Game Box Creation - Image Files
| Game Box Creation edit | |
About Images
Game Box images consist of the map board, the stock market and various tile and token sheets. This page discusses the creation of these image files for a game box.
The preferred format for all game box image files is Portable Network Graphics (.png). An image to png converter can be found here.
Some Good Sources Of 18xx Images
- Keith Thomasson on the Web Keith has given me permission to use his graphics.
Note that some games listed on the Game Boxes page already have source files uploaded from Keith's site to this WIKI.
- Some images can be copied [with difficulty] from Cyberboard game boxes. If you know of an easy way to access these images, please let me know.
- If you know of other sources, please let me know.
Map Images
Stock Market Images
Templates
Some stock chart templates can be found in the buildingBlocks/images/stock directory of the game box repository. I suggest starting with the stockgrid.ods file. Use LibreOffice Calc to add price values to the grid boxes and export it as a .pdf file. Then import it into the GIMP Image Editor and cut away the unneeded boxes and add colors, etc. Save the resulting image as a .png file and there you are.
Tile Sheet Images
You may want to read this paragraph for a better idea of what a tile sheet should look like.
Templates
The tile sheet templates are in the "buildingBlocks/images/6 x 16 hex" directory of the game box repository. Read the Info.txt file in this directory for the specs on the supplied templates.
Keith Thomasson Tile Graphics
The Keith Thomasson tile graphics are structured somewhat like tile sheets but the scale is different and the tiles are not arranged in exactly the correct way. Thus you will first have to chop up the graphic into color sections and then piece together some of them to make tile sheets. Be sure to preserve the exact inter column spacing when joining two graphics.
After the sheet is pieced together, you will have to convert the white background to transparent. Be sure that the white holes in the city tiles are not transparent.
Finally the scale of the sheet must be adjusted to meet the BOARD18 specification. The horizontal and vertical scaling are not the same [that is: the aspect ratio will change]. The scaling factor for the width of the image is 100/70. The scaling factor for the hight of the image is 116/70.
Token Sheet Images
The image on the right should provide a good idea of what a token sheet should look like.
Lifting Tokens from Cyberboard
To make the 1870 token sheet, I displayed the tokens from a 1870 Cyberboard game box and took screen shots of them. It took 3 screens to get them all. I then cropped the screen shots and stitched together this Token Sheet. I had to be careful to keep the spacing between tokens consistent. The resulting tokens had a diameter of 44 pixels so I scaled the sheet with a factor of 30/44. I then made the background transparent.