Displaying a Picture from a Variable

FoxhoundX

Okay, I am making an RPG, and would like to have health/mana bar indicaters, telling you how much you have left graphically 😛

Is there a way to do this (Get the percent left, and make the image from there, or would I have to make 100 graphics and do $percentlife.jpg ? 😛

Thanks
FB

cdbsi

<?
echo "<img src=some_image.jpg width={$percent_variable} height=20>";
?>

remember to replace some_image.jpg with the location of your image and to also replace percent_variable with your variable name.

Hope this helps,
cdbsi.

Magwheel

Well, maybe this isn't what you want.... but if you don't mind a continuous bar, made of one stretched graphic, then this should work. Make a gif/jpg a few pixels wide, and a a few pixels high. It's what I use, after I find the percentage:

<?php
$imgwidth=$per_cent;
//want a longer image? do this:
$imgwidth=$per_cent*3;

<img src='Meter.jpg' width='$imgwidth' heigh='10' alt='$percent%'/>
?>

As far as repeating a small (maybe 2w by 10h) rectangular graphic, say, one for every percentile, that should be easy too. Once you have your percentage, use something like this (caution, quasi-pseudo-code 😉):

$numOfBlocks = round($per_cent); //assuming you didn't already round it

use a for loop to echo the <img> until you reach $numOfBlocks.
Maintain the same width and height every time you echo it. So, at 75%, you'll have 75 blocks. If you want it scaled down, use $imgwidth = $per_cent/2 or whatever is appropriate.

Hope that helped. :p I'm a newbie at answering questions 😉

edit: added a link and so on

FoxhoundX

Hmm..Is there not an easier way to do it Via the GD? 😃 I've never actually used GD, but, just wondering.

The problem with that is the bandwidth would be killer, and since I cant afford hosting (bah!), my ISP would probably kill me 😛

Magwheel

With regards to image size, a small image (3*10 Web-colored GIF) can be quite small, about 46bytes. If you stretch/repeat it, that wouldn't increase bandwidth needs much, would it? I dunno. But maybe that's irrelevant :p

sorry, I don't know anything about GD ... though if someone does I'm curious to see the answer, too. 😃 Not curious enough to find a tutorial on it right this instant, mind you.... :p

cdbsi

Actually, you want to use the least amount of images possible.

<?= "<img src=bar.jpg width=".($percent*2)." height=20 title={$percent}>" ?>

Using the php graphics system would be a waste of server processing power, so don't use it when you can use an alternative.

P.S.: Using a 1x1 image stretched wouldn't take up more bandwidth, what are you thinking? :p

Magwheel

Originally posted by cdbsi
Actually, you want to use the least amount of images possible.

<?= "<img src=bar.jpg width=".($percent*2)." height=20 title={$percent}>" ?>

Using the php graphics system would be a waste of server processing power, so don't use it when you can use an alternative.

P.S.: Using a 1x1 image stretched wouldn't take up more bandwidth, what are you thinking? :p

You talkin' to me? If so, I was thinking "what the freap, stretching or repeating one file shouldn't take more bandwidth... unless I'm really really wrong. 😕" Turns out I'm not 😉 heh heh

Oh, and I tend to agree with the comment about wasting server power - if it's just to display an image of varying widths, or height, or a different number of times, the ways outlined here are very efficient.

coditoergosum

You could do it with GD, but IMHO it'd be overkill. I like the GD libarary, and I've used it a lot, but for something like this I personally would go with the 1x1 pixel image stretched idea. It will consume less bandwidth (and processor usage for that matter) to download 1 graphic of about 600 bytes, compared to a bunch of graphics that could be a few kb in size.

If you really wanted to do it, you would need to create a seperate script that generated the images, and then call it like this:

Then imagescript would take the percentage var, create the image, and then output it. Also, it would need to set the mime type correctly using header() before outputting it.

If you really want to try to do this, let me know. I can offer some tips. But really you should go with the 1x1 pixel image idea.

FoxhoundX

Yea, I just used a % of width 🙂

I thought it would be like 5k each time, but its only like 400 bytes 🙂

Thanks for the help

Magwheel

Good jorb. This is, I think, a common way of doing it, and for good reason. If fact, you can have a decent gradient gif for about 45bytes, if you can save it in the right format!

So, is this question, shall we say, [resolved] now? 😉

EDIT!: 45BYTES, and not K, as I first put :p!