Community DLC Suggestion Poll: Week of 2/21

[x4000]

If you still have a save, it's there.

[raptor331]

I see nobody likes my new transport feature ideas? 

[Fox Soul]

I would honestly pick that for my third choice, but for the Top two I find its not all that important.

Btw,
I noticed the poll ends on my birthday. Hehe, would be great if my picks win.

[Shardz]

I read the previous comments regarding the inclusion once again of the Screenshot Function nomination and I do agree in part that it is trivial and something that could be implemented easily. But...then why isn't it included already? As it is now, we must rely on external third party apps or Windows' clumsy Clipboard process in order to save screen caps. I do agree that this feature isn't rocket science and would take probably 4 minutes to implement in code and I would much rather vote for something else in this poll...but if it isn't supported here then it probably never will be implemented unless we speak up; hence, the inclusion in the poll. I don't know of any other games I have where I need to re-configure the Hypersnap hot keys just to take a screen shot and frankly there are so many key combinations in AI War that I'd be hard pressed to find a hot key combination that would work. Then you compare that to ALT+TAB out to Windows to grab a PrintScreen function and load up an external photo editor to paste it each screen shot I want. Is it just me or is this just a WEE bit more important than yet another new unit in the game? 

[keith.lamothe]

If I knew offhand how to implement the screenshot thing it'd be done.  I left Chris a note asking how.  I seem to recall some problems due to the GDI+ stuff, but I don't think there's any of that left on the main gameplay screen.

[Black]

Shouldn't your graphics api have a function call that copies the frame buffer?

[x4000]

Oh, sorry, I had not yet seen that note.  There's a simple way to do it with a DirectX surface, I'll get you some sample code from Alden Ridge, which has screenshot capabilities.  The GDI components simply won't be included in any screenshots, but there is no way around that shy of windows hooks, which are a bad idea on a number of levels.

And Black -- no, we don't manage frame buffers directly, the two buffers are flipped by DirectX itself.  We're not using triple buffering or anything like that (though, we are using the Z buffer for something fancy with blending the force fields, and we do use a temporary buffer for doing some write-combining of far zoom icons).

[quickstix]

I find FRAPS does a great job of screenies, the free version is all you need. Just bind the screencap key to F12 and away you go.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, for 3.052:

-Added in-game screenshot key (F12), images are saved as .png files to the Screenshots directory under the local application data directory (so it's a sibling directory to the Saves directory).

[quickstix]

Wow, that was quick. Thanks!

By the way, may I ask how the files are named? Just out of curiosity.

[keith.lamothe]

Similar to autosaves with retain autosaves on, an example:

Screenshot_2010_02_24_22_51_12.png

[quickstix]

Cool. Sounds like a winner to me.

Thanks again.

[Shardz]

Ok, for 3.052:

-Added in-game screenshot key (F12), images are saved as .png files to the Screenshots directory under the local application data directory (so it's a sibling directory to the Saves directory).

God bless you and Chris both!!! YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! *Thunderous Applause* Now I can die happy!!

[vonduus]

Screenshots on F12: Nice little feature. FRAPS is cool, but this is cooler!

[Kordy]

Yay, screenshots

*edits vote with an evil laugh*