NationStates Jolt Archive

I've been trying to shrink my new and wonderful flag to 10k's, but it's virtually impossible (without making it rather ugly). How about raising the size limit to 20k's? I understand the need for keeping things small, since there are so many of us here, but would doubling the flag size make such a big difference? We're still only talking of a couple of gig for hundreds of thousands of users...

/M

I believe it has already been increased once in NationStates's time. I believe Sal said afterward that it would be extremely unlikely if it did it again.

And that hundreds of thousands of users kind of adds up, too...

120,944 nations x 10 extra GB per = almost 1.201 MB

- A pretty hefty chunk of my computer's storage space.

Flag size went from an official 6.5 kb to 10 kb at the time of the server move. Also, it's more than storage, it's bandwidth. Bandwidth charges are much more relevant than sotrage fees in these days of cheap drives.

There are other ways to reduce image sizes. Go read the Flag stickies and topics in Gameplay. If you haven't used Photoshop yet, you haven't begun to fight. Maybe someone there will help you, because it's a stone-cold certainty that they won't be increasing the size here anytime soon.

120,944 nations x 10 extra GB per = almost 1.201 MB

- A pretty hefty chunk of my computer's storage space.

1.2 MB is nothing. You've got your units mixed up. I believe what you meant was:

120,944 nations x 10 extra KB per = over 1.153 GB more than now, and potentially almost 2.307 GB total.

Yeah, sorry to be nit-picky, but I agree that is a lot of storage space for flags, though most harddrives now have a lot more than that. But like someone said, it might be more of a bandwidth issue than a storage one.

Data transfer is a bigger issue than storage space. Don't forget that with several hundred thousand page views a day, with a single view of a region potentially loading up 11 different flags, that's a lot of data being downloaded.

You should be able to get any flag to look good and fit under the 10kb mark. Hirt, send me a TG if you want to let me try to make it work.

Flag size went from an official 6.5 kb

Actually, the effective limit was around 5.5kb. I had to eliminate a frame from my flag's animation to make it fit.

As I stated in my original post, it's just a couple of Gigs, and doesn't people mostly use the standard flags anyway? These should just be referenced, and shouldn't add significantly to the size used (hopefully just a database entry or a soft link). The bandwith problem is more relevant I guess.

Anyway, I've tried minimizing the size in photoshop, but I'm not very good at it. Tiborita, I'd be happy for any help. Where would you like me to send it?

I'm not sure what your trying to save it as, but if it's a bitmap image (.bmp) then try saving it as a Gif image (.gif) or j-peg (.jpg).

The latter two tend to be smaller in size, and it's shrunk enough, it may just fit.

Alternatively, trying reducing the range of colour and detail used.

Edit - Just remembered, bitmaps don't work anyway.

Hirt, check your TGs.