Welcome Guest, Please Read This.

Alright. I’ve seen so many people asking how to make incubators lately, that I thought well I might as well make a guide to it, to try and prevent these threads. This thread includes screencaps of each stage, to try and prevent failure.

Let's hope this time it will stay up - Third times the charm.

Hopefully you’ll find this useful.

NB - You can only create an incubator if you have eggs, hatchlings, dragons on your scroll. If you don't have anything yet, the incubator will not generate.

What Is An Incubator? (Taken from DC).

An incubator is an image that displays your eggs/hatchlings/dragons. It doesn't serve any actual purpose, but it provides a nice image that you can place in forum signatures to show off all of your dragons at once.

(It basically provides a picture of your scroll to show off your dragons and let others see what you have. You still have to get views, UV's for it, since although it 'might' encourage people to check your scroll out, it does not give your scroll any added bonuses).

How To Generate A Dragcave Incubator:

1. Go to your scroll, so you are on the http://dragcave.net/account page. Near the top, above your eggs are 2 options, Account Settings and below – Generate Incubator.





2. Click on the Generate Incubator option.

3. Sort: This option determines which order your dragons appear. Reverse sorting uses your selected option (E.g Growth – and puts it in the reverse order of that setting). Use account setting, uses the same sort that is viewed on your scroll.





4. Display: This option chooses which of your eggs/hatchlings and dragons are to be shown on your Incubator. If you want them all shown, you must check each of the options, except Hide Duplicates. Hide duplicates will only show one of each breed you have. So if you have 2 golds, it will only show one of them. (Different sprites for different breeds IE Silvers are exempt from this and will show one of each gender instead).





5. Incubator Size: This option determines the size of your incubator in your signature.





6. Other: To have your name visible on your scroll, select the Show Username option.





The most common option now, is to have the incubator uploaded to CDN. This has it's benefits. It means you only need to put the code in your signature once, and later updates to your incubator (more eggs, maturation etc) will involve less hassle. More about this will be continued at point 8.

If you want to have the Incubator uploaded onto image shack to just copy and paste the code, click upload incubator to image shack. If you don’t click the Upload to image shack option, you will only see the picture of your incubator and no code.

NB. If you have a slow connection of have multiple failed attempts at generating the image through imageshack, try uploading it yourself by following the second part of step 8.

7. You’re almost there! Click the Generate Incubator option!





8. Depending on which option you selected (To upload or not to upload – that is the question) which affect what you do next.

If you have uploaded to image shack, it may take a while to load (hopefully no more than 30 seconds depending on your connection). When the screen has loaded, you should see your incubator and a list of codes to choose from. For DC use the BBCode, copy it and then just paste it in your signature on the forums!





If you didn’t upload to image shack, when the incubator is generated, hover over the picture, right click and save the image to your computer. You then go to an image hosting site (E.g image shack, photobucket etc) and upload the image to that site yourself. You then need to take the BBCode again from the now-uploaded image and put it in your signature.





If you have loaded to CDN, follow the first step as if you've uploaded to imageshack. I.e choose the BBCode for DC.
However, unlike the other options where you have to generate a new incubator and replace the old code in your signatures whenever there was an update to your scroll; with CDN it will update your incubator without you having to replace the codes. To update your incubator, merely follow through steps 1 to 8, as if you were making a new incubator, select the CDN option again and when the page with the codes show up, if it hasn't already updated REFRESH THE PAGE. Press F5 or equivalent to refresh the page, hopefully then the image will have updated with the changes to your scroll.





Remember you can only generate an incubator ONCE AN HOUR. This includes updating CDN.

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The different code choices.

Although I have suggested to use the CDN option, please bear in mind that CDN can be very tempremental and may take a while to load or sometimes won't load your new request at all. However when it does work, it works very well and saves the hassle of updating your signature every time with a new code.

BBCode offers a reliable update and works every time. However it involves replacing the existing code in your signature with the new code, every time you update it - which could be too much hassle for some.

Tiny BBCode works the same as BBCode but the code to put in your signature is smaller. Useful for sites with a character limit in signatures.

Imageshack works pretty much the same as BBCode it's just hosted via imageshack.

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Hopefully at this stage, you will have one successful incubator in your signature!
If it hasn’t succeeded, try again, slowly, making sure you do each step.

This post has been edited by Pokemonfan13 on Mar 18 2009, 08:49 AM

This seems very handy, but I do have a couple questions:

What does the "tile size" mean? I know it shows it, but each time I try changing my tile size, it doesn't seem to do anything... does automatic show up better? I'm trying to get a few to the large size, and a few to the smaller, like it says you can do in "incubator size", but it doesn't seem to be co-operating.

On average, how long does CDN take to update? I'm just wondering how long it will show "user posted image" where the CDN image is supposed to be... did I do something wrong here?

Also, does the large size of incubator always swallow your name? Mine is seeming to....

CDN can take several hours to update.

I think all the tiles will be the same size, I don't think you can use some large and some smaller tiles in the same incubator. I think you might have to use something to reduce the number of dragons showing (hide duplicates, or hide adults?) to use smaller tiles.

If you can reformat the other part of your sig to take up a smaller, square area, and put the incubator in your sig, then add the other part with no spaces or enter between the parts, it should display all (or most) of the incubator showing your name.

Hmmmmm... This MIGHT need updating. Like the different tile sizes. But I'm not sure the changes are important enough to warrant it.

Terriah,

This is excellent! I just joined last week and was wondering about the steps to creating an Inclubator. Thanks for the info!!!

Bandahar