Rhode Island Deck Plans

[Dan Stack]

Darn, this is what I get for not downloading the Rhode Island plans...

Sorry to hear about the problems.

[Publius]

If you need me to email them Dan (or any others in a similar situation) up until the website comes back up, send me an email message. I'm hoping that the site comes back up sometime soon and don't want to send out dozens of emails, but if you were planning on using the plans in your next game or whatever I'd be happy to help out. The Zip file is about a half meg, so make sure that you can handle a file of that size.

Something I just noticed when I checked out those files in the Zip: When I save something as a Gif from my multi-platform graphics viewer program (IrFanView) it screws up the White, making it not-quite-white (slightly green). Anyone know of a better way to do this (Paint has a horrific time saving siles as gifs too) because I like gifs for this stuff better than jpegs.

[Tobian]

http://www.xnview.com/

Xn view is also free and quite good too- and it supports a plethora of formats.

How do you make up your intial images? Is there no export as GIF feature there?

[Publius]

I use Illustrator, but not to save as Gifs. I usually have the whole ship literally on a single file, along with other versions and "stuff" on the sides that I have pulled off, copied etc. Since Illustrator's "save as Gif" saves everything in the file, that would lead to huge files. If I wanted to save each deck individually as .ia (illustrator) file this solution would work better, but it is then harder to make changes to the decks and such (I fiddle with these images a lot). Altogether, this is a suggestion I might consider in the future once I think I am "done" with them (which may never happen).

As to how I construct the images I post: Generally, I copy the deck image I want in Illustrator (Ctr+C), then paste into Irfanview (Ctr+V), then save in Irfanview as a different file format (jpeg, gif, tif etc). Irfanview has been very very good to me, I like how it operates and everything, but it is just that the gifs it saves for me have that greeny tint to them, no matter how I set the "quality". Thus the question.

I'll give Xnview a try, it might work better for this, thanks for the link Tobian.

[Tobian]

Publis - can't you just select the parts you want - and use export - save them as TIFF's or whatever, then open them in your editor of choice and export as GIF's ?

[Publius]

Not in Illustrator 9.0 unfortunately. I can maybe save something I select as cad files, targa files and a couple of other files I don't really recognize (smattered with a few I do like JPEG, which I don't really want because of the color distortions). When I tried to actually do this just now the program said the image was too complex (which indicates to me that it was not trying to save what I had selected but the entire thing). Maybe there is some setting I am missing on the program which would allow me to do this; I button monkey my way through programs like this rather than actually read the manual which I don't really have anyway ('tho I'd rather not say why)

Actually, I tried to save some test files at the office with that viewer program you sent the address to and with some dinking around on the settings, I was able to get some good results. The colors weren't exactly the same (the red for example came out in a kind of deep pink) but it had a white background rather than a greenish tinted white background, so I was very happy. Thanks again for the link.

[Tobian]

Well that sounds better I guess.

Ok having done a quick check to see I wasn't imagining it...

I am assuming here you have one very long page with each 'deck' one after another right?

Well the solutuion is simple....

Ok it might not be. Have you organised each deck onto a seperate layer? If you have this part becomes a cake walk, as all you do is hide all of the things you don't want (selecting 7 whole layers is easier than manually going through a jumble) (I.e. the 'eye' on the layers pallette) - select 'save for web' - and the image will ONLY show you what you currently have visible on screen - not every drawing. It will also auto clip the image around that too!

I use Illustrator 9 on my MAC at work too - and that does it that way, I'm sure it'll be the same on a PC version if you have that.

if you 'export' the image - it uses all the outline - but then you can load it into XN veiew and chop it, but at least it isn't trying to export everything, just the visible layers!

File formats which will work for you in the export dialogue (if you were to do it that way) would be:
Amiga IFF
BMP
Macintosh PICT
Photoshop (PSD)
Tagra(TGA)
TIFF

they are all bitmap formats that XNview shouldn't have a problem with. The SWF format is a nice one too, because you could just save the whole thing as a flat flash movie - then people can print them out at any scale (it's a vector format!)

