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Post by bravesirkevin on May 12, 2017 16:56:39 GMT -9
I believe you need a minimum of $50 earned on OBS before you can transfer it to PayPal. There are three payment methods to choose from. You can be paid monthly by cheque or PayPal if you have the required minimum in your earnings on closing day, but the third option is to directly transfer money to PayPal at any time. For the third option, you can choose exactly how much to pay out. Doing this costs $1.
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Post by bravesirkevin on May 12, 2017 12:02:14 GMT -9
Thanks Kev for the update. I hope to do something similar sometime in the future but not now. I have the same requirements in the sense that I turning on one layer would mean to turn off a group of others, but for not that has to be done manually :-) In terms of file optimizations I have also found that minimizing each image where it is possible makes a huge difference. I even lower resolution for layers where it is not important, like dirt effects. I know in these days file sizes are not that much of an importance (with people streaming GB of movies each day) but I still try to make the as compact as possible. Acrobat Pro's optimisation is a little more fancy than that, and it's also automatic. You just need to set the options and hit the button and it does everything for you. It does compress all the images nicely, and also compresses the entire PDF after that, often reducing the file size down to a tiny fraction of the uncompressed PDF. It will embed any fonts if it needs to, ensuring that the end user doesn't need to have their own copy of the font. It also strips out all duplicate images, and automatically trims all images down, cropping any pixels outside of clipping paths and so on, as well as downsampling any images that have more resolution than required. It strips out any data that doesn't need to be there, including all metadata that could accidentally reveal personally identifiable information about you or your computer, to unscrupulous hackers out there. That feature alone makes Acrobat Pro worthwhile, but there are quite a few other advantages too. You have quite a lot of control over things like the layers and the bookmarks, and can control whether a layer is printable (which is helpful if you want to have fancy stuff on the screen but still save ink for your customers). You can also lock the PDF to prevent tampering, which is useful in a lot of ways, even though I never use it on my papercraft sets because I don't want to discourage kitbashing.
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Post by bravesirkevin on May 12, 2017 9:07:14 GMT -9
Not to distact too much from the main topic, and perhaps using Acrobat Pro to make PDFs is better, but I've found that Acrobat reader will draw the whole region of a layer, whether the pixels are transparent or not, and this kills performance. I used to be lazy since most PDFs I ever make are not very interesting, and it's easier to align a bunch of 8.5x11" images than it is to properly position a bunch of tiny images. But I found that for a LOT of layers, minimizing the size of each image on a layer is hugely important for performance. I've found the same, and my newer PDFs are designed with that in mind. The Slice tool in Photoshop is actually quite helpful in this regard. PDFs were never intended for the sort of abuse that we put them through, which is probably why Acrobat doesn't perform optimally. One of the more frustrating things is that there's a delay as it cycles through each of the deactivated layers almost as bad as the delay when it has to render an activated one, which is clearly indicative that they've opted for an extremely inefficient approach and sadly, there's not much we can do about that (short of keeping the layers and customisation options down to a minimum), but I've found that the progress bar thing makes the delay a little less excruciating, because it actually shows that something is happening while you wait.
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Post by bravesirkevin on May 12, 2017 8:18:27 GMT -9
I know that Marshall, printableheroes, does beautiful, easy-to-use PDFs that handle layers with buttons that cycle through available options, much like bravesirkevin's PDFs. I assume that they are both using some Javascript to make that happen. I do create my PDFs by exporting a layered PDF from Illustrator. I only use Acrobat Pro to set up my javascript buttons and to optimise the PDF before shipping. Acrobat Pro is an essential part of my workflow however, just for those two vital functions. I don't need fancy javascript for the progress bars at all. It just exploits the way that acrobat draws the layers sequentially from the bottom up. If you look at any of the Deluxe edition mini sets I released last year, or the Meadow tiles set, you'll see it in action. I do use some really complicated Javascript to do the interactivity though. Having a button to turn a layer on or off is not that complex, but quite often my configs require turning two layers on or off simultaneously, and that's a little trickier. In the Brotherhood sets, clicking a button might turn 4 or 5 layers on, while turning 4 or 5 other layers off. If you had to go into the acrobat layers panel, you could manually turn the layers on and off, but you'd get weird results. The "Random" buttons in my Deluxe sets have well over 500 lines of code. That's especially true of the ones in the Meadow and Constables on Patrol sets, because in those sets certain combinations are a lot more aesthetically pleasing than others, so I coded them specifically to try and randomly generate those more beautiful configurations slightly more frequently, and the uglier configs a lot less frequently.
