Much ado about Backgrounds

[Suzuricho]

Hi there, Ren'Py forum.

I haven't really started coding yet because I'm the type of person that likes to have all my resources together, named, and sorted before I even want to touch the engine. I get frustrated unless I have things together first, because I don't want to stop once I get started!

*sigh* So! My question is about Backgrounds. What size is appropriate to show all of the image in Ren'Py? I don't want to have a lavish picture that's too big where you're supposed to see a large clearing in a forest surrounded by trees, but in the window you only see the immediate bottom foreground and it looks like the lawn has never been cut. Conversely, I don't want an image of say, a classroom that only fills the screen half-way! Is there a way to tell the system what size to accept properly?

Oh... another background question! Are pictures of a starry sky with constellations under copyright to someone? I ask because my story is set partially in space, and there's a LOT of looking at the sky from Earth - it's really central to the theme.

Thank you for reading my post. I hope they aren't stupid questions... *eep!*

[luminarious]

First, backgrounds need to be resized to the window size, unless you do a lot of panning and zooming. Default is 800*600 pixels.

Secondly, I think NASA has a lot of images that are freely usable, so I'd start looking there.

[Suzuricho]

See, I was never sure about that size before. Thank you very much for clarifying that for me, on both accounts.

Sweet. It would be really unfair of NASA to put pictures of the night sky under copyright, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I could get one of those really pretty nebula pics and use it.

[Jake]

It would be really unfair of NASA to put pictures of the night sky under copyright, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I could get one of those really pretty nebula pics and use it.

I don't know about 'unfair' - it's as reasonable for NASA to hold a copyright on a cool photo one of their operatives took during their work as it is for any corporation to hold a copyright on a cool photo one of their employees took during their work. But generally, NASA opts to not enforce copyrights on their photographs (I don't know offhand how exactly they do this, whether they make them public domain or just allow anyone to use them for free; I seem to recall the former), which is pretty cool of them. I believe that they ask that you credit them for the photo, though.

[PyTom]

It's not just NASA - the US federal government has decided that "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

What that means is that pictures made by the US federal government are in the public domain by default, since they never were under copyright. This only counts government-made pictures, not contractor-made ones.

I don't see anything unfair about copyrighting a picture of the night sky, anymore than there's something unfair about copyrighting a picture of a nice tree. In both cases, if someone wants their own picture, they can take it themselves.

[Mihara]

There's quite a lot of free planetarium software out there which you can use to generate arbitrary correct sky as seen from any reasonable point within a few thousand light years. The generated images will normally not be license encumbered. Celestia in particular comes to mind: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Also Stellarium: http://www.stellarium.org/

[Guest]

hehehe...I'm having troubles with backgrounds too, so i'm posting it here since i think it's relevant...

which do you prefer? resizing a larger image to 800 x 600 or finding backgrounds that are already 800 x 600 in dimensions.

I was thinking if i resized larger pictures, quality will be retained (or not?)

[luminarious]

There is no perceivable difference, because most 800*600 backgrounds have been scaled down anyway. For painted backgrounds, it's pretty much mandatory to paint at double the end-size or larger if you want it to look good.

[curry nochi rice]

do you know how to make photographed backgrounds conform to the (colored) character sprites.... some site termed it as "watercoloring" or making it look water-colored....but not to the extent that it doesn't look realistic any more....

[prezzey]

FYI here is the actual NASA image license. (It's quite permissive.)