Author Topic: New Screenshot Feature (Read 5403 times)

Decar · « **on:** December 23, 2014, 04:09:42 AM »

I'm working on a simple screenshot feature in JCloisterZone, which will capture the entire game board and control panel and save it as a PNG to a specified directory.

I know lots of people like to capture their games and I thought it would be helpful not having to zoom out and printscreen and paste/crop etc.

I've got the basic feature working, I'd like to know if anyone else had any thoughts, or what it should/could capture?

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1366.0

Paul · « **Reply #1 on:** December 23, 2014, 05:27:11 AM »

Sounds like something to pitch for Farin. I'm sure he will implement this feature straight into JCZ. No more zooming and bulking about. One button and it automatically saves the board as .png in a specified directory.

It certainly is a good idea!

Decar · « **Reply #2 on:** December 23, 2014, 05:49:32 AM »

Yep, I've already got the go ahead from Farin; he's made to a branch any everything

He just has to put up with my terrible repository management.

I hacked the code to take a screenshot on every event and imported and aligned all the 140 images into GIMP yesterday, it currently looks like this:

I thought it was quite fun:

Warning it's 9MB: www.tehill.net/carcassonne/jcloisterzone/Animation.gif

danisthirty · « **Reply #3 on:** December 23, 2014, 06:17:35 AM »

I love that little animation of the game! I was going to ask whether getting it to take a screenshot of each tile placement and automatically create an animated gif (or some other movie) from the screenshots would be possible. I use a screen recording program to record most of the games I play, and then speed them up by a factor of 4 for YouTube. The idea of having the work done automatically is something I find quite exciting!

The only weird thing about the animation is that towards the end the meeples all shrink. This may be something to do with having to zoom out, but if this is the case I think it's probably better that some sort of resizing takes place at some point to ensure consistency throughout.

Anyway, great work Decar. I hope you're enjoying getting to grips with JCZ...

Decar · « **Reply #4 on:** December 23, 2014, 06:27:15 AM »

@danthirsty - Thanks for the feedback, I think I'll have a go at recording games; it's the next logical progression. But it's quite intensive for memory though. You may have noticed the last few frames seem to slow down. The full size the GIF was 39MB!

Good spot with the Meeple - I noticed it yesterday, it was caused by me zooming during capturing; I seemed to have fixed it now!

Paul · « **Reply #5 on:** December 23, 2014, 07:11:08 AM »

Gah!

I miss the good ol' games when you could hack and cheat left and right. It was part of the gaming experience for me.

Some games you find hidden items not implemented in the game but still there as raw data. Other times you can find sections of a map or hidden mazes that were cancelled in the official release but you could activate them yourself with a little tweak.

There there is the fun of so called 'modding' where you hack a game and make your own levels, characters, items, spells etc. I spent almost a decade doing this with Diablo 2.
My favourite hack with Diablo 2 was an item that would crash other player's game and sometimes their computer. I always believed in playing nice and sometimes, having the power to rid of the douches, you have to use that power to get a nice community of players that makes the game fun!

danisthirty · « **Reply #6 on:** December 23, 2014, 07:17:31 AM »

Quote from: Yellow on December 23, 2014, 07:11:08 AM

My favourite hack with Diablo 2 was an item that would crash other player's game and sometimes their computer. I always believed in playing nice and sometimes, having the power to rid of the douches, you have to use that power to get a nice community of players that makes the game fun!

"Yellow: messing with the people who mess with you since 2000"

Decar · « **Reply #7 on:** December 28, 2014, 10:37:31 AM »

Unfortunately, I've yet to find any secret levels in JCloisterZone

Maybe I should leave some

I've made a bit of progress but I'm not entirely happy with the result. Here's the AI playing DnP + The Tower:

It's an 88MB GIF?!?!

http://www.tehill.net/carcassonne/jcloisterzone/JCloisterZone_animation20141228-155204.gif

Paul · « **Reply #8 on:** December 28, 2014, 12:52:02 PM »

Quote from: Decar on December 28, 2014, 10:37:31 AM

Unfortunately, I've yet to find any secret levels in JCloisterZone Maybe I should leave some

I've made a bit of progress but I'm not entirely happy with the result. Here's the AI playing DnP + The Tower:

It's an 88MB GIF?!?!

http://www.tehill.net/carcassonne/jcloisterzone/JCloisterZone_animation20141228-155204.gif

88 Mb isn't so bad if it's a gif animation. I've dabbled in sizes up to 512 MB. But there are far more effective ways to deliver an animation. I take it you took what you had available then and there? As long as it works, right? Lol. All good.

Imagine making a full scale map of data that was literally less than 64 kb on the game disc, the old 1 MB sized disks. You would get something like this:

Warning! 18 MB file, 16384x16384 pixel .png. http://sydby.com/carcassonne/screenshots/other/u6-map-level-0.png

Sorry for the lack of thumbnail, I've yet installed an image editor that can handle the size.