*** May Super Challenge - Minimalist for Virtual Tabletop - WITH PRIZES!!!

[Robbie]

The trick is going to be to either highly compress the image or use colors/patterns that compress well. I really don't think its going to be that difficult to keep your map within parameters.

[ravells]

Arcana - is there a way of finding out which colours / patterns compress well?

[Robbie]

specific colors don't matter...its number of color choices and low-detail patterns that compress well.if you have a map with a lot of color in it, its goign to wash out when you compress it...whereas if you map with less colors, it wont' have as much detail to lose.

[Midgardsormr]

Arcana - is there a way of finding out which colours / patterns compress well?

PNG compresses grid-like patterns quite well. Its algorithm looks at repetition both horizontally and vertically. Angled and curved lines do not compress well, nor do gradients and blurs. GIF behaves much the same way, except it only looks at horizontal patterns, so it's strictly inferior to PNG for compression purposes.

If you duplicate an object, you can maximum savings by only moving the duplicate in an orthogonal direction (on a line perpendicular to the original) and not rotating it.

Here's how the PNG compression works: The algorithm catalogues the entire image, finding patterns that are repeated. Those patterns are entered on a hash table, which associates each pattern with a much shorter "key." The key is then inserted into the image file in place of the original pattern. The hash table is then appended to the compressed file.