Avatars

ok so i added my avatar, a pic of me... but it took about 20 trys before getting the file size small enough to make it work.

10 k is NOT the max file size... 5k maybe.


second, i'd like to make my avatar a flash piece.. can we have that available?

I got mine to work at less than 9k.

Thought I read 30k max at 80x80

No current plans to support flash (sorry). Yes, you should be able to use gifs for some animation. I checked the code and 10k is indeed the size, and from what is reported above, they have managed to put in 9k images.

agreed, then the forumz could be even gayer than my original avatar!

cdpage,

That's cool 8) Realistically, what can we do with such a small space. What would flash give us that an animated gif cannot. I mean, you cannot really play chess or backgammon in that space :?

Are we assuming no one has modem anymore? 25k would be pretty taxing on modem users.

There is one fulltime "regular" modem user: Spitfire. I think Wingy or Rich or someone else has a modem at home but broadband at work.

So yes, some access the forum with a modem, but I still think the avatar could be made bigger. Just let people disable it if possible.

Right, make the avatars bigger and the sigs smaller (at least do not allow that damed [ pre ] tag in them, and if ya do, ban em!

I've never seen flash avatars...ever. Bar that link you posted.

But it can't hurt to add it - It doesn't require anything extra really.

We're Techies... if any forum should have them its this one.

its an industrial/EBM streaming radio station.

I'd be DarcPage

whats so scary?

Yea, I'll second that....

Just think I could post my photograph and grant visitors a glimpse of my masculine good looks.

10K is too small? With an animated GIF I'm not even pushing 10K! So long as you use any compressed image format, how on earth can 10K be too small for an 80x80 pixel image?

Granted, I could see where maybe the move to 100x100 would be nice. Not that it'd really gain you all that much, but why not? 25KB for 100x100 though seems a little high. I mean a completely uncompressed 24bpp 100x100 bitmap image takes 29.3KB. Any form of compression would drop that significantly. For example, a sample 100x100 24bpp image that I used drops to 8.87KB using a losless PNG format, and to 2.75 KB using a JPEG format with very mild artifacts. So I could easily see 100x100 still having a 10K limit and doing just fine.

You'd have to be using some pretty crappy image format or making one heck of an animated GIF for the file size to really be a problem.

**ROFL** Yeah, because saving a couple hundred bytes with smaller sigs will make all the difference when increasing the avatar limit by tens of thousands of bytes.

Not only is the pre tag still not working, but it doesn't even seem to exist anymore.

Actually, I was amazed that I was able to scale down that silver phoenix drawing all the way to 80x80 and still have it look okay. I mean I drew it with pencil on a yellow post-it. I scanned it in using just the binary black-and-white setting, which helped, but cleaning it up to scale down that far still wasn't easy. Of course it looks much better in its original size, but then most things do.

As for Cedrik, well, he was easy.

It actually kind of cracks me up to have such two extremes of artwork in one avatar.

Now if only I could find my old runic SP drawing...

True but your avatar isn't colored in and it's a simple transformation from one image to the other. I've done a couple on here and I've had to compress down to sixteen colors to get them to fit And remove some frames .

Don't get vile with me just because I disagree with you!

You can't compare your avatar with all avatars that someone might like to make.

A transformation simple as your avatar consists of doesn't require much space.

Silly, not vile. Geeze, like I care enough to get vile.

Who ever said that I was comparing my avatar at all? Even the sample compressions I played with were full color ones. Which is why I say, unless you're doing something absurd.

The point is that there's no reason why you can't use what space you have. So you have less of an animation. Wah. Honestly. I mean hell, I've got another two images I'd like to throw into my avatar and it'd be uber-L337 if I could use more than twice that number of transition frames. But I don't do it. Why? Because that'd be a pretty darn big file, that's why.

I'm not saying 25K at 100x100 wouldn't be cool. Hell, 1GB at 2048x2048 for all I care. It's just a bloody avatar. 2k at 50x50 would even be enough. It's TGForumz server space. Let them set the limits and let me squeeze as much as I feel like out of it.

I agree with pickxx,

the more posts/longer you've been here, the more space you can have.

Start noobs at 2k 25x25 move up to 25k 100x100


as for .gifs

yea they can range in size very fast simplist things can be huges... while you can get away with a long drawn out one with almost no size at all.

and thats why it would be nice to earn more space.

don't get me wrong. 10k is enough. i don't want to slow down the site...if it will. perhaps stranges or noobs should not have one at all. they make up how much of the users here?

its nice to have something to look forward to other then just a new title too.

I can't help it if you're over-sensitive.

Hell, even if I take it fully bloody seriously (which I almost never do), I don't see how it's even remotely demeaning to call throwing way more animation frames than anyone possibly needs into an avatar as absurd. Saying that it's just plain silly to make a gigantic and slow-loading avatar in no way reflects upon anyone personally. I didn't say something like, "Your a freaking moron if you want that much space." I didn't say, "You're low life scum for using that much space." I said it's absurd to bog things down like that when no one needs it. You certain won't die without it. Nothing will break because you can't fit in those ten extra frames or million extra colors for a neato-keen blend effect. The worst that can happen is that you have to sacrifice a bit of l337-ness. Oh darn.

So maybe you should just pull that stick out of your behind already and grow up. Now that was a demeaning (but IMHO deserved) statement. See the difference?

*cough*

At 30,000 posts we get 150x150?

Ach no! IMHO that'd be awful As it is 80x80 is just right. 100x100 I could live with, as it wouldn't stretch that column much bigger. But anything over a 100 pixel width would bug the crap out of me.

Based on a screen grab the biggest we can get with out actually making the column any bigger, taller or wider, would be roughly 95 x 140


Hey... that would be GREAT!!!! pefect for a game of PONG!

now... how to get to 30,000 posts.

Edit:

Note that anything added to the 80px height would make the column taller...provided the post was 2-3 lines and the user didn't have a signature.

hehe this'll have to do for now. Boing Boing Boing

actually its not an obsission for pong, just interactive avatars.

it could be a poll, a maze, your life story, an inside look of your computer...etc.

'Pong' is just something that i did for somewhere else and thought it would be more fitting here.