Read Me : Collabs

[Luis]

Summer rules for any collabs starting from June 11, 2007 - Sept 1, 2007:

Please keep in mind that any collabs or collab host that fails to meet the specs below will have his/her thread deleted on sight. If you find your collab removed from the face of the planet then consider it in violation of one of the items below, Have fun! ^______^

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Checklist to start a collab thread:
If you answer NO to any of the9 questions below your thread will be gone. you are not qualified to manage a collab:

1 - Do you know what a Batting Average is?

2 - Have YOU made atleast 1 movie/game totally on your own that survived the portal?

3 - Do you have Flash MX 2004 or greater?

4 - Do you have all the proper specs necessary? (see below)

5 - Do you feel comfortable enough in flash that you can answer technical questions/issues?

6 - Is your Batting Average 3.0 or greater?

7- Are you actually going to be animating and not just giving orders?

8- Is this the only collab you are currently hosting?

9- Did you make sure there isnt a collab similar to yours already running?

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If you answered yes to all those questions go through the checklist below to setup your all-important first post, the more of these items you have covered the more smoothly your collab will go:

1- Whats the Frame Rate?
2- When's the deadline?
3- Who will be coathored?
4- If your collab is based on a song:
a) where can i preview the whole song?
b) are your parts cut and ready to go?

5- What are the movie dimensions?
6- What color is the movie background color?
7- What is the goal of the collab?
8- What are YOU going to be doing?
9- How should I label my symbols?
10 - Can I use my own sounds?
11 - Can I use sprites?
12 - Can I use stickmen?
13 - Can I use my own fonts?
14 - Are there things you want to exclude ? (clocks, locks, porn, sprites, etc)

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If you failed to meet the specs above but you really think you have what it takes to run a collab or your idea is so insanely good it would be a crime to not allow it ...then PM either myself, or jmtb02

Please do not spam this thread with bitching, feel free to ask questions or concerns however. Bitching can be done via PM :)

[23450]

Sounds good. Hopefuly i will spend some more time here this summer, and i dont plan on spending it sifting through collabs.

All i know is that it took about 8 movies in the portal before i was able to feel confident in making a collab (even though i didn't), hopefuly others will refrane as i did until they get an idea worth throwing out there.

[Lord-Sonx]

the fonts bit is unnessesery since all fonts should be broken apart before submission.

.. seems to be the same rules as before there.. ah well... at least you tried.

[Kart-Man]

Very nice. Hopefully, the number of people wanting to start a collab will diminish with these rules in place.

[Gi-go]

I have a new one-

"Is my collab idea intelligent in any way, shape or form?"

[Punxx]

Nice. Only complaint i have is that i think we need to raise the bar with the BA.. its fairly easy to get a BA over 3.00.

Hopefully this cuts down on the 35748957 collabs to come..

[SirSloth]

Hopefully this will resolve our problems with the madness.

[Lord-Sonx]

At 6/11/07 07:06 PM, Gi-go wrote: "Is my collab idea intelligent in any way, shape or form?"

that kidna falls under
'7- What is the goal of the collab?'

... just like the last thread about the colalb rules, thsi thread will most likyl be ignored and vansih..

errors revisted:

BG colour is unimportant as the leader can just use a blob of colour behind the clip when imported.

as for the symbols, just use a libary folder for every person, no need for symbol names and such.

[Nuggs]

I agree, I think that the BA requirement should be around a 3.25. Everyone has a 3.00 now

[Gi-go]

At 6/11/07 07:09 PM, Lord-Sonx wrote:

At 6/11/07 07:06 PM, Gi-go wrote: "Is my collab idea intelligent in any way, shape or form?"

that kidna falls under
'7- What is the goal of the collab?'

Yeah, I was just joking.

