converting loading screens
 

Just gonna make this short and to the point. I've been trying to get the WoW loading screens, but why are they all square? I gather it's got something to do with the .blp format since practically every file has square dimensions, but... Basically, how can I get the loading screen files in the dimensions/resolutions that they are supposed to appear in-game?

Have your graphics program open, take a screen shot (hit the "print screen" button), switch to your graphics program, paste ("ctrl + V") the screen shot into a newly created blank file. If you use Photoshop you don't even have to size it. It's automagically sized to your screen resolution. I think Gimp does that, too.

As to why they are square has nothing to do with the BLP format. It has to do with the age of the game, I believe the game was developed at the time when we didn't have all these neat wide (and extra wide) view monitors, so the graphics are pretty much square. I have a wide view monitor (a 17 1/2" laptop at 1600 x 900 resolution) and the loading screens don't go out to the edges. They are squares in the middle of my screen, but they filled the screen of my last computer (also a laptop, but a 17" with a 1200 x 800 resolution).

But even the WoD loading screens are square, including the ones with a file name that includes "wide" at the end. Surely the attached image isn't meant to be square. Incidentally, monitors weren't actually square 10 years ago. Squarer, surely, but 800x600 to 1024x768 was what most of my old CRT monitors were, as I recall.

EDIT: I just tried experimentally resizing one of the widescreen images to the resolution I play at (1920x1080), and it actually does indeed look just like it does in the game. I was expecting there to be terrible stretching and loss of detail, but I guess that's actually just what the game does. I still think the files being square has something to do with the format - maybe not necessarily of the .blp itself, but of something involved in the coding of the game, at least - more than simply the game's age (though such limitations in coding might be directly linked to its age).

Its meant to be square and then streched onto your screen thats why the loadingscreens all look bad :rolleyes:

The picture you posted was a "wide" one, wasn't it? I guessed it was because if you look at it it's "scrunched" some side-to-side. That way it looks "more normal" on a "wide resolution" monitor or TV. The "wide" graphics might be square, but they are edited to fit a "wide resolution" monitor or TV. (I'm guessing they are, anyway. I've got no idea what the Blizzard devs are doing, or have done.)

Every wow texture is square, event the 4:3 ratio loading screens. This means that neither of the loading screen textures have a native resolution, nor the 4:3 nor any wide ratios.