screenshots

Zell · Post by **Zell** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:27 pm

well, this sounds pretty stupid, but i dunno how to take screenshots.

Biff · Post by **Biff** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:41 pm

Check your zdoom.ini file, there might already be a key bound to screenshot - this for example: sysrq=screenshot

You'll also see these in the .ini file:

screenshot_type=png <--- sets graphics file format
screenshot_quiet=false <--- makes the word "screenshot" appear

You can bind a key other than sysrq to screenshot if you want.

I'm not sure what the valid screenshot graphics formats are, I think pcx is one. Can anyone comment about this, what the options are and the pros/cons? Thx.

Zell · Post by **Zell** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:42 pm

, where do the screenies go after u take them?

Biff · Post by **Biff** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:43 pm

The files should be written to the hard drive, in the same folder as zdoom.exe.

Zell · Post by **Zell** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:54 pm

hmmm, its not 4 me =(

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:12 pm

The files will be named DOOMxxxx.png, where xxxx is a 4-digit number from 0000 to 9999. You'll need a graphics program capable of viewing PNG files, obviously...

cccp_leha · Post by **cccp_leha** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 8:07 pm

PNG's are great but hefty. I run ZDoom in 1024x768 and on average, a shot is ~2 MB. When I change it to JPEG with Fireworks, its only ~90 KB and there is not much noticable quality loss.

Cyb · Post by **Cyb** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 8:48 pm

cccp_leha wrote:PNG's are great but hefty. I run ZDoom in 1024x768 and on average, a shot is ~2 MB. When I change it to JPEG with Fireworks, its only ~90 KB and there is not much noticable quality loss.

uhh, zdoom writes 256 color pngs, so 1024 shots should be around 200k not 2000 :P . zdoomgl is another story, that writes true color pngs which are rather large, but it's no worse than the massive tgas or bmps the majority of games write these days.

as for viewing pngs, you can view them in any browser, though many, many people with quicktime have a problem since quicktime is a piece of crap that attempts to associate itself with pngs even though it can't open them. I have quicktime only associated with .mov files, which is what I suggest, because otherwise it'll associate itself with every file format it can get its grubby mits on.

edit: actually I just tried a 1024 png and it's only 81k, but I was looking at a spot with a fairly low color count.

cccp_leha · Post by **cccp_leha** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 9:16 pm

I'll get back to you on that...
...
Ok, so I lied it was 1 MB

but still.

Hirogen2 · Post by **Hirogen2** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 4:19 am

Remember that PNG is a lossless codec, so expect high file sizes.

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 6:49 am

Hirogen2 wrote:Remember that PNG is a lossless codec, so expect high file sizes.

Better to write the initial shot in a 100% lossless format and then convert it later. That way you have a choice of quality vs size.

Fredrik · Post by **Fredrik** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 7:59 am

Now wait a second, I tried opening your attached screenshot in PSP and saving it to a new PNG. The new file was about 500K. And even that is much larger than it should be. The explanation is that your screenshot has been blurred from JPEG compression, which makes re-conversion to PNG perform much worse.

The original PNG screenshot could not have been bigger than about 100-200K. If it was, then there is something extremely weird going on with ZDoom's PNG compression.

Have you checked the value of png_level in the config (or from the console)? The default is 5, which gives a good tradeoff between speed and compression. If you've set it to 0 or something like that, you should expect large files. Try something in the range 5-9 instead.

Post by **randi** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 2:58 pm

Why didn't you just post a screenshot made by the game instead of one written by Macromedia Fireworks 4.0? The image you have is 32 bits, not 8 bits like the one from ZDoom would be. Firework's image is also poorly compressed. Like Fredrik, by just opening the image in Photoshop and resaving with the SuperPNG plugin (Photoshop's PNG saving also sucks, but not as bad as Firework's apparently), the image is only 500k. Converting it back to a 256 color image (though not with the Doom palette, because there are some extra colors in there), it shrank down to only 144k.

Also, an 8-bit 1024x768 image will be a maximum size of 768k. That is with no compression at all. A typical image will be much smaller as long as you leave compression turned on.

cccp_leha · Post by **cccp_leha** » Tue Aug 12, 2003 9:30 pm

DID I open it in Fireworks before

Post by **randi** » Wed Aug 13, 2003 9:10 am

Yes, that's the software listed as the creator in the image.