Pictures and GIFs in Chat and Abilities
I had a fellow Player point out to me a while ago that a large
variety of abilities and attacks are capable of accepting Picture and
GIFs, and with some further research, I found that a large variety works
using a simple Google Search and tracking down the Image's exact
location, with a few exceptions not working because the Site stores the
image on a type of splash page (help in figuring out the fix for such
things would be appreciated).
The following examples will be for
FireFox Browser, as I am unfamiliar with the other browsers. If you wish
to Message me the instructions for the other Browsers, I will try to
Edit them in here.
First, we require an image; for this example, I shall be using the screenshot posted by Kieth in his new thread (which he referenced earlier).
1.
First, we should make sure it is of the appropriate quality and size
for our tastes: Since this is Roll20 we enlarge the image with a Left
Click
2. Then (skip this step on Roll20) Right Click it and select
Open Image in New Tab, this will allow us to inspect the Image without
any resizing so we can see the actual quality of the image (this will
also help us note if we are trying to grab am exceptionally tiny
version, such as a 512x512 thumbnail)
3. Once we are here, we have
a few options for locating the Image, the easiest being another option
in the Right Click's Context Menu called "Copy Image Location". Using
this we can find out that the Screenshot is located at the following
URL:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.d20.io/images/63058958/9lcOFUVygdOlhpVRU8I1Lg/original.png?1537378258
in
it's current state, this URL is entirely useless for posting a Picture
in Chat. you can post the link and it will be clickable, allowing
players to download it when the page finishes opening (this is not
standard behavior across all sites, this is however standard for the
Roll20 images, they will not even see the picture before it tries to
download in this fashion)
With a bit of modification though, we can make this URL useful to us.
4. For starters, in URLs, anything after a ? denotes a variable or option, in this case we are talking about the
?1537378258
as it is entirely not needed, so, let's strip that text out, leaving us with the following URL:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.d20.io/images/63058958/9lcOFUVygdOlhpVRU8I1Lg/original.png
then
we need to know the method which to use the URL, as we still have the
same problem as before: we can post the Direct Download URL into Chat,
but they won't see the Image this way unless they download and then open
the Image. Roll20 uses a simple format for URLs:
[Text](URL)
this
means that we should try a similar format for the Image. It should be
noted that if the Image breaks, the Text portion will get posted to Chat
as a Clickable Link.
This is useful knowledge if there is a large
amount to load, as Chat is not entirely top priority, although it is
highly ranked, it should also be noted that Chat loads Text from Top to
Bottom, then Images the same way, so that 50 GIF message from 25
messages ago will load before the 1 PNG message 2 messages ago, be
considerate of this fact, and use the rule of thumb of "moderation in
all things". This also means you probably do not wish to include this
trick with your most common attack, as it will cause considerable lag to
load that many images when launching the Game, instead relegate it to
perhaps 1 or 2 per Turn at most.
Picture:
[x](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.d20.io/images/63058958/9lcOFUVygdOlhpVRU8I1Lg/original.png)
[Screenshot](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.d20.io/images/63058958/9lcOFUVygdOlhpVRU8I1Lg/original.png)
Hyperlink:
[x](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.d20.io/images/63058958/9lcOFUVygdOlhpVRU8I1Lg/original.png?1537378258)
[Screenshot](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.d20.io/images/63058958/9lcOFUVygdOlhpVRU8I1Lg/original.png?1537378258)
I
apologize for the lengthy disclaimer, but it really should be mentally
noted, as the lag spike can become quite exponential when it's used in
things like a Monk's Unarmed Strike, which can easily reach 9 swings per
turn at later levels, in addition to everyone else's chat images.
A
useful trick if you find your sources to be unstable: save the images
to an imgur account and link to the images there with the accessibility
set to Hidden but accessible with the URL.