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Two of our latest free scenarios, Michael Turner's Recon Meeting Engagement
and Mark Stricker's Alytus Bridgehead, used Microsoft Powerpoint to
create extremely nice Orders of Battle and Map files. I was able to painlessly extract these into a
web-friendly format in record time. I want to invite all of our other customers to use this format
when sending us scenarios. To help, we have created Powerpoint files of the initial
organizations in the rulebook (I want to thank Michael Turner for his help in entering the Russians).
After a bit of practice, you can copy and paste the appropriate organizations from
these to create neat looking scenarios with a minimum
of effort. Hint:Learn how to use the group/ungroup and draw/align functions.
Download ZIP file of Powerpoint OBs (212k) Right click
and save on your drive or run it directly from the site.
The raw powerpoint files are very large, (about 1.5Mbyte), so I used
WINZIP to compress them to a
manageable size. If you don't have
WINZIP yet, go to their site and spend the $29 to get a licensed copy.
It is one of the most useful utilities ever created for the PC and they deserve our support. I use it
on the site extensively. If you
really need it, send me an email and I will send you a self-extracting executable of the Powerpoint files.
Converting Powerpoint into web graphics
Some people have indicated interest in developing BF:WWII scenarios for distribution on their local
club websites. Here is a guide on how to use powerpoint to create neat looking graphic files that
can be used for this purpose. If you send me a powerpoint scenario for the site (hint, hint :-) ),
I will do the conversion to a web page for you, but here are the methods I use and some tools you will need.
Buy a good graphics program. For the Battlefront:WWII website
I use PaintShopPro (costs about $99), but the amount of use I get out of
it has fully justified the price. Without a program like this,
you can't do the conversions and image manipulation that you need to do for good web postings.
You won't end up using a lot of the strange features unless you are an artist,
but the ability to trim/resize, copy, save in different formats, and manipulate color depth are essential.
There are only 3 formats that you should consider for posting final images on the web:
.jpg for pictures,
.gif and .png for non-photographic images (including most maps and unit symbols).
These formats use compression algorithms that make the pictures take up a lot less room
than .bmp and .tif files. Not only do you use up possibly limited storage space with other formats,
but the time needed to download an image is directly proportional to its size.
This can be very important for people with modem (instead of high-speed) access.
.jpg uses an algorithm that loses some unessential detail in the photo to save space.
This may sound bad but usually you don't see any degredation until you save with a very high compression.
Paintshop allows me to play with compression to see the effects, so I can choose different levels
of compression to get a good compromise between size and appearance.
.gif and .png are lossless algorithms, which means that no detail is lost.
They are not good for photos, as the final product is sometimes larger than the original,
but are excellent for maps and orders of battle.
I like .png better, because it creates slightly smaller files and also is not subject to
a weird patent restriction (someone technically could demand a payment from almost every website
in the world) and if you don't use animated graphics it has all of the features of .gif.
The key parameter for .gif and .png is "color depth". If you have a black and white map,
you can reduce the color depth to 2. Most of our OOBs and maps can be reduced to a color depth of 16.
Manipulating this parameter can lead to some very small files that take up minimal space and load quickly.
.tif files are used for print publishing, and take up much more room than you need for the web.
However, they are quite useful as an intermediate format, as the files saved from powerpoint as
.tif seem to have more detail than those in other formats.
Use the powerpoint presentations posted above to build your powerpoint presentation.
I put a page of unit symbols at the front of each of the files so you can create your
own symbols by manipulating fill and line color.
You can also draw maps in PP as the drawing tools allow shapes lines, colors, and fill patterns.
Manipulate the powerpoint files to get them right and then convert them to web graphics as follows:
Save the presentation as a .TIF file (one of the options on the SAVE AS menu).
Use your graphics program to manipulate the resulting .TIF files by cutting the
size down to just the picture you want. Also resize it if needed.
Use the Count Colors Used and Decrease Color Depth options on the picture.
Save the picture as a .png or .gif. You are now ready to put it on the web.
Just as I recommend PaintshopPro, I recommend getting a good web editing tool.
I like Allaire's Homesite. If you use FrontPage or one of the other editors, the resulting code
is often inefficient.
When putting graphics on a webpage,
EVERY image on a webpage should have a WIDTH and HEIGHT attribute. This allows the page to
display while the graphics are loading.
If you don't do this, the browser must wait until every image loads before it displays anything.
If you have a lot of graphics, it will look like the page isn't displaying.