This tutorial explains how to produce "birds-eye view" pictures that show your entire map in a single image as well as how to prepare them for uploading to our forums.  Better still, you can do this in Microsoft Paint which is supplied as standard with most versions of Windows.

Submitted by WitchHazel, Bill_the_Brave, Earl_Listibald, Dragonheart_Killer, Aubergine

Note: Although this tutorial is based o­n using Microsoft Paint, the same general technique will work in most other image editors.

In-Game Preparation

To get the best results you need to do a few things from within the game (either while playing a map or editing a map) as follows:

• Remove the control panel (that appears at the bottom of the screen) by pressing the "Tab" key (usually the key with two arrows facing different directions above your "Caps Lock" key).  You can get it back later o­n by pressing the Tab key again.
• Zoom the camera out as far as possible so that you get as much of the map o­n screen as possible.

Process Overview

Before we dive in to the rest of the tutorial, here's a quick overview of the process...

As you can see from the picture above, our "birds-eye view" picture is actually made from multiple screen grabs, which we'll be referring to as "images".  In the example above, 4 images were used to create our big picture.  Images are overlapped o­ne o­n top of another to create the big picture.

Now, you need to work out what order to create the images...

Image Order

Normally you would take the image starting at the top-left of your map (image 1 in the picture above).  However, if you have a "Time until last battle" or other status messages you don't want them to appear more than o­nce in your big picture.

In cases where you need to hide status messages, take the bottom images first (2 and 3), then the top-right image (4 ) and finally the top-left image (1).  You will use images 4 and 1 to overlap (and therefore hide) the status messages in images 2 and 3 and you will use image 1 to overlap the status message in image 4.  Obviously, image 1 would have to overlap much more of image 4 and in some cases you might need to take another screen grab of the top-center of the map in order to do this.

Taking the First Image

To take your first image, move to the appropriate place o­n your map (as discussed above) and then press the "Print Screen" key (sometimes known as things like "PrtScn" or "Prt Sc", etc).  This will copy whatever is o­n the screen at that time in to the Windows Clipboard.

Now, switch to Windows by pressing "Alt" + "Tab" and open Microsoft Paint (usually found under the accessories section in your "Start" menu).

From the Image menu, click o­n "Attributes..." to show the image attributes window:

Click the "Default" button to set the default settings, then click "OK".

From the Edit menu, click "Paste" to insert your first image.

Once this is done, go back to the Image menu and click o­n "Attributes..." again and you will see the actual size of the image you just pasted in:

You will need to multiply the width by two and the height by two because we will be creating a picture that is two images wide by two images high.  You should then increase the width and height values a bit more so that you have some extra room with which to reposition images.

Tip: You can use the Calculator program to do these calculations - it can be found under the Start menu in the "Accessories" section.

In our case, the calculations were as follows:

Width: 800 x 2 = 1600, then add 50 = 1650
Height: 600 x 2 = 1200, then add 50 = 1250

After updating the width and height in the Attributes dialog, click the "OK" button to make your changes take effect.  You should now notice that there is a big white space to the right and also below your image.

Move the first image to the appropriate corner of your picture.

Well, that's our first image added to our big picture, now we need to save it!  From the File menu, click o­n "Save as..." and then give it whatever name you want:

In our case (shown above) we have called the file "Big Picture" and used the "Save as type" setting for "24-bit Bitmap".

Adding Remaining Images

To add the remaining images, you need to use the following process...

In Microsoft Paint, select the "Selection" tool o­n the toolbar (it looks like a rectangle with a dashed line), then draw a box o­n your picture where you want the next image to go.  It doesn't have to be big, it's just used as a guide for the next image.

Press "Alt" + "Tab" to go back to the game and reposition the map for your next screen-grab.

Note: You need to ensure that there is a little overlap between this image and any previous images otherwise you will get gaps between images in your big picture.

Press the "Print Screen" key to copy the screen to the Windows Clipboard

Press "Alt" + "Tab" to go back to Windows.

From the "Edit" menu in Microsoft Paint, select "Paste" as shown below:

This will paste the new image in to your big picture at the location where you made the selection rectangle as shown below:

Next, you need to overlap the new image over the previous image(s).  Move your mouse over the new image and then click and drag it so that it overlaps the previous image.

This will take some practice to get just right but o­ne way to make things easier is to look for some key feature like a wall or building to use as a guide.

From the File menu, click "Save" to store the latest changes to your big picture.

Repeat this process to add as many other images as are reqiured for your big picture and remember to save after adding each image.

Resizing the Big Picture

To make the image easier to work with and also reduce it's file-size, you need to resize your big picture after you have added all the images to it.

From the Image menu, click o­n "Stretch/Skew" as shown below:

Reduce the top two numbers (Horizontal and Vertical stretch) to about 40% - you may need to experiment with this depending o­n the size of your big picture.

Click the "OK" button to apply the changes.

Note: Most other image editing programs refer to this process as "Resize" rather than "Stretch".

Cropping the Big Picture

In many cases, you will want to either tidy up the border around your image or possibly chop away some edges of the picture that are not interesting.  This process is known as "Cropping".

Click the "Selection" button o­n the toolbar and then draw a dashed-line box around the part of the image you want to keep.

Once you are happy with your selection, go to the Edit menu and then click "Cut" - this will copy everything in the dashed selection box in to the Windows Clipboard.

At this stage, you might want to make o­ne last save of your big picture in it's current form - if you do, just save in the usual manner.

The Final Stage

From the File menu, click "New" to create a new, blank image.

You might be asked if you want to save chages to your current picture - it's up to you what you answer.

Now, when the new image is created, go to the Image menu and click "Attributes...".

Click o­n the "Default" button to set default settings and then click o­n "OK" to make the changes.

From the Edit menu, choose "Paste" and this will insert your cropped image in to the new picture.

Finally, it's time to save our cropped image.

From the File menu, click "Save As...".  It's up to you if you give the picture a new name, but most important of all is it's image type - it has to be a JPEG image in the "Save as type" box:

Checking the File Size

In order to upload a picture to our forums, it needs to be 100Kb or less in file size.  So, to check what the file size is, open Windows Explorer and go to the directory/folder where you saved your image, then click o­n the image:

If you have a details panel o­n the left, the "Size" shows how big your image is.  If you hover the mouse over the image file, you will get a tool-tip showing what the image "Size" is.

Should your image be too big to upload to our forums, open it in Microsoft Paint and then use the "Stretch/Skew" option to shrink it's size down some more and re-save it.

Once the image is small enough, you can upload it as a file attachment in o­ne of your posts in our forums:

Final Notes

You can of course make a full scale map picture using this method, but you will need to calculate the attributes sizes, both width and height, according to how many images you need to take!

All pictures taken in Brave Sir Robin's invasion map Special Brew.

See Also

• Guide to Uploading Pictures to our Forums
• Taking Screen-Grabs and Uploading to the Forums