Hazel Whorley
Level Design

me@hazelwhorley.com

Tutorials

Map Screenshot Guide [UED 3]

Why use screenshots?

Level previews help people to recognise a map when looking in the map list. People will generally ignore or forget a map in the list if it has no description or screenshot. Preview screenshots show up in the UT2k4 instant action/host game map list and the vote menu.

This tutorial covers:

Taking Screenshots

Set up the display
First you should set a decent resolution and gamma in the display settings, and bump up all the detail settings to the highest if possible. To clear the screen of all hud icons, weapon and crosshair, type "togglescreenshotmode" in the console. Alternatively you can go into spectator mode and type "showhud" to hide only the hud.

Find a good view
A good screenshot should show the main play area or a key location in your map, any interesting features, or any other view that characterises the map. If you have good level previews people are more likely to remember your map any play it again.

Try to avoid including huge expanses of wall or floor in your screenshots, this makes it look boring and leads the eye away from key features.

Useful Commands
Press tab and type the following in the console:
fly - allows you to fly around the map. (offline only)
ghost - you can fly and go through walls. (offline only)
walk - return to a walking state from the above commands. (offline only)
fov - type fov and an angle (0 - 360) i.e. fov 100 to change your field of vision. The default is 90, increase it to take wide-angle shots or decrease it to zoom in.

Taking screenshots
Press F9 take a screenshot, this saves the screenshot as a bitmap file in the UT2004/Screenshots folder.



Level Preview

Editing the screenshots
The screenshots you took should have been saved in the UT2004/Screenshots folder. You'll need to resize the screenshots to 512 x 256 pixels and save them as .tga .bmp or .pcx files before they can be imported.

Import screenshots as textures
  1. In the texture browser click File > Import. Browse and open the screenshot file.
  2. Type the following in the box that appears:
    Package: MyLevel
    Group: Screenshots (or anything you like)
    Name: The name of the screenshot. It helps if they're numbered.
  3. Make sure Generate Mipmaps is unchecked under options. The texture is now imported. You don't need to save the MyLevel package itself as it's saved within your map file.
  4. Compress the texture - right-click it and click Compress > DXT1.
  5. Change the level of detail by going to the texture properties (right-click > properties), expand the tab that says Texture and change the LODSet property to LODSET_Interface.
  6. Repeat the above for any other screenshots you want to import.
Don't close the editor until your material sequence is created and set as the level preview. Unless the textures you imported are in use they will be lost when the editor is closed.

How to create a MaterialSequence
Most maps use three screenshots for a preview, each one fading to the next. This is done by creating a MaterialSequence.

  1. In the texture browser click File > New...
  2. Enter the following in the New Material window:
    Package: MyLevel
    Group: Screenshots (or preferably whatever you put last time)
    Name: The name of the level preview. Can be anything you like.
    Class: Raw Material
    Properties > MaterialClass: MaterialSequence
  3. The properties window for the new MaterialSequence will open. Click SequenceItems > Add and enter the following:
    Action: MSA_ShowMaterial
    Material: Select the first screenshot from the texture browser and click use.
    Time: 1.5 (this is the time the screenshot is shown in seconds)
  4. Click add again and enter the following to fade between screenshots:
    Action: MSA_FadeToMaterial
    Material: The second screenshot.
    Time: 1.0 (fading time)
  5. Repeat the above for all the screenshots so you get a sequence like this:
    show screen1 > fade to screen2 > show screen2 > fade to screen3 > show screen3 > fade to screen1

Setting the level Preview
In the editor click View > Level Properties and expand the LevelSummary tab. You can set other important information here like Author, Description and Player Count. Select the material sequence you made from the texture browser, then click Use next to the screenshot property in the level summary. Check the description, author name and screenshot all show up correctly in the UT2004 map list before you release the map.



Problems

Missing Level Info
Sometimes your level description and screenshot haven't changed in the map list, even when you updated them and saved the map.
First open the latest version of your map and check that all the level info is still there.
If it is, try the following:

  1. Remove your map from the ut2004/maps folder.
  2. Start UT2004 and look in the map list, then exit.
  3. Copy your map back into the ut2004/maps folder.
  4. Start UT2004 again and look in the map list to check it's fixed.

Black or distorted screenshots
If you have an Nvidia 8800 series graphics card, this may cause screenshots in UT2004 to turn completely black. Update the video card drivers, and if it still doesn't work I recommend taking screenshots with fraps. Having anti-aliasing turned on sometimes messes up screenshots with some cards.