I kind of lost hope in humanity after I saw the "Super Mario Sprites Acting Like DBZ Characters Collab" and the "Im 13 and I want to Animate MS Paint Looking Porn Collab"

[Lord-Sonx]

At 6/11/07 07:11 PM, Nuggs wrote: I agree, I think that the BA requirement should be around a 3.4. Everyone has a 3.00 now

Corrected

[Gi-go]

At 6/11/07 07:14 PM, Lord-Sonx wrote:

At 6/11/07 07:11 PM, Nuggs wrote: I agree, I think that the BA requirement should be around a 3.8. Everyone has a 3.4 now

Correctedx2

[jmtb02]

At 6/11/07 07:11 PM, Nuggs wrote: I agree, I think that the BA requirement should be around a 3.25.

You don't have to be an amazing developer to make a collab though. Sure, some collabs suck, but the developers participating will get something out of it. 3.0 batting averages just ensure that people are able to complete decent projects, which is our main worry, that the author won't be able to run the collab and everyone's hard work will be worth nothing.

[blah569]

I think those rules are good. If you prove you know what you're doing and you don't have a 3.0 BA, you can still do it right?

[Bezman]

At 6/11/07 06:59 PM, Lord-Sonx wrote: the fonts bit is unnessesery since all fonts should be broken apart before submission.

What about dynamic text? Even in a movie, coded text can make certain things far easier.

Also, when broken up, it takes up more filespace as individual letters are 'saved' multiple times.

[pezzo]

great idea but why is it only for the summer? it should be forever

[Luis]

My main concern was hitting the 9 commandments.. the other specs below are more or less recommendations to consider when putting together your thread.. obviously they wont all apply to your collab every single time... its just there to get you on the right track.. its not a catch all.

[BlackmarketKraig]

At 6/11/07 06:55 PM, Luis wrote: Summer rules for any collabs starting from June 11, 2007 - Sept 1, 2007:

Alright, the fortress is up and here comes the invasion...

I hope you have fun squashing the n00bs. =D

Would it be too much to ask that the admins put this in the FAQ? Denvish's rules are great and very concise and we all love Denvish, of course. But the new rules need to be obvious to anyone who isn't a moron and does take time to read the rules, as there is a bit of difference over how collabs will run this summer as opposed to previously.

Great work on this, Luis and jmtb02. You guys are going to take the brunt of this collab season, so best of luck with that.

[ToasterDemon]

At 6/11/07 08:23 PM, Bezman wrote: Also, when broken up, it takes up more filespace as individual letters are 'saved' multiple times.

You must not be breaking it up all the way. When you break it apart it turns editable, so you can erase it and what not. Its essential if your using fonts, and usually takes up no more space at all.

[Luis]

At 6/11/07 11:36 PM, ToasterDemon wrote:

At 6/11/07 08:23 PM, Bezman wrote: Also, when broken up, it takes up more filespace as individual letters are 'saved' multiple times.

You must not be breaking it up all the way. When you break it apart it turns editable, so you can erase it and what not. Its essential if your using fonts, and usually takes up no more space at all.

I think he's talking about filesize rather than physical space... and yes breaking up typefaces does add filesize. Especially if its a really intricate font.

[Wurmy]

At 6/11/07 11:32 PM, BlackmarketKraig wrote: Would it be too much to ask that the admins put this in the FAQ? Denvish's rules are great and very concise and we all love Denvish, of course. But the new rules need to be obvious to anyone who isn't a moron and does take time to read the rules, as there is a bit of difference over how collabs will run this summer as opposed to previously

The only problem with that is that no 'noob' is going to want to read the FAQ. They'll just want to go out there and start the collab right away. Either that or they won't 'see' it. This applies to this topic too. So in the end the mods will still have a lot of locking to do :(

[wolfinator-x]

Nice I guess I know all about collabs! All questions were answered "YES". Too bad none of my ideas are popular...