[Publius]

I don't deal with layers, the construction of these plans are far too messy for that (blame my generally messy style I guess). Plus, I haven't button monkeyed that yet. I also have no idea about using/programming/creating things with Flash, someday maybe, but I haven't done anything with it as of yet. As far as the other formats, I try to keep the images as Gifs because Gifs are better with maintaining the colors than other 'standadr' formats (although there is a shift in the hue objects remain a solid -off- color rather than a cluster of pixels with slightly different colors) they (Gifs) tend to be smaller as well (at least for this). Thank you nevertheless for the suggestions, I may try to incorporate layers into subsequent plans I do.

BTW, the website is back up (finally).

[Tobian]

You can add layers any time you want - and you can show and hide any object with or without layers - just open your layers pallette - and click on 'create new layer' - and start dragging a bunch of stuff in there.. it's all dead easy and drag and drop. It's the nicest feature in Illustrator - you can rearange all the objects visually without having to constantly go "Send to back" etc. you can also do a quick 'copy and paste in place' by simply dragging an object onto the new yaler button and it's instantly duplocated - saving you having to CTRL C CTRL V - then move it where you want...

All 'layers' are are sort of like using 'group' but without that nasty group effect (i.e. you click on one object, and you get them all!!) They are far handier even than in Photoshop - because each of the objects still remains editable within the layer - it's just that they are much better organised.

With the 'export to flash' it just creates a flat SWF file - you can just embed it in a web page without having / owning or knowing how to operate FLASH.

Yes a GIF is a highly optimised image format and suitable for what you want: and also good for the web (the obvious choice) but I was just saying you could use the other formats - and convert them to GIF - your application can do that. (Irfanview or XNView).

If you need any help with Anything, just give me a Buzz.

[Publius]

Thanks for the help Tobian, I appreciate it very much. I think I'll avoid messing with layers for the moment though until I have enough free time to suss my way through it.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I have updated the site a bit, I have larger versions of the Rhode Island Plans (I also fixed the hull-facing door problem). I sized them up 150% so that you can better make details out (prints better too on most printers). The only problem really is the fact that the staterooms that I "draw" using brushes now have 1.5 thickness lines, and they look a little bit funny. I might sit down, resize the originals and replace all of them one day coming up, but I'm not in a real big hurry to do that at the moment.

On a sidenote, I have also posted my (preliminary) ground base plans. The design is modular, and I will be posting a complete base plan using them sometime soon. I just figured that I have been sitting on them for a while now and they were just kind of sitting their inert on my harddrive.

150% Rhode Island Plans:
http://www.digitalindalo.com/rpg/trek/new_design.html

Ground Base Preliminaries:
http://www.digitalindalo.com/rpg/trek/groundframe.htm

[Tobian]

Very nice Publis, I'll have to download a copy for myself this time!

Not exactly sure how the whole brushes with lines in it thing works - but there is a setting in the preferences to 'scale strokes and effects' - that might be having an effect - of course you are scaling them which is probably why it's happening. Probably best to get the original brish - upscale it by 150% - make sure the lines are right, then make it a new brush - and apply it to your line instead of the other one.

[Publius]

Yeah, that's what I meant when I said: "I might sit down, resize the originals [referring to the staterooms mentioned in the sentence before] and replace all of them one day coming up, but I'm not in a real big hurry to do that at the moment." It is a tedious process however, thus my not really wanting to get to it anytime soon. I'd rather wait and see if there are any other errors in the drawings (like the stateroom facing the hull last time) and then do everything all at the same time.

[krijger]

Originally posted by Publius
[B]Just wanted to let everyone know that I have updated the site a bit, I have larger versions of the Rhode Island Plans (I also fixed the hull-facing door problem). I sized them up 150% so that you can better make details out (prints better too on most printers).

Hi Publius,
will you also update the original Nova Plans (and upsize them)??

[IceGiant]

Looks good Publius.
I havn't fine toothed combed it yet but I did notice a problem with decks 3 &4(when I downloaded them). Deck 3 I think I fixed by printing on 81/2 x 14. But deck 4 seems to be actually smaller than the original. They both looked fine on your site, but are smaller when i dwonload them and print them. The other decks appear to be fine. Wondering if it's just me or possibly something else.

[Publius]

Deck 4 (150%) is 2021x1090 pixels, check what you downloaded and see if this is the same figure. When I rightclick>properties the image this is what it gives me.
The original was 1348x734 pixels.

Or do you mean it looked smaller when you printed them out? If so, I think both images are larger than standard page sizes, so either one of them will be shrunk down when printing them on one page.