PurposeGames Tag: background

PETO on "Changing background?"

PETO — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:57:37 +0000

About documentation:

My favorite source for "Copyleft" photos is the following site, which searches photos on Flicker that have such licenses:
http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/

When I don't document it usually means that either I created it myself or my students did (which is not an excuse to not give them credit...)

tickman on "Changing background?"

tickman — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:19:28 +0000

Esar:

I forgot to mention:

In a few cases when I changed a game, I contacted players of the original to let them know that their scores would be lost (same when I added more dots and reset the highscores).

That's fair to the players and to you.

But very hard to do if there are more than a few players...

Esar on "Changing background?"

Esar — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:07:48 +0000

Thanks for the (extensive) answers.

Too bad you can't change a background. Don't worry, I won't ask David for a favor ;)
Those people with a highscore just should play it again :) (Not that many played my games yet, but still)

Those websites of copylefted sites could become handy. I'll remember them. I agree it's a good thing to do, but in some games with a lot of pictures it will become kind of a big list ;) I'll find out a way to deal with it.

Thanks again!

tickman on "Changing background?"

tickman — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:27:20 +0000

Esar:

As Niklas says, there is no way to change backgrounds w/o losing the other information. It might be possible for David to transfer information from one game to its successor,but for that to be a valid request the games would have to be almost identical (same number of dots in about the same arrangement, very similar background, same clues and answers). And it may not be possible at all. In any case, I wouldn't ask that of him lightly: he's very busy with the site and with his real life.

I've often changed a game by replacing it, and have never asked David to migrate information. Like Niklas, I have lost many plays, people's scores, game ratings, and comments on the games I replaced.

Anymore, unless there are only a few plays, I don't usually replace a game after a certain period of time has elapsed. In several cases, I have created an 'updated' version when I came by a better background. So I've got 2 starfish games, 2 bird beak games, and a few others. I usually reference one to the other in the game comments, so people can find the other game. I also usually label them so that old and new are not the same (i.e., advanced version, updated, etc for the new game).

Re: attributions, I usually do that. Niklas and a few more sometimes do that. A lot of the material in Wikipedia/Wikimedia is "copylefted" (vs. copyrighted). In effect, these are licenses to use the material. Although you are free to use it, most such licenses say that you should attribute the source. I'm glad to oblige, and reference the URL so people can find it.

Giving attributions also helps people who take an interest in the subject to learn more about it. Usually, I give a URL not only for the background image, but for an article containing the background (and/or other relevant information). That keeps with the spirit of the "Purpose" in "PurposeGames".

And some of the more general backgrounds I've found have been used by other people in making games. If you find a good world, Europe, US, etc. map, people will want to know where you found it, so they can make games with it. It's not unheard of to see "where did you find that map?" in game comments.

The two most common "copylefts" are CreativeCommons and GNU Free Documentation. I don't think the CC/GNU police will be beating down your door if you don't do attributions, but I think it is a very good thing to do. It also doesn't usually take long to do it for any one game, but in the aggregate, I've probably spent several hours putting attributions and pointers to more information on my games. That means I could've been 3 games ahead of where I am now! If I had all that time as a single block, that is. It's really all the background modifications that are time consuming, not the attributions.

Then again, if I didn't pontificate on the Community Page, send PMs, comment on games, or leave messages of encouragement and advice on people's message boards, I might be 89 games ahead of where I am now. Would that be somehow better for PG?

Well maybe, but better for me? No....

So if you think people should give their sources, you should do it. It'll just be part of your style, and we all gotta develop our own PurposeGame styles.

Good luck, and good games (playing *and* making them).

Tickman

niklas on "Changing background?"

niklas — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:07:09 +0000

Hello Esar,

I'm afraid there is no way to change the background without losing all the game statistics.
I have revised some of my games with various results, some of them has been played as much as before but some of them hasn't been played as much as they where before, most likely because they are less visible once they have left page one and has been played fewr times than before. Because of this I'm very reluctant to revise any of my games, one of the rewards as a game maker is after all when people play your games.

You are not obliged to say exactly where you found your backgrounds. You are obliged to not use any coprighted material, Wikipedia can be a good source of non-copyrighted material.
Tickman is very good at saying wherefrom he got his backgrounds, I used to do it but I seized to do it since almost noone else does it, maybe not a very good reason but that's the way it is, maybe I will start doing it again.