[Striker028]

Looks great, this'll definitely cut down on the random collabs like "0mgz0rs i have this awesome idea we can like make a madness tribute!" but i have a question, wouldn't it be easier to make ppl apply for collabs first? like, they'd have to get approval from one of the mods via PM or something. then, people would take the starting of a collab much more seriously, and it'd probably save you moderators the trouble of having to track down the nooby collabs.

just an idea

[Shadowii2]

Once again agreed with batting average of 3.000

[Fora]

Luis is mad because of wolfinator's collab, hahahah

[Bezman]

At 6/11/07 11:36 PM, ToasterDemon wrote:

At 6/11/07 08:23 PM, Bezman wrote: Also, when broken up, it takes up more filespace as individual letters are 'saved' multiple times.

You must not be breaking it up all the way. When you break it apart it turns editable, so you can erase it and what not. Its essential if your using fonts, and usually takes up no more space at all.

As luis said, I was talking about filesize.

I can't think of a reason why breaking fonts would be essential in normal usage. The only reason that comes to mind is if you want to modify a font to create a custom logo thing.

Is it actually possible to break up fonts 'halfway'? Not sure what you meant by your first sentence.

Anyway, I was in a mood to procrastinate and so did some actual testing, which I've never done before.

question: Does breaking apart fonts increase filesize? By roughly how much?

method: using my own 'Aiwa Hifi (A.D.)' font and the 'Chopin Script' font, I made a .swf only containing one frame, with a few typed lines. Then these were exported with the fonts broken up. Then I did the same for a longerparagraph of text with those and 5 additional fonts (7 total) with a cross section of sans-serif, serif, pixellated, and multiple decorative styles.
Then I took the broken-up Aiwa Hifi paragraph and remade it by converting each letter to an mc and duplicate-moving them around. Not done with any exactitude but that's unlikely to affect filesize...

findings:
Turns out that the size of an .swf with only a couple of lines of text is multiplied by around 4 if you break it apart.

For a decent sized paragraph, the size tended to be multiplied by around 6-8, with one pixel font only multiplying the size by 4 when broken.

Turning seperate letters into mcs and just duplicating the mcs for seperate letters made it only around 1.5 the size of the original.

thoughts:
I was surprised the multiplication factor for filesize increase varied that much - I understand the relative complexity will vary (the digital font had an equally complex 'm' and '?' for example, whilst in most they'd use far more control points for the 'm') but still... that I can't understand why.

No other suprises. Asking the same shape to be saved multiple times is always gonna take more filespace than if you'd let it be stored once and either used mcs or used the inherent awesomeness of fonts. Using mcs would always take more filespace as the position of each letter must be saved individually...

conclusion

Yes it does result in a greater filesize, but not enough to be concerned with generally. Unless you're using paragraphs of text, you're likely to have bigger issues elsewhere to worry about (unoptimised vectors within the graphical animation/sub-optimal use of symbols...).

If text is static and breaking apart fonts saves a lot of hassle for the organiser, then go ahead. I'd personally ask for the font files though. And it could be a cool way to get new fonts...

It increases filesize but only by a negligible amount for a typical animation.

http://aciddica.com/this_will_be_deleted_at_s ome_point_in_the_future/bfonttest/?M=A
(the .zip contains all files+some filesize reports)

[ZeeAk]

Just so everyone can see this, bump.

[Kuoke]

At 6/15/07 07:27 AM, Dr34m3r wrote: Just so everyone can see this, bump.

Either that, or it was a +1 postcount.

*cough*

But the thread will more than likely get more views if people bookmark it, and then refer the link to noobs trying to start collabs. Or well, that's what I do.

[ZeeAk]

At 6/15/07 07:30 AM, Kuoke wrote:
Either that, or it was a +1 postcount.

*cough*

But the thread will more than likely get more views if people bookmark it, and then refer the link to noobs trying to start collabs. Or well, that's what I do.

Same for you.

*cough*

Anyways, stop the flaming. I bookmarked it.

[Penboy]

Thanks for the update Luis.

bookmarked