Screenshot Manipulation

[Sirian]

I had problems with missing screenshots as well. Now I run Civ 4 in window mode and copy/paste the screenshots into irfanview.

There are certain parts of the interface where the screens don't take. These are consistent:

* City Capture dialog
* Most Diplomacy interactions
* Religion has spread to your empire
* Learned a new tech

A couple of others.

Currently, I know I can trust taking screens in cities, or from the main map view, or during combat anims, or from the advisor panels. I have been alt-tabbing out to paste from the clipboard in to an image file for the Known Instances where a shot won't take.

Believe me, I'm not pleased that this function isn't working 100%. Whatever is up for Arathorn is a separate bug related to something not shaking hands with his hardware or drivers, and that's a separate issue. But screens are failing for everybody in certain cases. I will not stop nagging Soren and Moose about this until it is fixed. Even if that means years. They have their hands full trying to fix more urgent matters, though, so no promises other than that I won't shut up about it while it remains less than 100% functional.


Epics and SG players will need to figure out when they can and cannot trust a particular shot to take, and then take extra steps for the instances that will or may fail on them. You got to work with what you've got! For now.


- Sirian

[KingOfPain]

When resizing images (especially when resizing by percentage) - try to use nice easy divisible numbers, such as 75%, 50% and 25%. If you "must" use something in-between it would still be better to use, for example, a round number like 70% rather than 69%.

Sharpen the image before scaling, and sharpen it after scaling. You will get a better/sharper image with this technique, thus you can save your file in higher compression to save more bandwidth and disk space.

If your image program has an "Unsharp Mask" option, use it instead of other sharpen tools. The name is misleading to most people, long story, but it is generally a better tool.

KoP

[Maniac Marshall]

Well, I was scared to use the game version of pics too after reading about the problems, but I seem to have opened annother can of worms doing otherwise.

My comp has a problem of sometimes crashing when I alt + tab to get back into the game. Not allways immediately, but within a turn or so of doing so. It took me a while to realize this was what was going on, So I ended up crashing several times while playing it . One particularly nasty crash resulted in a crash to restart, wiping out my notes for a few hundered turns. Fortunately I've been able to restore the flow of the big events from the pics and the replay, but some strategical decisions (why I researched things in what order etc) are lost for good

And after all this.... the damn pictures took just fine by the in game mechanisim.

Personally, if you're going to resize pictures to signifigantly smaller ones, I suggest png over jpg (unless your using the in game thing... which I may do now). bmp IS the best, but its a bandwith bandit.

- Maniac

[Griselda]

Have you tried playing in windowed mode? I can't live without it anymore.

[Malurous]

Hi,

ingame shots outside the instances Sirian mentioned work fine for me too, but to what size should I resize them before posting? Sure, I'm not going to need the information very soon (asking because of the Epic), but it'd be nice to know what size people tend to use. I don't want to be one of those guys who makes the reader scroll sideways all the time. It's no problem for me when I'm home, but when I visit my parents (quite often) it really becomes an issue on their comp :mad:

[BeefontheBone]

800x600 I'd say, definitely no bigger. It often helps to cut out only the interesting bits, both in terms of bandwidth and the scrolling thing you mentioned.

[Malurous]

Thanks

Yeah I realize the cutting thing, I just wanted to know the upper limit...

[Sirian]

Thanks

Yeah I realize the cutting thing, I just wanted to know the upper limit...

If you are posting your report to a forum, you'll force people to scroll sideways for each line. That's definitely bad, and I crop my shots to about 750 width or so when I can. However, Civ4 has more interesting stuff to see and sometimes calls for full screen shots. In these cases, I don't crop, but instead change my report so that I write short lines only, and don't use any word wrap. Then the images can scroll off the right, but the text won't.

Meanwhile, on my own site, I can get the text wrap to adjust to each person's own settings, while images will scroll to the right if necessary, giving me the best of both worlds.


As a general rule, crop the shot down as far as you can without cutting any important visual content. People don't need to see the interface elements over and over unless they say something important. If you need a bigger slice, or a full shot, to show what you want, then don't be afraid to do it, but do try to ensure that when you do, you use the appropriate method to prevent the annoying "scroll right to read every line" problem for low res users. ... At least if you want everybody to keep reading your reports!


It's good that you don't want to be "that guy" who ticks off low res readers. I hope everybody else is paying attention!


- Sirian

[Malurous]

As a general rule, crop the shot down as far as you can without cutting any important visual content. People don't need to see the interface elements over and over unless they say something important.

Thanks for the tip on the interface!

"that guy"

*pointing fingers* THAT GUY uses too wide pictures!

On a more serious note though, I have quit reading some interesting threads because of this effect. Even when it's a well-written report, the tedium can be too much. As I'm going to do my best to write reports that are good reads, I don't want to screw it up with some like that.