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03-08-2007, 10:26
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Old Alpha
  
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As the owner of the Gallery of Contemporary Arts i find it my responsibility to educate the comunity about this matter. I have recived many PM's with questions and as i had problems with the system myself i hope this guide will help all people trying to bring their art into the Universe.
a guide by MA is available at: http://www.entropiauniverse.com/en/rich/5234.html Step 1: Sign and Interaction 1.1 The first step you have to take in order to upload anything into the Universe is to obtain a medium onto wich you will upload. The following mediums are available Sign - Allows for static Images Screen - Images with transition efects, Bink video Display - Images with transition efects, Bink video with Sound! Any of the above with the extension (PC) in the name will work for participant content. I use Reon W/T/S Sign (PC) in my gallery. There are also other signs like X-lite or Visique ... W stands for wide T for tall and S for small, u can always check the aspect ratio of the screen to know what shape it is (discussed below) I havent experimented much with screens and displays yet but i guess as a rule of thumb if u follow my guidelines for the signs which i will discuss below the content will also work with screens and displays. 1.2 After obtaining the sign (5+10 PED sign from auction) you will have to place it in an ESTATE YOU OWN! be aware of this that you must own an appartment or house or shop or any other estate in order to be able to put your content onto a sign. Placing the Sign onto a public wall will not allow you ro interact with it only to pick it up... so you must own an estate to upload your content (250 PED for small appartment from MA auction). With the sign and appartment in your inventory you venture to place your sign down just to find out about more hidden fees... first u must pay appatment rent (10 PED for 1 months rent) then when u try to place the sign on the wall you realize that it must be repaired to 90% of tt before you are allowed to drop it (100 ped repair cost of sign ... 300 ped for display) When you repair your sign I advise to repair it to 90% of TT + cost of one add ... otherwise after u place the sign down add your content to it and try to move it u will again have to repair it to 90% 1.3 Once the Sign is placed down on your wall you will be able to interact with it ... You can create normal standard messages like with other signs or MA advertisement system if you ever used it  but now you want to upload your own images into it Right ? so how do we go about that ... press the folder icon on the Signs interaction menu... its called Participant content and you can also find it in your Action Library - System tab...Step 2: Participant Content System 2.1 Once you press the icon you will see a list with a few buttons on top... nothing in the list.. the list you see is a list of already uploaded images to the game... You havent uploaded anything so there is nothing there yet... By pressing the ARCHIVE button you will go to your archive directory on your local drive... very interesting thing and took me a few minutes to figure out... The directory should be located in: C:\Documents and Settings\your username\My Documents\Entropia Universe\Archive You should place the images you wish to upload in that directory to ba able to browse them from inside the game... havent tried making subdirectories but i doubt it will work lol There will be a PREVIEW button in the second window that opens ... you can use it together with ANY sign/screen/display you encouter in the universe to see how your image would look ingame... i suggest going to a shopping mall and trying out some encountered signs ... Note in preview mode only you will be able to see your image being displayed so u cant share it with others unless u take a screenie 2.2 After making sure the graphics looks good you can upload it to the Game Servers by pressing UPLOAD ... there is a fee for uploading images to the servers depending on image size (40-60 PED for static image upload fee in average):
2.3 Once the image is uploaded it will appear on the first list and u will be able to use it during sign add creation. To use the image when creating a advert on your sign (creation menu) you simpy choose it from the list of images to be displayed .. it is appended to the list at the end so i just advise clicking the left arrow instead of going through the 40 pre-uploaded MA images. The rest follows as in normal sign .. u can add text second image etc etc ... u click OK then pay add creation fee of (5-6 peds add fee ... thats why we repair 90% + add fee to be able to move the screen after making an add) and the sign will now display your image  Total cost of the process: Step 3: Image Specification 3.1 A lot of people have trouble understanding the image specifications MA made especialy that the image width and height must be of power of 2 size so i will explain why and how to do this.. The reason why MA requires us to create images of the size of power of two is because they are lazy programmers and GFX card work nice with textures of power of 2... their screens are aspect ratios 1:1 1:2 2:1 4:1 and its easy to have textures of power of two ... we can moan all we want but in the end we must comply with their rules and regulations -_-'' ... anyway for those who dont know what a power of 2 is let me explain 2 to the power of 3 (from here now on written as 2^3 ) is simply 2*2*2=8 ... the power operator tells us how many times we must multiply the number by itself to obtain the result... the follwing numbers are consecutive powers of two: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048 I end at 2048 because i found that to be the maximum size accepted by the system... 1 is also a power of 2 ... 2^0=1 .. in fact any number to the power of 0 is equal to 1... not sure about 0 tho ... hmm anyway lets not focus too much on mathematics  Just make sure your PIXEL count on the image width and height is one of those numbers and u will be on the safe side (if not the image wont display in the Archive view) 3.2 Aspect Ratio Every Sign has its aspect ratio specified in the description .. for an easy example Reon S has the aspect ratio 1:1 meaning width/1=height/1 (height and width are of the same lenght) other signs have other aspect ratios and you should make sure the image you upload fits correctly into the aspect ratio else it will be streched and wont look good... For example Reon W screen has the aspect ration 2:1 ... this means width/2=height/1 ... in other words width=2*height or simply its two times wider than it is taller ... to fit an image correcty into such frame you should use an image of the size 1024x512 for example or 512x256 etc... anything where width is twice as big as height ... I hope this will anwser a lot of questions... please post if you dont understand a part of the tutorial so i can explain further Best Regards Ido Sunrider Last edited by Ido; 10-27-2007 at 21:42. Reason: added link to MA info and filled in more detailed upload Values (as suggested by Kujo) |
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03-08-2007, 12:10
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Elite
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great guide, thanks for taking the time. (sry, cant rep)
one small point on cost which is really only 85ped, since the repaired tt value of the sign and the apartment can be recovered. |
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03-08-2007, 12:37
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Prowler
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Hi Ido, very good guide !
Just a question though: what graphic formats are available for uploading the images? (jpg, png, gif, bmp, tiff, ...) /jdegre. |
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03-08-2007, 12:41
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Prowler
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Great guide and thanks for making the cost transparent !!!
 It's quite harsh to see that in the end, uploading a few pixels costs you at least 25$ assuming you have the appartment... |
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SPU is now an official EU Community Website ! Visit the SPU website and join our forum  The original storyline of PE/EU from the old days can be found here! |
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03-08-2007, 12:47
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Old Alpha
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An added note on the placement of signs. Be careful placing them on outsides of houses because I've had a sign disappear into the wall. After I had placed it on an outside wall, the sign disappeared completely. I had to do some clever manuevering going inside the door of the house to grab the clickable name of the sign and then go around and pick it up from the inside of house through the wall. It was very difficult to pick up again and if your sign disappears, you may have to send in a support ticket to get it back.
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03-08-2007, 12:55
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Old Alpha
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Quote:
From what i remember the acceptable file formats are: .jpg .tga .... ... and one more which i havent heard of ever but it says its name if u click on the "?" button next to the "X" which noone usulay bothers to check the 3 formats should be listed there somwhere because i couldnt find that info on the entropia universe website....ohh and for vide its only Bink format Ido |
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03-08-2007, 12:58
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Old Alpha
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... wanted to warn all the newcomers who might be disapointed a sign they buy for 15 ped wont work ... like a few already have been due to hidden fees  Ido |
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