MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: *ORFFICIAL* MAMEWORLD LOGO THREAD

yo all im the one with too much time on his hands whos been doing a lot of the new mameworld logos (i think i made about 20 so far). i have been sending them directly to smitdogg whenever i make a new one

i can try to do some requests if anyone has any?

some tips if anyone wants to make some logos:

1. logo height can vary (note that 130 pixels is currently the size to make the logo fit perfectly in the logo area)

2. logo width can vary (personally i generally stick between 270 and 370 pixels)

3. admin prefer either PNG or GIF ... and not JPG

4. GIF is limited to 256 colours, so is not suitable for everything (if u want to make an animated GIF obviously your are stuck with GIF format and 256 colours .. however 256 colours is usually adequate anyway regarding arcade game gfx...)

5. for getting initial screenshots of a game, i first have a check of google images to see if what i want is there (and at a decent enough level of quality.. ie. not an overly compressed JPG)... otherwise, i use mame itself and the default F12 key to save a screenshot to the mame SNAP folder. for saving several screenshots in one session (eg. if i am wanting to make an animated GIF), i will pause the game first, take a screenshot, and then while leaving the game paused, browse to the mame SNAP folder, move/rename the saved screenshot to eg. 'frame1.png', then go back into mame, use the shift key with the pause key together to move forward one 'game frame' at a time, and take more screen grabs as necessary ... note: every time you press F12, you have to keep going back to the SNAP folder and move/rename the saved screenshots, or mame will overwrite the last file saved

6. when you have your final image, PNG and GIF can both be shrunk down in filesize. for PNG you can use the free software called PNG MONSTER which is found at ... http://www.vbgore.com/PNG_Monster ... note: you do not lose ANY image quality when using PNG MONSTER to shrink PNG images. for reducing GIF size, you can use the free service at ... http://www.gifreducer.com/ ... however you may lose quality if you try to shrink GIF's too much (you get a preview before saving anyway, so you can decide on the amount of reduction you are willing to accept, if any....)

7. to make animated GIF's, i use a small simple free program called UNFREEZ ... http://www.whitsoftdev.com/unfreez/ ... you simply drag GIF pictures (which then become frames of animation) into the main program window, and set the delay time in centiseconds (100th of a second) between each frame

8. for the total filesize regardless of if using a PNG, GIF, or animated GIF, i dont like to go over 70KB. admin might disagree and say they dont mind larger image files, but personally i try to stay under that amount anyway (so the images load faster on the webpage for one thing, plus it's easier on bandwidth).

9. i use two tools to make the logos. i use the free regular microsoft PAINT program under windows XP, and a free program called PAINT.NET ... www.getpaint.net/ ... which is very good for eg. high quality resizing of images, adding effects to images (soften, sharpen, smooth, etc)

10. a good place to get free fonts is ... http://www.1001freefonts.com/ ... the fonts are well laid out in categories with previews also (note: if i cant find what i need there i just use google searching instead...)

11. a free, decent and reliable place to upload pictures is ... http://tinypic.com/ ...