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: LordDavid ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:

Originally posted by DeSylva:

I had noticed this as well, particularly the Gammulan logos and Baloogan's.

You are right - it was originally enforced that the only logos allwoed for use in threads were the official ones. I have submitted (and received official approval) for the ISS fleet logo, which is why my fleet has begun using it. I believe Wraith may also have official approval for theirs. And I think Prime has approval for their Wing logos.

You are correct that Wraith's logo has received approval. The standard animated Wraith sequence weighs in at 12.7KB, the morphed version at 112KB has been retired.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man, .gif's are old school guys. Learn how to create vector based art. Start using flash. Few peeps don't have the pluggin. It's hella fast and hella small. And you can do SO much more...

Sorry, I don't have anything I can show you... yet

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Few "peeps" (?) may not have the plug-in, but many do not have Flash. GIF animators are cheap (many are free). Flash is expensive.

Besides, I don't want to go through the nightmare of listening to a dozen clashing sound effects from a dozen little Flash movies (you know it would happen eventually).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From the "Things to remember when doing animated gif sigs" thread:

quote:

Originally posted by Advil:

Since I made the few animated sigs for us Gammulans, I've seen them popping up everywhere! There are some really good ones that really add to the atmosphere around here.

That said, I want to remind all of you (and myself) to keep track of how big those sigs get. I've checked a few of them by right clicking and getting file size. Some of these things are 120k or larger. And some sigs have multiple animated gifs that are each about that size.

Consider a couple of very important points: One is that anyone on a modem is going to be downloading that sig for a very long time. A decent modem connect will pull around 4k a sec, so it takes them 32 seconds to download a 128k gif. The sencond thing to remember is that you are probably hosting that file off your personal web space, or that of someone you know. Remember that when the game goes live thousands of people may download your sig over a few weeks, thereby exceeding your (or your friends) bandwidth limit to the site hosting it. It adds up fast.

Suggestions for streamlining:

I've been using Ulead to make the few sigs I've done so far.

First thing, remember that you can make each individual frame last as long as you want. So if nothing's moving, make that frame stay put longer rather than showing a bunch of frames where nothing happens. Huge savings in size here.

Second, when doing effects some frames (like the first, or last couple) don't show much change. Remove them, since when the gif is animating you won't really notice them missing. A gif animation is a little jerky anyway... after all it's not a DVD movie. Along these lines are doing effects like the "screen off" effect I use in my sig. I originally made a 40 frame transition to do it, then I threw out the last 30 frames that are all black anyway, and only used about every other frame of the first 10 that actually had the effect. There's only about 4 or 5 frames of effect before going black this way, which is all that's needed to make it look right.

The last thing you can do is PLEASE use the optimization features if your program has it. Ulead is VERY good at this. It condenses the color pallet to a smaller size. You'd be amazed that you can actually pull 20% or more of the color pallet out and barely see a difference in the end product.

This isn't a rant at all, just some friendly advice to make those great sigs even better! I have cable and don't care how big your sigs are, I'm just trying to offer ways to make them more efficient.

Good luck and keep those sigs coming!

How about just making a rule for animated gifs like:

[*]Image Order: Race ┬╗ Caste ┬╗ Fleet/Organization ┬╗ Wing/Subdivision (optional) ┬╗ Personal (optional)

[*]Image Specs: Animated .gif file, 2.5 seconds on each "section", 74 x 88 pixels, max size: 35-50k? (undecided)

The 2.5 means that, including transformations, the timing stays about the same as that of the original .gif icons, like the GalCom one. (Watching logo-dances (as in the logos all change at different times) is not pleasing to the eyes, while trying to read text. ) The max size is just a rough estimate of where I want the size to be. What do you think? (I've got dial up that maxes out at 27k, so I'd like it small.)

Don't care how many frames, as long as timing is close to 2.5/section and that the size is small enough. This should be flexible enough to keep it cool looking, keep the innovation going, and keep the sizes down. Opinions?

I think that the ones that lordDavid, Jaguar, and Advil (and anyone else using the original Gammulan style) used were okay. They were small (-er than others), and included what was required. Timing could possibly change. The Gammulan military also might need it's own logo apart from the Race logo later, though. (You know--you've got mercs, assassins, and other non-official military castes in the Gammulans already.)

Heh, I passed up post 700 yesterday. Ah well. w00t!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel like I'm responsible for this mess. I worked really hard to keep the file sizes down on the ones I did. I thought 30-40k was on the upper end of reasonable. Unfortunately, I think I let the genie out of the bottle. If one is big, someone will do one bigger. I think I'll redo my logo without the animation... just to set a good example.

Ah well, I did it for the fun of learning anyway.

Also, I didn't see this logo thread at the time. Feel free to delete that other thread I made and leave this one. Sorry for the mess.

[ 11-14-2001: Message edited by: Advil ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...