Question about levelshots

[Neon_Knight]

I want to make new levelshots for every OA map, (at least those who have been for a long time between us ) but I have some questions for fromhell:

1) What should be the preferred dimensions for these?
2) What should be both preferred saving format and settings at saving time?

That should be nice to know in case of someone like to put an adequate levelshot for his/her map.

[fufinha]

I extracted these from my maps, the thumbnails should link to the actual levelshots. I have no idea of preferences or what makes good standards but I do notice most these levelshots are similar and consistant.

I did notice the oa levelshots are sometimes square shaped and end up looking poor on browsers etc. I guess the dimensions should suit a typical resolution of a typical monitor.

http://allowdl.com/album/main.php?cmd=album
 

[pulchr]

in quake 3 the levelshots are very small, but they still look great when the level loads (i'm using 1680x1050).
i guess there's some kind of overlay with noise to make it look that good. there are no jpeg compression artefacts or such things visible.
however if the small levelshots are maximized on my screen they look like crap.

this "noise" is not present in openarena and therefore the images need to be very large and high quality to look good.
which is a waste of space etc. i'm not sure this is the way it works but i guess it is

if someone could take a look at the code for what is displayed when the levelshot is shown we might be able to get this noise effect in openarena too.
(if it is wanted). i tried to look for missing graphics and such but didn't find anyone that matched - and i'm useless at finding things in the code.

[damocles]

The engine has some screenshot commands that downsample to 128x128 using the graphics card's texture filtering.  It then does the same when loading the level.

You can bind a key to "screenshot levelshot" and it will take your current view like a regular screenshot (including the HUD).  You can also use \devmap and \levelshot, which will remove the HUD and take a picture from intermission (scoreboard) points.

It will save to the correct place automatically ("Wrote levelshots/aggressor.tga").  You can set sv_pure "0" and load the map again to see.

[cosmo]

Use 256x256 TGAs.
Please keep squares. Engine does better with that.

[Neon_Knight]

The engine has some screenshot commands that downsample to 128x128 using the graphics card's texture filtering.  It then does the same when loading the level.

You can bind a key to "screenshot levelshot" and it will take your current view like a regular screenshot (including the HUD).  You can also use \devmap and \levelshot, which will remove the HUD and take a picture from intermission (scoreboard) points.

It will save to the correct place automatically ("Wrote levelshots/aggressor.tga").  You can set sv_pure "0" and load the map again to see.

I tried that command, it generates screenshots at the info_player_intermission point, and if it doesn't exists, it takes the levelshot at the first info_player_start it found. I've incorporated info_player_intermissions to my maps due to that, these should be linked with a target_position or info_null entity to get better results.

[pulchr]

ah, nice - i didn't know about the "/levelshot" command.

[Joki]

or just /exec highquali (or whatever the name of your highquality-cofig is) then use /cg_draw2D 0 to hide all HUD related stuff and /team s for spectator mode.
fly around until you found the perfect spot to take the screenshot. i like taking normal /screenshot instead of /screenshotJPEG thou, because i like to
add text and maybe post-process the image before finally compressing it into .jpg. for the format: almost any size would work. you could even use a widescreen-format,
if you dont mind that on 4:3 resolutions the very left and right areas will be missing. 240x240 or 320x240 work fine.

[chaoticsoldier]

You need /cg_drawgun 0 too   (EDIT: superfluous comment I know no gun is obvious.)

Bear in mind what cosmo said about keeping it 256x256 TGA.