Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: VicRattlehead on April 05, 2010, 09:46:26 am

Title: Screenshot output format
Post by: VicRattlehead on April 05, 2010, 09:46:26 am
Is there a way to make FSO save screenshots in a different format like PNG or JPG? Having to convert them from TGA is a hassle.
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: The E on April 05, 2010, 09:52:24 am
Well, it's probably possible to get them converted to png on the fly (libpng has to be good for something after all)....
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: castor on April 05, 2010, 10:26:22 am
High compression levels may be impractical for "real time" use though? But if you don't use high compression levels.. well, what's the gain to using TGA.
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: The E on April 05, 2010, 10:44:21 am
Well, that's the tradeoff, isn't it? Either you get the screenshots instantly, or you have to wait for a few cycles to get them compressed.

And since I do believe that noone really wants jpg-compressed screenies, png is the only game in town.
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: chief1983 on April 05, 2010, 11:23:02 am
I'd suggest waiting a bit until libpng support is a little more mature.  We did just add it after all.  We should probably get support for 1.4.x first.
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: castor on April 05, 2010, 03:14:26 pm
And since I do believe that noone really wants jpg-compressed screenies, png is the only game in town.
Yea, most people would probably prefer png. Personally I'd rather take tga (default) and jpg (cmd line option). Many nice looking screenshots have gradients and stuff painful for png to compress (and the not so nice looking shots.. well a few artifacts won't make them much worse).
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: The E on April 05, 2010, 03:38:19 pm
Yes, well, if it was me? I'd take just png and let people worry about converting that to jpg as needed. 

Besides, it's not like it takes _that_ much time to compress...
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: chief1983 on April 05, 2010, 06:08:40 pm
The important thing really is having the least latency, between compressing the data and actually dumping it to the hard drive.  Obviously no compression is lowest on the CPU but the larger file will take longer to write.  So, if png is quicker to compress and still as small as tga, it's a better choice.  If there's a tradeoff we'll have to figure out which one is best.  I don't even think we have bmp support in the engine so that's probably not up for consideration.
Title: Re: Screenshot output format
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on April 05, 2010, 06:13:56 pm
You also have to take into account even small latency can cause issues with multiplayer so it's always best to error on the side of speed.  Files can be converted to other formats easy enough.