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Post by bravesirkevin on May 11, 2017 13:42:14 GMT -9
What kind of progress bar? For opening the file? I have no idea how to add any logic to a pdf. I have seen some of you making these selection menus that turn layers on and off but have no idea how and where that is done. The file opens quick... it just takes ages to draw each layer, and even if the layer isn't on then it still delays the drawing process. The way I do the progress bar is to add a frame of the progress bar animation into every 10th or 15th layer so as it draws the layers, the progress bar seems to go up until it's finished drawing all the layers.
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Post by bravesirkevin on May 10, 2017 18:23:37 GMT -9
I am running a lot of layers already. Don't know how many I can add more before the file becomes a monster in terms of usability ... I try to stay below 50, but I've gone up to 200 on the Brotherhood sets. It's frikking slow but it works, and I decided it was worth it for the flexibility in that case. The Meadow set also has an insane amount of layers... well over 100. When I do go overboard like that, I generally try to add some sort of progress bar to let people know that it is still working.
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Post by bravesirkevin on May 5, 2017 5:10:32 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 23, 2017 16:43:15 GMT -9
This week's free paper mini is a special recolour of one of the minis from a brand new set of Snake Men that we'll be launching in a few days! Here's the Ophidian Hunter!
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 16, 2017 13:12:54 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 13, 2017 17:23:15 GMT -9
Still not sure what is meant If you are referring to the darker "ring" in the inside, this is meant to be the shadow from the tent. The lighter circle in th emiddle is where the light is shining through. I can skip it if it confuses. What he meant was that the darker ring (ie. the cast shadow) would only need to be there on spots that were being used as the interior of tents. On tiles that meant to mark the former location of a tent that had been taken down there wouldn't be a shadow because there is no tent to cast the shadow. mproteau (Paper Realms) was just saying that there's no need to get rid of the shadow because the dark ring doesn't necessarily need to represent a shadow and could just be a sign that that outer ring of ground got stepped on more than the inner circle and so it doesn't look out of place even on the abandoned spots.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 9, 2017 8:52:55 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 1, 2017 5:36:36 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 30, 2017 8:08:33 GMT -9
Over here, if you weigh 90 you're really, really heavy! I certainly hope you don't mean kilograms... :S That would make me obese, as I weigh 93. That would depend on how tall you are... it's a perfectly healthy weight for someone who's about 190cm tall.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 27, 2017 4:05:41 GMT -9
Over here, if you weigh 90 you're really, really heavy!
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 26, 2017 14:32:03 GMT -9
In my part of the world they abandoned the imperial units ages ago and we were only ever taught metric, and so I only know imperial units because I played DnD as a kid. There are only a handful of things that we use the "old measurements" for... for example, we measure beer in pints and quarts (and not very accurately at that, a pint is of beer is 500ml if it's from a tap, and 333ml if it's in a bottle; a quart is 675ml). By virtue of the fact that clothing is imported from places that export primarily to the US and UK, it's quite common to measure body parts in inches as well, but most folks around here don't even realise that it's going on. They just assume that 32 on their jeans is just some sort of jeans size code. We also have an odd tendency to describe our heights in feet rather than in metres, which is probably because of TV... we'll measure it in meters and then convert it because we're weird like that.
It's next to impossible to find a ruler or tape measure that has inches on it... If it weren't for the Games Workshop tape measure I bought for use in playing Warhammer, I wouldn't be able to measure inches directly at all.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 26, 2017 11:19:08 GMT -9
After downloading, printing and making this week's free paper mini, your heroes can stand in the presence of royalty!
