I’m designing a module for a friend and it requires several decks of cards. My friend has provided artwork for the cards but, when I use this artwork, it produces a card that is much larger than wanted. Do I need to change the artwork or can I change the card size within Vassal?
I’d be interested to see what those who know VASSAL intimately say on this. It is my impression that to change the actual size, number of pixels used, of art generated external to VASSAL, not with the Piece Image Generator, one must use other software like Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp or Inkscape (there are other software packages that can do this too).
It depend on what exactly is the wrong size. You could adjust the default zoom level, and that would make everything smaller. If it’s only the cards which are the wrong size, then you’ll need to rescale the cards or rescale everything else to match.
I suspected this would be the case. I had hoped that there would be a sizing facility within Vassal that would work as long as I retained the aspect ratio of the original artwork. I can do the job in Paint Shop Pro but there are almost 200 cards to adjust and it will take me forever! Anyway, head down and get on with it, I guess. Thanks for your help.
You could resize them all in one shot with ImageMagick. If the card are the bulk of the artwork, however, consider resizing everything else.
Strongly agree–get ImageMagick and do some basic searches for help, along the lines of “imagemagick batch resize” and you’ll find plenty of examples that will get this done in a snap.
Thanks for the suggestion to use Imagemagick. I downloaded and installed the software and did the help search for “batch resize”. All that seems to have installed on my PC is something called “ImageMagick Display” which has almost no menu entries and no help facility.
Apparently, I have to type a series of instructions into a command line somewhere - but I have no idea where. I am assuming I have downloaded the wrong thing and will uninstall and seek out the correct software. I’m not a computer tecchie (although I know a little on the subject), therefore, lots of what I am reading is “double-Dutch” to me. Also, the programme looks very new and so most of what I read appears to be written by people who have spent their life absorbing jargon and re-iterating it to the rest of us who haven’t 
I don’t think I’m being stupid or unreasonable but I have a feeling that I’m going to need to spend more time learning ImageMagick than Vassal.
LATER: I downloaded what appeared to be the right software (ImageMagick-7.0.10-62-Q16-HDRI-x64-dll.exe) and installed that - but it doesn’t seem to offer any insights as to what I should do - and no sign of a command line.
???
I don’t mean to be discourteous at all, but I don’t really have it in me to go into the level of detail required to explain via forum post how to do command-line operations if you are starting from no knowledge. So I’m surmising it’s not a good value proposition to go down the ImageMagick road, comparing the time investment to learn how against the laborious one-by-one image adjustment process in the software you already know.
If Paint Shop Pro does not have any batch facilities, one alternative GUI software I can recommend from personal experience is GIMP, in conjunction with the installable BIMP plugin which is expressly designed for doing batch operations on sets of images. All point and click, I think you’d find it much more intuitive.
Hi Joel:
I appreciate that you have no wish or time to teach me how to use ImageMagick and, indeed, I wouldn’t either if the roles were reversed. You’ve helped me enough in the past for me to know you are not being unhelpful. I shall read my Paint Shop Pro manual to see if there’s a batch facility. I have used GIMP in the past - it is very similar to PSP - and will see what I can do with that if PSP doesn’t come up with the goods - it is pretty old now . If worse comes to worst, I’ll just plough through the files one by one.
Right now, I’m struggling with how to provide each player with a large area on which they can lay out their cards and counters ready to be deployed to the main map. I don’t know whether to use a Chart Window Menu or a Private Window - I do find this aspect of Vassal quite taxing. One day I really must sit down and read the manual carefully - but there always seems so little time. Anyway, thanks for giving me a little of your time thanks to the other guys for their contributions.
Cheers,
Mike
Private Window is what you want here. Pieces/cards/counters aren’t capable of being dragged and dropped onto a Chart Window.
BIMP plugin? Never heard of it, I will have to give it a try. I was going to suggest David’s Batch plugin for GIMP:
sourceforge.net/projects/gimpdbpplugin/
which I use all the time and is a viable user-friendly option.
Oh dear–it is in fact David’s Batch plugin that I have direct experience with. My profuse apologies for the error. I can’t vouch for the other one, though it appears to have a great deal of the same functionality.
LOL! I love the confusion caused by acronyms. Anyway - message received and understood - I shall fire up GIMP, and investigate David’s BIMP and then take to the air in my BLIMP. Seriously, though, this forum is excellent - I always get a constructive reply and the folks who inhabit it are great to deal with.
Thanks, Joel, for the tip about the Private Window. I may have to come back and ask you some more once I experiment with it - hope that’s OK. By the way, should I start a new discussion to cover that?
I’m going to start a new discussion called “Private Windows” in the Module Design section. Hope to see you there.