Buildings > Raeli Oven > Color Map > Prediction Help

The process

1. Start the oven
2. take a series of screenshots of the oven dialog
3. use any popular paint package to get Red-green-blue color values for the color swatch
4. use Quizzical's spreadsheet to compute Hue and Saturation.
5. report the results

Note: If you you can get the screenshot file, but can't do any of the rest of it, you can still help! Read the section at the bottom of this page.

Start the oven

Someone has to start the oven. As long as you can get the color swatch from the oven dialog, you're good.

Take screenshots

The easiest method is using Alt-C (on windows). This puts a file by the name frame#####.png in the directory you installed the game in. (##### being some number starting from 0000 and going on up.)

A bit less convenient is using the Printscreen button. This requires a bit more work on your part, as it only captures the screen to the "clipboard". You then have to paste the image into whatever painting package you want to use. ... and, you can only have one screenshot on the clipboard at a time.

Useful Screenshots

The most useful screenshots are those taken between about 30 and 90 minutes into the baking process. All ovens start at white, and end at black. The closer the tile color is to those colors, the harder it is to translate the RGB values to Hue, Saturation and Intensity.

Having multiple screenshots is useful because the Hue and Saturation values can be averaged, to get a more accurate value. If you start taking screenshots at the 30 minute mark, and continue making them every 10 minutes or so, that should be more than sufficient.

If you can't make multiple screenshots (due to time, ability, or inclination), even a single screenshot within that range would be very helpful, and fairly accurate.

Get RGB colors from the swatch

Any of a wide variety of bitmap painting tools can be used to get the RGB colors from your screenshot.

Most of you will have MS Paint (under the accessories menu on your Start Menu). Here's how to get the RGB values you need with Paint:

1. Open Paint
2. Open the screenshot
3. select the eyedropper tool (use the View/Tool Bar menu option if you don't see the tool).
4. LEFT-click on the Raeli Oven's color swatch in your screenshot.
5. use the Colors/Edit Colors... menu option to bring up the edit colors dialog.
6. press the Define Custom Colors >> button to bring up the color chooser.
7. This displays the Red, Green, and Blue values of the color you picked. (It also shows the Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity values. Do NOT use these values.)
8. Record the values shown.

At this point, you can close the color editor.

It is recommended that you do this for several points on the oven dialog color swatch. If you get different RGB values for different locations within the color swatch, average them.

And really, this is a lot easier than it looks on paper. And easier to do than to describe.

Use Quizzical's spreadsheet to get Hue and Saturation values

The zip file attached to the color map page contains Quizzical's spreadsheet. (Author's note: I don't know how to create links to non-image files stored elsewhere in the wiki, and I really hate to post the same file twice...)

Anything that can read an Excel spreadsheet can open it. (MS Office, OpenOffice, etc.)

The parameters page of the spreadsheet (shown near the bottom of the window, for you novices) has a section with green cells. Put your values in there, and the spreadsheet will calculate the hue and saturation values corresponding to them.

If you want, choose the OvenColors page and enter the hue and saturation values into the green boxes there, to see what colors that particular raeli oven is likely to produce.

Report the values

The Color Map page is a very good place to report your oven's colors.

I want to help, but..

Ask a friend. Ask an acquaintance. As one of us strange folks.

... I don't have any ovens

You don't have to start the oven yourself. If you encounter an oven that is currently smoking, but isn't into the very dark colors yet, you can still take screenshots.

... I can't take screenshots (or can't find them once I took them)

Ask a friend for help. Or ask us! :)

... I can't get the RGB values

Worst comes to worst, you can ship the screenshot files to someone who can.

... I don't want my oven reported on the color map.

Obviously, there are folks who value their privacy. We can respect that. If one of the conditions of getting the data is that we don't publish you oven's data, so be it. Contact one of the folks below, and we'll take care of it.

Who to contact

The first step is to put your information on the color map. But it may also be helpful to poke someone and let them know that there are new numbers to play with.

If you're still lost, and need someone to talk to, contact one of the following:

• Quizzical
• Sabt-Pestnu
• MarvL

Hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of posting your names... - S-P