Tools

Because I've been asked several times what tools I use, where I can get them, etc., I've decided to draw up a brief description.

In many respects, the most important tool is the hoster. Currently, this is netfirms.com. I've tried many: angelfire.com (no ftp access; very clumsy to maintain a site with much content); geocitices.com (quite good, but limited directory depth, annoying banners, horribly long and complex urls, and no cgi hosting.), freespeech.org (no cgi), fortune city (no cgi; banners), and clanpages.com. The last seemed perfect (no banners, ftp, news script support, unlimited space, though no cgi), until, after two weeks of preparing for the transition, making the transition to their site, they suddenly removed all ftp access and the news scripts stopped working for three days. To add to the annoyance, tech support emails just vanish into a black hole. Geocities will remain my fallback site for hosting, simply because Yahoo is large and not going to go away tomorrow.

News postings are handled by the NewsPro script. This is an excellent tool allowing heavily customized news posting. Best of all, it's free! I recommend this very highly; although a large script, it's extremely powerful and flexible.

For MIDI arranging, I use Midisoft Studio 4. It's a very old and somewhat buggy program, but it came free with my sound card. Incidentally, several people have asked where they can get the midi's, or the "music" on my page.  Just click here for a zip file containing most of the current midis.

FrontPage 2000. I tried early versions of FrontPage Express, and was repulsed, as I was with FP97. But finally, in FP2K, Microsoft has it more or less right. You can hand code and tweak HTML all you want, it no longer "removes" Netscape compatible code, and most of the bugs are gone. If you can afford it, and you don't currently have an HTML editor you love, you might find it worth getting. If you can't, download FP Express and see if you can live with that. It's worth noting, by the by, that SC Legacy does its layout with FrontPage.

For image capture, I use HyperCam. This is an excellent tool that, even in the unregistered version server very well. See below for instructions on how to use this.

For movie playback, and still shot cropping, I use IrfanView. Considering the price (free for non commercial use) this is excellent value. I copy frames out of one IrfanView window, and paste into another for cropping. Within 5-10s I have a cropped screenshot ready to paste into my HTML editor, which is...

For image editing, I'm currently torn. I use both the very powerful but cryptic Corel PhotoPaint 8, and the much wimpier, but marginally easier to use Microsoft Image Composer 1.5. I've also tried Adobe PhotoDeluxeŽ Business Edition, but found it horribly buggy and not really a serious tool. (max image size is about 6MB if I recall). PhotoShop I'm told is much like Corel PhotoPaint, powerful, but tricky to use. Microsoft now has PhotoDraw 2000; I haven't played with it enough to know much about it. With the exception of IrfanView (above), I can't really recommend any of these tools as being great for relatively novice drawing tool users, so use whatever you've got, secure in the knowledge that it's not too awful.

How to Use HyperCam:

Run the program. You will see six tabs: Screen Area, Hot Keys, AVI File, Sound, Other Options and License.

Screen area tab: StartX=0, StartY=0; width=640, height=480.

Hot Keys Tab: Change these so they don't interfere with StarCraft. I use SHIFT-CTRL-ALT-F9, F10, F11, F12.

AVI File Tab: Pick a name and directory. Check add sequential file numbers. Set fps rate to, say 0.4 or so. (I've tried from 0.25 to 1... 0.4 gives a screen shot every 2.2 seconds, so that's not bad.) Set playback to the same number. Set Key frame every 6 frames. Select Full Frames (Uncompressed).

Sound Tab: Record sound if you have a mike and want to use it to talk during the game, otherwise no. I suggest no.

Other Options Tab: defaults are fine.

License Tab: leave this as is.

Exit out of HyperCam so your settings are saved, then restart it (this ensures that if you crash during initial run, at least all your settings are saved).

Now, make sure you have at least 1 GB of space on the hard drive you are storing avi's. 2 GB is better. I'm having to delete films of games that I haven't had time to report on because I'm out of space... and I started with 3.8 GB

If you are using twilight or arctic tileset, set screen resolution to 256 colors. (right click desktop, Select Properties, Select Settings Tab, and set to 256 colors.) If you are using ANY other tileset, set to 65536 colors. Note: If you fail to do this, you will either have a file 2-4x as big as it needs to be, or you will have a file that looks really bad.

Because it runs out of sync with SC, once in a while you will see ODD stuff -- for instance, the minimap will show you are looking at the base at 6 oclock, but the MAIN screen shows you are looking at the base at 3 oclock -- or whatever.

Have Fun!