Mods must have a banner-picture

[ssilk]

Don’t allow mods without banner-picture. Lately I saw that behavior while uploading music at http://Audius.co , they took some random picture from https://unsplash.com/ and made a song-banner out of my selection. Cool.


Why?
Mods without pictures break the UI and reduce memorability of that mod.

If the modder doesn’t provide a mod picture he can choose a random picture.

Where to get those pictures?

As said, we can use free picture portals.
I see other sources:
a) search in the mod for pictures, if there are some pictures, let the modder choose from them.

b) let the modder upload a map, and extract the picture of that map

c) randomly make screenshots from any game and the user can choose from that collection

[Bilka]

I'd rather not have to spend time and effort making/choosing a thumbnail for modder-only one line mods like https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DataRawSerpent. Nothing about the mod is improved by slapping a picture on it.

[darkfrei]

The mod logo must be uploaded also due mod portal as before.

[Deadlock989]

No. Just no.

[steinio]

Good Intention but a bit over the top.

Maybe only pictures for mods with more then a specific amount of kilobytes.

[Silari]

Never seen a missing image break anything on the mod portal, or in-game.

If it is an issue, seems it'd be a lot simpler to just have a default one that's used if one isn't provided. The base mod has one set for it, could just use the same one for any mod where the author didn't set one explicitly.

[Kyralessa]

Mods with a picture look better than mods without, no question.

But if a mod author doesn't care about that, then so what?

If somebody goes to all the trouble to create a mod, it seems silly to tell that person the mod isn't allowed with a picture.

But if you don't like to see mods without pictures, you could probably use a browser add-in (Greasemonkey or some such) to hide those mods from your view.

[darkfrei]

There is youtube solution: First mod name letter, random color.

[eradicator]

Nope. You can force people to chose a picture. But you can't force them to chose a good picture. Thus nothing would change. Here's my new default picture in case this ever happens:

The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png (234 Bytes) Viewed 6612 times

[Deadlock989]

What, you mean you don't favour the OP's ultimatum of making people visit a corporate stock photo bank filled with tacky schlock, and choosing either a smiling lady scientist with at least a clipboard but ideally looking thoughtfully at a Büchner flask, or perhaps a nice waterfall with a lady tastefully combing her hair, or an inspirational doggie looking heroic? What kind of modder are you?

And of course, all of that can only happen after your 150MB mod has been uploaded, because that's the only time you'll ever detect a missing thumbnail.png. I'm sure those of us in backwards countries like the UK will be overjoyed when we painstakingly upload big mods over our asymmetric DSL which has 1/40th the upload capacity compared to download, only to find a steel portcullis slam in our faces with a demand to choose either a picture of a hipster holding a cup of flat white, or a collection of pebbles arranged in a nice zen pattern, or perhaps some bearded gentlemen with nice abs doing exercises on the beach. What's not to like?

[coderpatsy]

Here's my new default picture in case this ever happens

Now that won't do. That's not even filesize optimized. You can get it down to 96 bytes.

[eradicator]

You can get it down to 96 bytes.

Interesting, what tool did you use? I tried pngout, optipng and pngquant and the best i can get is 110.

[coderpatsy]

You can get it down to 96 bytes.

Interesting, what tool did you use? I tried pngout, optipng and pngquant and the best i can get is 110.

FileOptimizer.

[eradicator]

FileOptimizer.

Huh. One of those freeware tool bundles was not what i expected. According to the help file:

Different engines are automatically used depending on the file type:
[...]
- Leanify 0.4.3.136 - https://github.com/JayXon/Leanify
- PngOptimizer 2.4.1 - http://psydk.org/PngOptimizer
- PNGOUT 02/13/2015 - http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm
- pngquant 2.7.0a - http://www.pngquant.org
- pngrewrite 1.4.0 - http://entropymine.com/jason/pngrewrite
- pngwolf - http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de/pngwolf
- TruePNG 0.6.2.2 - http://x128.ho.ua/pngutils.html
[...]

So i guess i have some testing to do now. Thanks ;).

[Deadlock989]

I use PNG Gauntlet which trials PNGOut and optipng and I think others. That FileOptimiser looks like it's shaving another 1-2% off small files so it's coming out with marginally better results, but on the other hand, PNG Gauntlet runs multithreaded so it's subtantially faster, running 8 files at once on my system.

