Avatar size too small

redhotsonic · Post by **redhotsonic** » 2012-04-02, 1:05:52

The avatar must be 10kb or less? Seriously, but that's too small. Make it at least 100KB please. Can hardly load anything at 10KB

Cheers
redhotsonic

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-02, 1:50:51

I am always open to suggestions, but 100kB for an avatar is way too much.
Actually, as of now, there are 4 people whose avatars are smaller than 1kB: DalekSam (418 bytes), Sonic of 8 (447 bytes), ValleyBell (589 bytes), and Sik (1014 bytes).
I decided to enforce strict rules about avatars to keep the forum nice and readable.
And yes, Oerg's avatar is slightly taller than the limit, but it's a rare exception.

Post by **ValleyBell** » 2012-04-02, 9:02:28

9,040 bytes (still too tall, but smaller than 10 KB)

You need to convert it to 256 colors, that cuts the size to 1/3.
Also the alpha channel was very granulative in transparent areas, increasing the size again.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-02, 10:04:52

Yes, it's still over the 120×120 limit, but it's acceptable enough so I will grant an exception if you want to use that one. However I will crop it on the sides (not a big deal, it's empty anyway), since it's 146 pixels wide right now, and anything over 144 stretches the forum layout. I wrote 120×120 in the rules to be safe, but I don't mind the occasional exception, as long as it's narrower than 144 pixels, and not too tall.

redhotsonic · Post by **redhotsonic** » 2012-04-04, 20:17:12

It's your forum so it's your rules, but 100KB is nothing. It's 2012, everyone has broadband by now and 100kb is going to do nothing to their bandwidth. When there's other forums out there that you can upload upto 500kb, 800kb, even 1MB, I think 100kb is very reasonable.

120x120 pixels seems fair enough though.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-05, 2:53:03

Oh, it's not about bandwidth, believe me, it's a design choice. Limits are what make you more creative, everyone can have a fancy shiny avatar if no limits are in place, but see, this place is all about old games, from the 80s and the 90s, where musicians and artists made their best efforts to create awesome music and awesome graphics with the few resources available to them. By enforcing low limits I actually wanted to encourage people to be creative in the same way and use small sprites as avatars, just like the ones used in those games for example. I didn't tell anyone until now, but a quick glance at the memberlist makes me feel happy, since more than one person chose an avatar that fits well with this forum's theme. Even I sometimes change between my usual avatar (Kamineko, the gray cat from Azumanga Daioh) and the one I'm using now (Nadja Arle, the beautiful girl from Madou Monogatari).

That said, don't be as drastic as saying that this is my forum so there are my rules. I stated this more than once: this is a place where everyone should be welcome and treated like a friend. Exceptions can be made and will be made whenever it's possible to make someone happy without going too far (as I said, for example, I don't mind an avatar slightly larger than 120 pixels, but I will never accept one larger than 144 because it actually stretches the forum structure, and yes, I know it can be resized, I even have the php code to do that dynamically, but I don't want to resize pixel art, it would look like crap). If you wanted to join a forum with tyrannic admins that think of you as an annoying filthy slave who dares to post on their elitistic forum, always ready to say no (when they are in a good mood) or ban you straight away (when they're in their normal mood), then you are in the wrong place, this is not tasvideos. You are not an user here, you are a friend, like every other one.

So please, post a link to the avatar of your choice, and I'll see what I can do

redhotsonic · Post by **redhotsonic** » 2012-04-05, 20:23:57

Tom wrote:Oh, it's not about bandwidth, believe me, it's a design choice. Limits are what make you more creative, everyone can have a fancy shiny avatar if no limits are in place, but see, this place is all about old games, from the 80s and the 90s, where musicians and artists made their best efforts to create awesome music and awesome graphics with the few resources available to them. By enforcing low limits I actually wanted to encourage people to be creative in the same way and use small sprites as avatars, just like the ones used in those games for example.

I see, that makes sense. But may I throw a suggestion that if this is the case, you may want to make it slightly bigger than 10kb still as it's too small. 25kb will still make people creative, but they will have more design choices. Yet still limits people from throwing in any avatar.

With 10kb, it won't make many people creative, it will make them think (like I did), "10kb? I won't bother with an avatar then".

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-06, 0:10:43

Fair enough, I can see your point, and that is a valuable suggestion. However, remember that even a complete 320x224 screenshot can fit below a 10kB limit, for example:

(10209 bytes < 10240)

You should never get anywhere near that limit if you do things right; that said, I raised the size limit to 15kB, and I raised the width limit to 144 pixels since that's the real limit anyway. Let's see how things will turn out.

Oerg866 · Post by **Oerg866** » 2012-04-06, 10:45:49

Tom, you should enable the feature to load avatars from external URLs without that kind of limit....

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-06, 10:53:39

I disabled that feature actually because of that limit, as it would give us almost no control on what people link to. By allowing external avatars, one might link to something that fits within the limits, and then replaces the file afterwards. By forcing people to upload avatars here, we'll never have to deal with images that break the rules. Again, I know the avatars can be resized in real time with a simple php code, but I don't want to resize pixel art, it would look bad.

However, I'll contact you privately to discuss something related to this.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-04-20, 10:04:30

Tom wrote:Limits are what make you more creative

Relevant:
http://xkcd.com/1045/ (today's xkcd)