Overview Picture – Operation Flashpoint

Revision as of 06:37, 28 December 2006

Creating a picture for mission overviews

Images to be used in the mission preview have to meet certain criteria to have the right position and size.

Here's a quick walkthrough to creating a proper image.

Take a relevant snapshot while in the mission

OFP (as well as ArmA & VBS) don't have built-in screenshot-taking capabilities, so you will need a third-party program to do this. There are many different ones available, but the most popular ones in the gaming community are FRAPS or Game Cam, which also have several other game-related features, like movie capturing and FPS (frames/sec) display.

original, undistorted image (512x315px)

Crop it to size

Once you have an appropriate image, crop it to a proportion of 1:1.625 (so if your image is 1,000 pixels wide, it should be 1,625 pixels high).

You can use different proportions, but these are the ones that fill out the menu frame in the mission preview the best.

formatted (distorted) image (512x256px)

Reformat it to the right proportions

Images used in overview.html must have specific edge sizes (i.e. the size must be 2^x). The most common sizes are 128, 256 or 512. So, you could have an image that's 256x256 or 512x256, but you couldn't have one that's 500x300!

Once you resize your image to the proper proportions it will most likely look distorted. This is ok, as later in the game it will be resized again to the correct proportions. When you do distort the image it is normally better to make it bigger, rather than smaller to meet the next allowed edge size (e.g. if your image is 300x487 make it 512x512, rather than 256x256).

Save the picture in .JPG format.

image visible in game menu (overview size:155xp5px)

Define the overview.html

In your overview.html you need to call the image via an HTML tag:

<html>
<head><title>Mission Title</title></head>
<body>

< p align="center"><img src="lost.jpg" width="155" height="95">

</body>
</html>

The size to use if you want to fill out the predefined image frame is 155x95.

If you used different proportions for your original picture, you will have to adjust the sizes here too.

Compile your mission

Use any of the many tools available to create your PBO files.

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ====Take a relevant snapshot while in the mission====
 OFP (as well as ArmA & VBS) don't have built-in screenshot-taking capabilities, so you will need a third-party program to do this.
-There are many different ones available, but one of the most popular ones in the gaming community is [http://www.fraps.com/ FRAPS], which also has several other game-related features, like movie capturing and FPS (frames/sec) display.
+There are many different ones available, but the most popular ones in the gaming community are [http://www.fraps.com/ FRAPS] or [http://www.planetgamecam.com Game Cam], which also have several other game-related features, like movie capturing and FPS (frames/sec) display.
 [[Image:Overview tut org.jpg|thumb|right|400|original, undistorted image (512x315px)]]
 ====Crop it to size====
 Once you have an appropriate image, crop it to a proportion of 1:1.625 (so if your image is 1,000 pixels wide, it should be 1,625 pixels high).