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 18, 2017 7:15:46 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 12, 2017 6:46:59 GMT -9
New Free Paper Mini! The Countess hails from the gloomy lands beyond the mountains. The superstitious peasants of that dark land will tell tales of tortured screams coming from her castle at night and claim that she drinks the blood of innocents to preserve her unnatural beauty, but what do superstitious peasants know?
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 9, 2017 7:31:55 GMT -9
You know, it doesn't actually need to fold flat to get compact storage. People are still going to store it in a box, so a little bit of bulk is bearable. If the walls of this fold flat, but the roof doesn't, I think you'll be okay.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 6, 2017 17:52:34 GMT -9
Looking great!
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 5, 2017 5:24:11 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 25, 2017 13:21:14 GMT -9
There's definitely a degree of mystery about how OBS handles bundle pricing. I've found the same as others have mentioned here, that when checking-out a bundle price from which I already have one or more items, I get a further reduction noted - so in other words, I'm not paying for the item(s) I already own again. I suspect that if you're logged-in to whichever part of OBS you're on, because the system automatically flags up every product you've bought from them, that this too is probably an automatic system, because it recognises which products you already own. However, I mentioned some time ago elsewhere on the CWF, during the Winter Offensive Sale on Wargame Vault this year, SkeletonKey Games were discounting many individual items, but several of their bundle prices were no longer discounted at all. And checking again today, that's still the case. Yet weirdly, the text on the page tells you both the full and discounted prices, with the percentage you're saving. Only the price you'll pay is the full one shown at the top of the page! OBS doesn't dynamically price the bundles... When a publisher sets up the bundle, they have to manually list a bundle price for each item, so the discount is kinda baked in. It might be that they chose to exclude the bundle from the sale in order to encourage folks to buy the individual items which were only discounted once, and the automation over at OBS didn't know how to handle the scenario properly.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 24, 2017 12:07:01 GMT -9
Bundles are generally intended for customers who are discovering you for the first time... The idea is to encourage them to take a whole bunch of your stock at once instead of just taking the single pack that they stumbled across, so in most cases you wouldn't really get folks buying bundles if they've already got most of what's in there...
However, this does raise an interesting point... if the bundle price is automatically reduced because some products in it have already been purchased then the way you're pricing the bundles might be a problem. You've made all the products in your bundle free, except the one which you've set a $5.99. So if the purchaser already has the $5.99 one, then they might be getting the bundle for free, and if they have everything except the $5.99 one, then they might not be getting a discount at all.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 24, 2017 7:59:09 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 17, 2017 9:17:42 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 13, 2017 6:18:22 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 12, 2017 9:02:31 GMT -9
Two brand new sets freshly released! These paper minis sets are a follow on to our very popular cultist set, The Brotherhood! Each adds 6 brand new figures with a focus on rituals and ceremony and will really round out the cults you've created with the other sets! The "Brothers of the Fire: Sacraments" paper minis set keeps things simple and is cheap and cheerful with 6 beautifully detailed minis! The "Sacraments of the Brotherhood" paper minis set has a customization feature that allows for millions of possible unique combinations! This set will allow you to create the members of virtually any religious order you can imagine. Cutfiles coming soon!
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 12, 2017 8:59:01 GMT -9
Two brand new sets freshly released! These paper minis sets are a follow on to our very popular cultist set, The Brotherhood! Each adds 6 brand new figures with a focus on rituals and ceremony and will really round out the cults you've created with the other sets! The "Brothers of the Fire: Sacraments" paper minis set keeps things simple and is cheap and cheerful with 6 beautifully detailed minis! The "Sacraments of the Brotherhood" paper minis set has a customization feature that allows for millions of possible unique combinations! This set will allow you to create the members of virtually any religious order you can imagine. Cutfiles coming soon!
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 10, 2017 6:48:05 GMT -9
So the interior tent walls just have to be detailed enough to look good when you look at them from the outside, right? Yes
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 6, 2017 14:53:46 GMT -9
I'd say this forum is pretty active, considering... there are about 50 members that visit every day and we do actually have quite a few folks signing up to the forum. Maybe 5 to 10 a week. It's certainly more active than the facebook group, though a lot of folks who used to post regularly here have taken to just using that instead.
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