Thus spake yangtze:
As you can see, the vast majority of the pieces in the module were
simply created within Vassal itself.
I see from examining the module that you used the Game Piece Images
facility to create the piece faces, rather than supplying the images
yourself—which makes the situation a bit different from what I’d
described originally.
What VASSAL is doing in this case is composing and producing the
images for you, based on parameters you specified. Neither GPI nor
user-supplied bitmaps are well-suited for producing images for
printing—if you wanted pieces images which were suitable for both
screen display and print media, you should have created them as SVG—
but, with GPI you might be able to adjust the images to get something
which is adequate for printing.
So, find out from your printer what DPI they want. For example, if they
say they will print at 600 dpi, then the image for the face of a 1/2"
piece should be 300x300px. Right now, you have your pieces set to be
54x54px. To get piece faces which will be 1/2" at 600 dpi, you need to
set the size to be 300x300 and then multiply all of the font sizes by
600/54. That might get you something which looks acceptible, or it
might still look crappy. But that’s the best you can do without redoing
the pieces.
I’m not an expert in computer graphics and have no conceptions about
them at all, I’m simply reporting what Superior POD have told me. They
say the images I sent, which were screenprints of Vassal, were at 72dpi
and they need ‘larger’ images, whatever that means, in order to create
readable hard copy. I have no idea how to create ‘larger’ images from
Vassal.
I have attached an example of the files I sent them.
Here’s their email if it’s any help: "I apologize that I didn’t get back
to you. I spoke with Jeff and he said that because the images you were
starting with were web images, there is not a way to increase the dpi.
Most, if not all, web images are at 72 dpi.
I should point out here that even professional printers can be confused
or don’t communicate very well about these things: Bitmaps being “at 72
dpi” is literally nonsense, because dpi is not a feature of the images
themselves, but rather the medium in which they’re rendered. The only
thing they could mean here is that most web images are intended for
display at 72 dpi—and that itself is dubious, since the only screens
which ever were at 72 dpi were old Macs which largely predate the web.
If you check your screen, you’ll likely find that its actual resolution
is significantly more than 72 dpi. (The one I’m using now is 96 dpi,
e.g.)
What the printer is really telling you is that you need to supply more
pixels in each dimension if you want decent-looking printing at the
fixed absolute size you’re asking for.
–
J.