Screen Shots & Map Preview Screen Shots in UT. - (Sticky also?)
Screen Shot in UT:
By "Hook" - 6/5/02
This is only how to do a screen shot in UT.
Start the UT Game.
Go to Preferences then HUD. Make the HUD invisible.
Make the Weapon Invisible & the Crosshair Invisible.
Set the Graphics to the best you can.
Now go into your Map. Hit the tilde key "~" to bring up the console.
Enter "fly" (no quotes) so you can fly around & hover for good screen shots.
When you find the scene(s) you want, hit the F9 key. This takes the shot.
You will notice the screen change briefly during the shot.
This stores the shot in your UT System folder. They are labeled numerically such as: Shot0001, etc. The shot files as they are, are bmp (bitmap) files. They are very good quality but they are also not the best looking. They are kind of bland.
You will probably want to enhance them a bit in a photo editor such as MS Photo Editor especially the Color Balance!
They are also very large in file size.
From here you can do with them, as you want. Convert them to jpeg, resize, etc.
Screen Shot For Preview in UT Menu:
By Pete "Hook" Morgan - 6/5/02
Start the UT Game.
Go to Preferences, then HUD. Make the HUD invisible.
Make the Weapon Invisible & the Crosshair Invisible.
Set the Graphics to the best you can.
Now go into your Map. Hit the tilde key "~" to bring up the console.
Enter "fly" (Type fly, no quotes, hit Enter) so you can fly around & hover for good screen shots. Close the console.
When you find the scene(s) you want, hit the F9 key. This takes the shot.
You will notice the screen change briefly during the shot.
This stores the shot in your UT System folder.
They are labeled numerically such as: Shot0001.bmp, Shot0002.bmp, etc.
The shot files as they are, are bmp (bitmap) files. They are very good quality but they are also not the best looking. They are kind of bland.
You will probably want to enhance them a bit in a photo editor such as MS Photo Editor by balancing the color a bit. They are also very large in file size.
Also in the photo editor you must resize the screen shot to a more reasonable size to where the finished photo area you want for you preview will fit approximately into the 256 x 256 pixel area in UT for the preview screen shot. Resize down to say 320 x 280. Of course next you will have to crop the screen shot to an exact square of 256 x 256 pixels. Make sure you pick the 256 x 256 area you want for your final preview shot OUT OF the larger screen shot that you just resized more appropriately. You should cut out (crop) a correct square OUT OF the resized original.
(Do NOT Resize your picture to a 256 x 256 pixel square by software. Your screenshot will most likely be distorted.)
Finally, you must convert the new cropped shot to 256 color, 8 bit color depth.
Now save this shot as a 256 color, 8 bit .PCX or .BMP file. Now you are ready to import this shot into UnrealEd! I personally use the .PCX file format. I believe it saves as a more compact file.
Open the map you did the screenshot for in UnrealEd.
Bring up the Texture Browser window. Click the Import button.
A file dialog will pop up. Browse to the location where your preview is stored and select it, then click the OK button. The Import Texture dialog will pop up. In the "Name:" field enter: "screenshot" (no quotes) and in the "Package:" field enter: "MyLevel" (no quotes). UNcheck the "Generate MipMaps" option and then click the OK Button. After UnrealEd works for a moment you should see the "MyLevel" package displayed in the browser with your preview screenshot shown in the browser texture window. Go to Level Properties. (Right click in a bare part of one of the 2D windows) Under Level Properties, there is a field called "Screenshot" (You need to click on your newly created textured screenshot in the Browser window to have the name come up) Click "use" in the properties window. Rebuild and save your map.
When you run the UT game and select your map in the UT Menu, (when starting a practice session or network game), you should see your screenshot displayed just as it does with all of the maps that came with UT. When a Screen Shot (or texture, see adding custom textures tutorial) is imported to the MyLevel package, you do NOT need to include the screen shot or texture file with the Map in the final zip file to be distributed to the public.
Note: I believe that any/all support files (music, sounds, etc.) can be added into the “MyLevel” package, just as you can with the ScreenShot and Texture files as mentioned above!
I just have never tried it with any other than the ScreenShots & Texture files.
There you have it!
Let me know if you have any questions!
Hook
(
