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How to take and post screenshots - A brief tutorial
As I have been asked how to post pictures, how to make screenies, how to attach things to posts and so on, I have decided to post this little tutorial so new players can easily learn the basics of forum-gaming
Part One
How to take screenshots in Civ4
This is gonna be the easy part. When you´re playing Civ4, just press "PrintScreen" on your keyboard (it´s usually at the top row of keys to the right side). You can do this multiple times, all of those screenshots will be stored (by default, if you didn´t change it) in "C:\Documents and Settings\[your name]\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\ScreenShots".
Now you got your screenies. Let´s move on to the next step!
Part Two
How to rescale screenshots to posts
Be warned that it is not liked by the community to post pictures that exceed a width of 800 pixels, because anything larger than that will cause the entire thread page to become ugly (scrollingbars needed for left-right navigation, textlines being longer than the screen can display and so on).
Civ4 will save your screenshots at the same solution as you are playing on, which will most likely be larger than 800x600 pixels. So it would be quite nice of you to downscale all pictures before posting them.
To do that, just load the picture in any program capable of editing pictures (MSPaint, PhotoShop, CorelDraw, ...). In MSPaint, which almost all of you should have, you need to go to "Image", select "Attributes" and enter a width of 800 (and a height of 600 for best effects). Then save the pic.
Now you´re set to post it on the forum!
Part Three
How to attach pictures to posts
To get access to the attachment options, you need to click on the "Post Reply" button to the top (and bottom) of the thread you want your post and picture in. You will be taken to the editor window with the smiley list and, to the very bottom, the "Attach File" line! There you can simply click on "browse", select the downscaled JPEG image (your screenshot) and press "open".
Add some text into the form and submit your reply - voilá, there it is, your screenshot in full size!
In order to show multiple screenies you either need to post multiple replies with one image attached to each, or you need to use the upload feature of Apolyton.
Part Four
How to upload (and link to) pictures on Apolyton
To the very top of your Apolyton Forum page you will notice a line of links, starting with "control panel" to the left. The eigth link in that line is called "upload". It is your ticket to the Apolyton upload feature!
First you should know that whatever you´re uploading is restricted to internal use only - which means you cannot link to these files directly from outside Apolyton. Also all files you´re uploading must not be politically incorrect in their content and must have a connection to Apolyton, so no naked ladies please.
Click "Upload". On the site that has opened, click "Browse" and select your screenshot. Now click the "Upload" button. After a small amount of time (or after several months if you´re still using a dial-up) the screen will change and say "file was uploaded". The five adress bars below contain different URLs and VBCodes you can simply copy-paste to any post of yours. I´d suggest using the second one (shrinked version, which will show full size if clicked) for images larger than 800 pixels in width and the fifth one (full image) for smaller ones.
As you can see, using the upload feature allows you to bypass the rescaling procedure.
To get the URL in the fifth line to actually become an image, you need to wrap "IMG" tags around it when writing a post. That means you type in "[ IMG ]HereComesTheURL[ /IMG ]", of course replacing the text in between with the URL and deleting the spaces in the brackets.
I know it sounds complicated, but just try it for yourself and see
.
The difference between ATTACHING and UPLOADING pictures
In brief: Attached pictures remain there for a long long time and are not substracted from you personal upload space. But you are restricted to one picture per post and you need to rescale it if it´s bigger than 800 pixels in width.
Uploaded pictures are stored at your upload space, which is limited. If you run out of it, you need to delete some of those files, which will also make them disappear from all posts that link to them.
On the other hand, you can work with those pictures much better in your posts, as you can show multiple ones and define exactly where to place them (not just at the bottom of your post).
So chose whatever suits your needs best.
I hope this helps a bit, cheers
As I have been asked how to post pictures, how to make screenies, how to attach things to posts and so on, I have decided to post this little tutorial so new players can easily learn the basics of forum-gaming
Part One
How to take screenshots in Civ4
This is gonna be the easy part. When you´re playing Civ4, just press "PrintScreen" on your keyboard (it´s usually at the top row of keys to the right side). You can do this multiple times, all of those screenshots will be stored (by default, if you didn´t change it) in "C:\Documents and Settings\[your name]\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\ScreenShots".
Now you got your screenies. Let´s move on to the next step!
Part Two
How to rescale screenshots to posts
Be warned that it is not liked by the community to post pictures that exceed a width of 800 pixels, because anything larger than that will cause the entire thread page to become ugly (scrollingbars needed for left-right navigation, textlines being longer than the screen can display and so on).
Civ4 will save your screenshots at the same solution as you are playing on, which will most likely be larger than 800x600 pixels. So it would be quite nice of you to downscale all pictures before posting them.
To do that, just load the picture in any program capable of editing pictures (MSPaint, PhotoShop, CorelDraw, ...). In MSPaint, which almost all of you should have, you need to go to "Image", select "Attributes" and enter a width of 800 (and a height of 600 for best effects). Then save the pic.
Now you´re set to post it on the forum!
Part Three
How to attach pictures to posts
To get access to the attachment options, you need to click on the "Post Reply" button to the top (and bottom) of the thread you want your post and picture in. You will be taken to the editor window with the smiley list and, to the very bottom, the "Attach File" line! There you can simply click on "browse", select the downscaled JPEG image (your screenshot) and press "open".
Add some text into the form and submit your reply - voilá, there it is, your screenshot in full size!
In order to show multiple screenies you either need to post multiple replies with one image attached to each, or you need to use the upload feature of Apolyton.
Part Four
How to upload (and link to) pictures on Apolyton
To the very top of your Apolyton Forum page you will notice a line of links, starting with "control panel" to the left. The eigth link in that line is called "upload". It is your ticket to the Apolyton upload feature!
First you should know that whatever you´re uploading is restricted to internal use only - which means you cannot link to these files directly from outside Apolyton. Also all files you´re uploading must not be politically incorrect in their content and must have a connection to Apolyton, so no naked ladies please
.Click "Upload". On the site that has opened, click "Browse" and select your screenshot. Now click the "Upload" button. After a small amount of time (or after several months if you´re still using a dial-up) the screen will change and say "file was uploaded". The five adress bars below contain different URLs and VBCodes you can simply copy-paste to any post of yours. I´d suggest using the second one (shrinked version, which will show full size if clicked) for images larger than 800 pixels in width and the fifth one (full image) for smaller ones.
As you can see, using the upload feature allows you to bypass the rescaling procedure.
To get the URL in the fifth line to actually become an image, you need to wrap "IMG" tags around it when writing a post. That means you type in "[ IMG ]HereComesTheURL[ /IMG ]", of course replacing the text in between with the URL and deleting the spaces in the brackets.
I know it sounds complicated, but just try it for yourself and see
.The difference between ATTACHING and UPLOADING pictures
In brief: Attached pictures remain there for a long long time and are not substracted from you personal upload space. But you are restricted to one picture per post and you need to rescale it if it´s bigger than 800 pixels in width.
Uploaded pictures are stored at your upload space, which is limited. If you run out of it, you need to delete some of those files, which will also make them disappear from all posts that link to them.
On the other hand, you can work with those pictures much better in your posts, as you can show multiple ones and define exactly where to place them (not just at the bottom of your post).
So chose whatever suits your needs best.
I hope this helps a bit, cheers
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