Low-Res version of RQ core rules?

[SnorriHT]

G'day,

I'm really struggling to read the RQ rules on screen. I have a reasonably powerful graphics card and it takes 3 seconds or more to render a page. I realise that doesn't sound much, but when one is flicking through the rulebook 20 to 30 times during a session, it gets tiring very quickly.

I don't have a problem reading 7th sea 2e on screen because there is a low-res PDF option. I don't have a problem with the BRP rules, because that's only a 20 mb PDF file, not 100 mb like the RQ Core rules.

I'm not sure where I can ask Chaosium to provide a low-res PDF option for the RQ core rules.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[mfbrandi]

12 hours ago, SnorriHT said:

I’m really struggling to read the RQ rules on screen.

Have you tried switching off some of the document’s layers in your PDF reader?

For the RQG core book, just leaving the Text and Headers & Numbers layers switched on might help. Across different PDFs, however, you might find that elements are not always in the layer you expect them to be (or you might find white text in one layer and its black background in the graphics layer you just switched off). Worth a try, though.

[NickMiddleton]

My experience is these sorts of lags are rarely about raw resolution but most often to with file _complexity_ (layers, comments, fonts, scripting etc).

Also, probably your most direct route to get a response is via the Chaosium website? 

Edited July 10 by NickMiddleton
Clarity

[Nick Brooke]

Print as PDF, with pretty layers turned off and a greyscale output setting. Then read your new crappy-looking PDF.

[PhilHibbs]

I tried that, and it produced a 750MB file compared to the original 100MB so YMMV. It might still render faster on a mobile device if it's the images that are slow rather than raw file size. It does seem to turn pages faster on my laptop than the original.

Also it probably won't be searchable.

That was with Acrobat Reader. Foxit Reader does a better job, producing a 109MB file, and searching works.

Edited July 11 by PhilHibbs

[SDLeary]

Does Acrobat still have “Flatten” as an option? This can sometimes produce a smaller and faster file, though at the expense of being able to do anything with layers.

SDLeary

[mfbrandi]

41 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I tried that, and it produced a 750MB file compared to the original 100MB so YMMV.

Probably it was set to render each page as a single graphic, rather than to “shrink” the graphics individually. People’s PDF printer drivers will vary.

Ghostscript can strip graphics (for a text only or text+vectors file) or re-render them for you (lower dpi and/or greyscale) — other tools are available — and it is free and cross-platform:

There are loads of options (some baffling to my feeble brain), but each person will likely need only a couple.

[soltakss]

On 7/9/2024 at 11:18 PM, SnorriHT said:

I don't have a problem with the BRP rules, because that's only a 20 mb PDF file, not 100 mb like the RQ Core rules.

My version if the RQG Rules PDF is 75Mb. When I open it there is that annoying blurry but for a second before the page appears.

[SnorriHT]

I was able to get the rulebook down to 51 mb by converting the images to Black & White.

This works for me because I use the PDF annotation feature a lot.

And having the rulebook B&W highlights the blue and red text used for annotations.

[Jason D]

You should be able to view the pages without backgrounds, by turning off that layer in Acrobat (or your .pdf reader of choice). This should ideally help you view the pages much faster. 

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, Jason D said:

You should be able to view the pages without backgrounds, by turning off that layer in Acrobat (or your .pdf reader of choice). This should ideally help you view the pages much faster. 

Actually that depends a lot on the device itself (device RAM), as the whole file is loaded into memory for most apps to read, and stays there. Keep in mind that when you turn off a layer that you are simply not showing it, as opposed to quickly creating a new file without said layer, and then flushing the original file. 

Things should work fine on most modern computers, though experience will vary widely on tablets and phones.

SDLeary

[HorusZA]

I use this free site to compress all of my pdf's:
https://www.ilovepdf.com/compress_pdf

Shrunk my copy of the Core Rules down to around 16Mb on high compression.

Edited July 16 by HorusZA
file-size correction

[SnorriHT]

Thanks for replying Jason, and to all others who have commented.

And yes, I could turn off art layers etc, but as SDLeary indicated it's all about the size. Add in discord, a VTT, the adventure module, GM notes, Quick reference tables, the character sheets, on top of everything else which is chewing up computer memory in the background, and things can get clunky xD

I also annotate my rules before and during the game, especially when edge cases arise, or we decide to homebrew something.

I understand there may be commercial reasons for not providing a low-res option of the Runequest core rules. As such, the best option for me is to simply compress the PDF.

Thank you everyone for listening and contributing 🙂

Edited July 16 by SnorriHT

[Alex]

On 7/16/2024 at 10:56 PM, SnorriHT said:

And yes, I could turn off art layers etc, but as SDLeary indicated it's all about the size. Add in discord, a VTT, the adventure module, GM notes, Quick reference tables, the character sheets, on top of everything else which is chewing up computer memory in the background, and things can get clunky xD

Yes, I found my machine -- not high-end, but not utterly feeble either -- really struggling with both rendering and searching, especially if there was anything else bloaty going on at the same time, and/or if it was getting tired and emotional and overdue a reboot.  But what I found made a huge difference was to print-as-pdf out a version without the bulkiest of the layers, and use that for quick reference and searching.  Running it through compression/optimisation helps further.

[Mr_Douglass]

The Sumatra pdf reader is your friend here:

https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader

[Alex]

On 7/16/2024 at 9:57 PM, HorusZA said:

I use this free site to compress all of my pdf's:
https://www.ilovepdf.com/compress_pdf

Shrunk my copy of the Core Rules down to around 16Mb on high compression.

I belatedly just tried one of these myself, and I was surprised by how good the results were.  Better compression by far than the method I previously mentioned, art is still there which avoids the weirdness of removing it entirely, and I don't even see huge and obvious artifacts in the rendering.  As I feared the main thing it was going was cranking up the lossiness of the existing image compression (of jpeg-format data and the like) to Dangerously Experimental levels.  Only apparent downside is that text-searching seems a little slow.  (Though maybe my mere i5 machine is getting to the Tired and Emotional stage, would have to do this under more controlled conditions to be at all confident this effect was real.)  https://alternativeto.net/software/smallpdf/