Esar on "Changing background?"

Esar — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:40:33 +0000

Hello,

I'm playing and creating games on this website for some time now and I really like this site. But I've got some questions now about backgrounds.

Is it possible to change backgrounds of your games without losing the rest of the information and the highscores. I wanted to change some backgrounds so they all look the same but I couldn't find out how.

I was also wondering if we are obliged by PurposeGames to name the source of your background in the background or at least in the comments of the game? Personally I think it should be, but I don't see many people doing it.

Greetz,
Esar

David on "Request: PNG background images > 300 kB"

David — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:00:37 +0000

Hi Eq,

I've put it on hold since the playability of the games suffers a little from having to wait even longer for the loading of the picture when it becomes too big in KB.

But it's quite possible that such change should be OK soon since many if not most nowadays have broadband/cable connection to Internet, limiting the effect of such wait.

I'll look into it within the work currently being done on the site. I'll post back here when any change is due in this area.

equestenebrarum on "Request: PNG background images > 300 kB"

equestenebrarum — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:21:09 +0000

David, do you think there's a possibility to increase the maximum file size for image backgrounds to say 600 kB (maybe for PNG file format only)? Due to your recompression of my already compressed JPEG images quality sometimes gets poor, when at home in my image editor it has been great. That happened in my latest game "The World's Most Impressive Palaces Part 1" for example. If you could increase the allowed file size I could more often use the PNG file format.

equestenebrarum on "Background Giveaways"

equestenebrarum — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:34:22 +0000

Slovakia:

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/3110/slovakiacolornr7.png
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/6223/slovakiapc1.png

equestenebrarum on "Background Giveaways"

equestenebrarum — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:51:22 +0000

Free backgrounds (created by me) for Sweden and Scandinavia games:

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6233/scandinaviajt1.png
http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/583/sweden1ur8.jpg
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/4093/sweden2jk5.jpg

Huggie18 on "How to put more pictures into one background."

Huggie18 — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:50:09 +0000

I use ACDSee, you can edit photos and resize & crop. Same thing really, Tickman, Eques, RDG all are good reasons.

Happy Days!!
Huggie18

equestenebrarum on "How to put more pictures into one background."

equestenebrarum — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:57:33 +0000

Hi loeh, you can upload your picture in best quality on this site: http://imageshack.us/

(You don't need to register or anything.) Just send the direct link to the image here and I will reduce it for you and give it back the same way.

loeh on "How to put more pictures into one background."

loeh — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:14:13 +0000

Thank you for all help!
I have read the different threads. I just have to ask one more question. With the risk to sound stupied...
I do not manage to make the pictures smaller. I have tried in a couple of programs but do not manage to minimize the size of the picture which is over 1MG! I have tried to save the picture in different formats, and when I saved it as a JPEG it came down to 500kb but it is still not enough! Can somebody help me?

Thank you!
/Louise

ps. hope you understand my bad English

mwkoopmans on "How to put more pictures into one background."

mwkoopmans — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:42:30 +0000

Thank you all for your quick help.

tickman on "How to put more pictures into one background."

tickman — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:53:26 +0000

As usual, RDG and Eques are helpful, and right.

I don't usually put a lot of different pictures together, but do occasionally use 2 or 3 (e.g., to include a map inset).

There are a lot of programs you can use. Paint/draw programs like Canvas, photo-retouching programs like PhotoShop, and so on. I usually use PhotoShop Elements, which is a stripped-down version. I got it for free with some hardware I bought, and it works well enough.

Less commonly, I use PowerPoint, and even made a game explaining how to design a game with it:

http://www.purposegames.com/game/2435/info

There's also an earlier thread on the Community Page about it:

http://www.purposegames.com/topic/196?replies=11

and there are several helpful postings there.

It's far from ideal, but it does work, and a lot of people have it.

Some people have even used Microsoft Word to make games (It is possible to include pics there), so if you're willing to spend enough time outgassing around with it, you can make lots of programs work.

Good Luck, and Good Games.

Tickman.

equestenebrarum on "How to put more pictures into one background."

equestenebrarum — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:00:20 +0000

You can only use one image to create a game at Purposegames.com.