[eradicator]

I use PNG Gauntlet which trials PNGOut and optipng and I think others.

I usually use pngout directly because i'v never seen it beaten by anything till now. And speed has never been an issue to me due to small input filesize. FileOptimizer also runs a bunch of trial as expected. The winners for this png are ECT, pingo, defluff and deflopt. Never heared of any of em :D.

Code: Select all

Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:12	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:12	Level: 9	Original: 234	Optimized: 234	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: PngOptimizer (3/16)	Commandline: \PngOptimizer.exe -file:"\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_4294960106_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:12	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	Level: 9	Original: 234	Optimized: 160	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: TruePNG (4/16)	Commandline: \truepng.exe -o4 -tz -md remove all -a1 -g1 /i0 /nc /tz /quiet /y /out "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Output_4294961957_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png" "Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	Level: 9	Original: 160	Optimized: 110	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: PNGOut (5/16)	Commandline: \pngout.exe /q /y /r /d0 /mincodes0 /kacTL,fcTL,fdAT /s0 "Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png" "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Output_4294960084_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	Level: 9	Original: 110	Optimized: 110	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: OptiPNG (7/16)	Commandline: \optipng.exe -zw32k -quiet -o6 -strip all "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_5831_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	Level: 9	Original: 110	Optimized: 110	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: Leanify (8/16)	Commandline: \leanify.exe -q -i 30 "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_4294959918_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:13	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 110	Optimized: 110	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: pngwolf (9/16)	Commandline: \pngwolf.exe --out-deflate=zopfli,iter=30 --in="Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png" --out="\Temp\FileOptimizer_Output_7273_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 110	Optimized: 97	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: pngrewrite (10/16)	Commandline: \pngrewrite.exe "Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png" "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Output_4294958328_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 97	Optimized: 97	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: advpng (11/16)	Commandline: \advpng.exe -z -q -4 -i 30 "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_4811_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 97	Optimized: 96	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: ECT (12/16)	Commandline: \ECT.exe -quiet --allfilters -strip -9 "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_2162_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 96	Optimized: 96	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: pingo (13/16)	Commandline: \pingo.exe -s8 -strip "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_4173_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 96	Optimized: 96	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: DeflOpt (14/16)	Commandline: \deflopt.exe /a /b /s "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_8588_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 96	Optimized: 96	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: defluff (15/16)	Commandline: \defluff.bat "Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png" "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Output_735_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"
Start: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	End: 2020-12-18 23:22:19	Level: 9	Original: 96	Optimized: 96	Errorlevel: 0	Input: Q:\The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png	Output: 	Plugin: DeflOpt (16/16)	Commandline: \deflopt.exe /a /b /s "\Temp\FileOptimizer_Input_4294957718_The Emperor's New Thumbnail.png"

multithreaded so it's subtantially faster, running 8 files at once on my system.

Isn't a multi-tool trial kinda the anti-thesis of speed ;)? When i need speed i just use pngout /s2. But i guess not having to implement multi-file parralell processing yourself is a bonus.

[ssilk]

Maybe I had been going to far with it. The reason for this suggestion is just, when there is no pic, the portal should not show the picture frame. Showing that empty frame is just bad UI.

There is youtube solution: First mod name letter, random color.

Like that idea. It would make the mod recognizable.

[Deadlock989]

Maybe I had been going to far with it. The reason for this suggestion is just, when there is no pic, the portal should not show the picture frame. Showing that empty frame is just bad UI.

No, it isn't. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Please stop insulting the developers with your absurd trivialities.

[ssilk]

Deadlock, I didn’t insult anybody. Who insults is just you.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

It is - according to the newest ui-research - a (small) problem.

[Xorimuth]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

It is - according to the newest ui-research - a (small) problem.

Indeed it is a 'problem'. Thumbnails are usually helpful and a good thing... but it is the mod owner's problem, who have evidently not decided to provide a thumbnail for one reason or another.

It is the mod owner's who suffer by not having a thumbnail because they miss out on a recognisable symbol for their mod and catching people's eyes as they scroll past.