How to Get Images Into Forge

[Professor]

OK - I don't know it works, but by the time this topic fills out, the title will make sense, I hope.

I don't mind terribly playing without art, but if it's there, it might improve the look and feel a bit. I know there are copyright issues to think about, so if something more specific than "the internet is your friend" can't be posted, then I'd be OK with a PM.

I tried linking to the library from Manalink, but all the art is named by card number. Sure, I can guess that the first picture is Air Elemental, but I couldn't get more than 10% of cards right by image only. What's the secret?

Thx.

[Chris H.]

Launch the "run-forge.jar" file. This will bring you to the New Game window.

The pull down menu named Menu has two options which will download the jpg card pictures. One will download HQ pictures and the other will download LQ pictures.

[blotto]

Am I missing something? I have images in mine. Go to menu dropdown and click the "download LQ card pictures". OR are you talking about something completely different?

[DennisBergkamp]

The easiest way is to just download them within Forge. Start it up and click menu -> Download LQ pictures / Download HQ pictures (depending on your preference of high or low res).
Then the pics will automatically be downloaded to /res/pics and /res/pics/tokens.

The naming convention is as follows: {imageName}.jpg
Image names are lowercase, spaces and dashes are replaced by underscores ( _ ), apostrophes are skipped.

examples:
an_havva_township.jpg
akromas_vengeance.jpg

You can also see this mapping if you open card-pictures.txt found in the /res subfolder with a text editor.

[Chris H.]

I suspect that manalink uses a cropped image and not the entire card as artwork. I have seen some of the message on the manalink/shandalar forum and the artwork is just the art and does not include the rest of the card as part of the image.

Below I will attach the image that I use for morphed creatures and this will help to show that Forge uses a near full card image:
`

[Professor]

Thanks to all of you. I hadn't really considered that option since I don't have broadband at home. I thought there might be an install file I could DL all at once. If that's how it's done, though, I'll have to get my butt over to a Starbucks and steal some bandwidth!

[Chris H.]

Thanks to all of you. I hadn't really considered that option since I don't have broadband at home. I thought there might be an install file I could DL all at once. If that's how it's done, though, I'll have to get my butt over to a Starbucks and steal some bandwidth!

`
On several occasions, people have left a link to an archive containing a number of LQ or HQ images. These links tend to get lost in all of the message traffic. It is also difficult for a person to continue to update the archive to include all of the newer cards pics as they are added.

If someone was willing and able to take on the task for a long period of time, we could then use and sticky the topic:

Helper Files - tokens, cards pictures, set editor

as this would be the proper place to keep the link.

A visit to Starbucks, on the other hand is not a bad idea and could be fun.

[Huggybaby]

Even if a direct download archive is out of date, won't forge pick up from there and update only what's missing?

[Chris H.]

Even if a direct download archive is out of date, won't forge pick up from there and update only what's missing?

`
Yeah.

Once I thought about it, I realized that even an out of date archive is better than none for the new users. Thanks for the sticky, that will help them find the archive.