Icons are the picture files that identifies a family. They are displayed many places, the family board, the various ranking lists, etc. etc. You see icons all over the game. Basicly, an icon can be any little picture in the most common formats, no bigger than 32*32 pixels, and 6000kb large. Small file sizes yes, but since they´re uploaded to the mobsterboss.com server, they naturally have to be small, due to server costs. And compared to many other games, it´s a fairly generous size actually. You can pretty much find any little picture on the web that complies with the above requirements, and you have an icon. Here´s a few examples: Just two random pics I found on the web. Both you could download (right-click and save on your local drive), and upload to mobsterboss.com. Your family now has an icon. You can of course, also create small pics yourself, if you´re good with graphic work. That kinda brings me to the next issue. You have probably noticed, that most of the icons used on mobsterboss.com, has somekind of animation or movement. You can also easily do this with any picture editing program. Some use photoshop, some use other programs, if you do not have a program like that - there´s several great programs you can get for free, like the Gimp and Artweaver for example. There´s many many others though. Take your time to get to know the various features of whatever program you download, especially the Gimp needs a little time to get into properly. There´s plenty of guides out there on how to use the programs already, I won´t begin to cover that here. Now, you´ve found a nice animation on the web, that you wanna use as icon on mobsterboss - but it doesn´t fit the size requirements, you´ll need to alter it then. I´ll use this random found animation: Now, as shown above, it´s too big to fit - remember, it needs to be 32*32 pixels max, and it´s also too big. To just make it fit the requirements, you actually don´t need any program. You can just use this great site: gifworks.com Using just that site - I added a little text and fixed the size to 32*32 - added websafe, and reduced colours, so that it´s no bigger than 6000kb - Here´s the result: This image is ready to use on mobsterboss.com - Now the text may be a bit boring, sitting there in the middle while the coin spins, you may want the text to scroll past or something else. For that you need your choice of picture editing software. I always use flash to make medias, but that´s not a free solution, again, if in doubt on how to use the various picture editing programs, consult the help files or the many guides that are available on the web. Here you see the "TEST" text scroll from right to left, with a different, bigger font: Again, should it have become too big, I would have gone to gifworks.com and added websafe colours etc to make it fit the requirements. You can continue playing around with the icon you want, untill you find something you like. Remember to try and test them with several browsers, such as Firefox and Internet explorer though. You´ll find that they will look slightly different depending on what browser you use. Look at the icon I made below in both Firefox (The browser strongly recommend by myself) and IE. (I forgot to check it before using it) See what I mean? Hope this quick little guide helped with any icon questions you might have - otherwise, feel free to post on the forums in mobsterboss.com - and either some of the other players, the admins or myself will be more than happy to help you out. ~Mac
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