Like RonaldDerGrosse says, you need to put all your images together into one single image by using an image editing program, and save this composed image, ideally in a size of 700 x 550 pixels, in JPEG, GIF or PNG file format. Take care that the filesize of your result is under 300 kb.

All image editing programs allow you to resize and compose images. There are some such programs for free download. One very potent is called The Gimp, and is available for free here: www.gimp.org

I wish you fun creating games :)

RonaldDerGrosse on "How to put more pictures into one background."

RonaldDerGrosse — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:15:08 +0000

MGI Photosuite III will let you build collages out of jpeg pictures.

mwkoopmans on "How to put more pictures into one background."

mwkoopmans — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:39:53 +0000

I think more pictures are being used in the background. This is what I see in several games.
Who can tell me how to do this!

niklas on "Error message when deleting backgrounds"

niklas — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:56:12 +0000

Now it is OK. A really quick response, thank you!

David on "Error message when deleting backgrounds"

David — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:43:50 +0000

OK. Try now please and see if it works better.

Thanks for reporting this.

niklas on "Error message when deleting backgrounds"

niklas — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:21:51 +0000

I get an error message when deleting a background. It happened to me yesterday and the I thought it was a one-off but now it happened again.
The message is:

bbPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1]
DELETE FROM pg_game_tag WHERE game_id =

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/pg/public_html/bb-includes/db-mysqli.php:76) in /home/pg/public_html/my-logic/delete-custom-bg.php on line 28

bix21 on "States"

bix21 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:18:15 +0000

That's definitely earned you a nod eque... I think the spirit is fantastic. Well done.

equestenebrarum on "States"

equestenebrarum — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:37:04 +0000

Maybe the above link doesn't work properly, but this one does:

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/8343/minnesotaic3.png

equestenebrarum on "States"

equestenebrarum — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:33:21 +0000

http://imgplace.com/image_bin/4749/6a73936536ce28bb489c88208ac24d35.png

Hope that helps :)

newyears1 on "States"

newyears1 — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:50:58 +0000

I can

niklas on "Revised Games"

niklas — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:58:56 +0000

I removed the dots and added a message to the old game but it kepot getting 'played' anyway so I unpublished it. All people doesn't seem to read the game description or comments...

RonaldDerGrosse on "Revised Games"

RonaldDerGrosse — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:49:04 +0000

A suggestion, niklas. What if you left the old game still intact, redid your background and added your features that are new and call it something new like "The Cities of Oceania Reformulated with South Pacific Breezes." Place a message with the old game to direct people to the new and improved one. People have a one in six chance of playing an excellent "Niklas Game" every time they play. You could increase the odds to one in three. Big companies have been reformulating their products for years. If perfume came in a beer bottle, I doubt if it would sell!

niklas on "Revised Games"

niklas — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:15:09 +0000

Thank You!
I thought that since the old scores are only kept for six months now the effect on peoples ranking would be smaller than it would have been before PG 2.0. I think that a bigger 'problem' is that some of the games will be harder to find, take 'The Countries of Oceania', it was played almost 1900 times and showed up on page two or three if you sorted the games by 'times played' but now you will need to click next a lot of times, or search actively, to find it. Maybe the damage is greater to my vanity (I like when my games are played) than anything else ;-)

tickman on "Revised Games"

tickman — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:39:52 +0000

Good job with the new games.

I did this with a lot of my games awhile back to redo the way I did attributions, correct some errors, and in a few cases to change backgrounds. (And there were a few I accidentally deleted, too.)

I didn't get any negative comments about doing that, and suspect you won't either.

But it does delete the highscores, so that's not good. I didn't realize it at the time, but that could've temporarily demoted people from say, Grand Master to Master status. But as we don't have that kind of rating right now, it may be less of a concern.

There are other games (not yours) that I wish would get the same treatment from their authors. What you've done is to take good games and make them better. There are some games that are fair or poor that could benefit from revision.

And there are still a few of mine I think about redoing sometimes...

niklas on "Revised Games"

niklas — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:26:05 +0000

As you may have noticed I have revised some of my older games that had a not so good looking background, I also changed/added some dots. In order to this I had to re-make the games and remove the old ones. This means the highscore-lists have been deleted as well so if you want a place on the highscore-list you will have to play them again, but since they are better now (imo) it should be more entertaining than the last time you played them :o)
You can find the games here:
http://www.purposegames.com/games?t=9442