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Screenshots

Revision as of 08:41, 18 October 2010 by Sev (talk | contribs) (Added section on how to produce game icons)
Screenshots Project Service
URL(s) http://scummvm.org/screenshots
Purpose Provide a repository of screen shots of supported games.
Maintainer(s) Eugene Sandulenko (Sev)

Introduction

We try to have screenshots on our website for all games that we support. The purpose of this page is to describe how new screenshots are to be made to ensure uniform overall quality. In particular, what scaler you should use, how files should be named etc.

List of screenshots we need

How to make screenshots

Here are additional rules on how to make screenshots which were settled in the last couple of years: (Of course any suggestions are welcome!)

  • Check if this particular screenshot hasn't already been committed.
    • If there is no visual difference between an already submitted screenshot and your game version, don't submit it.
    • If you are submitting screenshots for non-English game, use only those which have visual difference (changed graphics) or have something written in that language.
  • ScummVM settings
    • Pick an interesting scene to take the screenshot of.
    • 320x200 games should be run with HQ2x (Ctrl+Alt+3) mode with aspect correction (Ctrl+Alt+a) mode on. I.e. it should be 640x480 image.
    • 640x480 games should be run with 1x scaler.
    • On platforms which use the SDL backend (Win32 and *nix included) Alt+S creates a screenshot file called scummvmXXXXX.bmp inside the current directory.
    • Make sure your screenshot is 640x480 and was made with HQ2x scaler (if originally 320x200). Otherwise it won't be accepted.
  • Screenshot file details.
    • Screenshots should not contain any window decorations.
    • The only supported file format is PNG with maximum compression.
    • Preferably run OptiPNG and advpng after that. Use default parameters for OptiPNG and -4 parameter for advpng for best results. If you don't, we'll have to do it later.
  • File name is gametarget[-platform][-lang]-X-full.png where:
      • gametarget is the game target name, see our compatibility page for the full list
      • platform is an optional parameter for cases when you submit non-PC game version screenshots
      • lang is an optional parameter when screenshot for non-English version
      • X is a sequental number.
    • Create a .txt file containing the file names followed by full game name and optionally provide the platform name and language in parenthesis. For example "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (Amiga German)"
      • There is no need to provide titles for every file if they're all the same. Use your discretion.
  • If possible, use the mkthumb.sh script to produce thumbnail versions of your screenshots. If you don't have it or can't use it, then save in interlaced JPEG scaled down to 256 pixel width with quality 0.33 (or higher, watch for the compression artifacts). Optionally you can commit/submit only PNG and TXT and we will create the thumbnails for you.

How to make game icon

On screenshots page you may see set of nice 'headshots' used for the games. If you are submitting screenshots for new game, you may help with creating the icon too.

There are two stages. For ready-to-use version you will need Photoshop CS2+. But GIMP/MS Paint is enough for the first stage.

  1. Pick some distinguishable graphics from the game. In most cases it is head of the main character or image of main item in the game (such as the hourglass for Ween)
  2. Make its background transparent by carefully painting over all unneeded pixels
    • In GIMP
      • Magnify the image
      • If background is not solid-colored, fill it with some color unused in the image. Acid green works well in most cases :)
      • With Select By Color tool select the backround
      • Invert the selection
      • Add layer mask -> use selection as layer mask
      • Apply the layer mask
  3. Downscale image to 22x22 or less. Make sure that you're using bicubic scaling, and that features of the image are still recognizable
  4. Save image as PNG

This ends first stage, you may already submit your icon, it will be a great help for us.

Now you may consider adding shadow to it, but you will need Photoshop CS2+ for it.

  1. Open file scummvm_icons.psd in Photoshop. You will need at least CS2 version
  2. Open your icon in Photoshop
  3. Copy/paste icon to scummvm_icons.psd file at some free place
  4. Open badges layer group, first badge, right click on it and select 'Copy layer styles'
  5. Switch to your pasted layer with game icon
  6. Paste layer styles to the game icon layer
  7. Select the icon with selection tool, up to 24x24 area. If the shadow is bigger, you will have to go back to previous stage
  8. Click on Edit->'Copy Merged' menu item
  9. File->New... (it will automatically have dimensions of the image in clipboard)
  10. Paste the image
  11. Save it as PNG

You're done.

Now consider optipng, advpng (see previous section), but that is optional.

How to submit screenshots

  • If you have write access to the web module in the SVN repository, you can commit it directly. NOTE: Don't forget to add the binary format key (-kb).
  • Alternatively, you can submit it via our patch tracker.
  • If you didn't perform some actions with the screenshot file, for example if you didn't compress it or were unable to produce thumbnails, please mark your submission accordingly.
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