How to make Screen shots/ animated gifs?

Helium Pond · October 30, 2000, 18:44

Can someone help me with this? What I want to do is a) take a screen shot of the game from maximum zoomed-back mode (ctrl+x) at the end of every turn of a game, which is the first thing I don't know how to do, and then b) combine all those frames into something like an animated .gif file, which is the second thing I don't know how to do. Basically, I want to make a version of the end-game replay, but a lot cooler. When you zoom all the way out, you lose the border information, but you see all the cities and units as little colored dots. It's cool, and I'd love to figure out a way to animate it. Especially in a MP game, wouldn't it be cool to see this after it was all over? Can someone help me with this? Again, two things: 1) how do I make a SMAC screen shot, and 2) how can I combine screen shots into an animated .gif, or something else that will animate the frames?

Provost Harrison · October 31, 2000, 08:32

Use Alt+Print Screen, that should copy the contents of the active window (ie SMAC) to the clipboard. Paste this into a image editing program of your choice. It should work...

Helium Pond · October 31, 2000, 14:44

What is this clipboard thing everyone's always talking about? I've worked with computers for most of my life, and I feel dumb admitting it, but I have no idea what the clipboard is. How do I look at it? Where is it?

Purple · October 31, 2000, 17:38

Are you using a Mac? The Windows Clipboard is a buffer that can hold a picture, text selection. You can select (highlight) something and Copy (ctrl-C) it to the Clipboard. Then you can Paste (ctrl-P) whatever is on the Clipboard to another application, say a text processor or graphics program--in your case a gif-animation program such a Gif Animator (shareware).

You can also Cut (ctrl-X) an item, that is, delete it and the deletion goes to the clipboard.

Chowlett · October 31, 2000, 19:19

In general, it's impossible to view the clipboard directly. It's simply some notional place where what you copied is.

Aredhran · November 1, 2000, 17:04

To view the contents of the clipboard, you need to install a Windows component, called Clipbook viewer or something like that.

You can find it from your control panel, Add/Remove programs, it's in the Windows Accessories.

Aredhran

Helium Pond · November 1, 2000, 18:05

Well, I don't think I need to use GIFs anymore anyway. I found some shareware GIF creaters, and it looks like GIFs usually don't have the kind of frame count that I'll need to make these animations. So I think I need to use an AVI maker, but I seem to have a problem with writing AVIs. All the shareware I've found to write AVIs give me errors. One of them says something like "the action AVIFileOpen doesn't have a handler in the registry", which I have no idea how to address. I've tried downloading lots of Codecs, I've tried downloading new versions of Windows Media Player (which for some reason made SMAC start crashing), and I've use the File Types control panel to edit, remove, and replace the file associations with the .avi extension, and nothing works. Can anyone give me advice, or refer me to some website that can help?

drewski · November 2, 2000, 12:40

quote:

Originally posted by Purple on 10-31-2000 04:38 PM
... You can select (highlight) something and Copy (ctrl-C) it to the Clipboard. Then you can Paste (ctrl-P)...

Just a word of caution. I believe that in most Windows applications, ctrl-P is the shortcut for Print whereas ctrl-V is the shortcut for Paste (which, of course, seems obvious as "V" is the ??th letter of "paste"

Gotta' just love Windows

)

In many cases, you can alternatively use ctrl-insert for Copy, shift-delete for Cut, and shift-insert for Paste.

Edit: having a "rolleyes" tag immediately followed by the end of a parenthetical respose yielded :rolleyes followed by a smiley -- not the desired effect.

Edit: Grrr! I messed up with my "correction". In the process, I posted a separate entry and still didn't fix this. I think I might finally have this right now.
[This message has been edited by drewski (edited November 02, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by drewski (edited November 02, 2000).]

drewski · November 2, 2000, 12:43

Hay Carumba!

I'm having much trouble. Please forgive me.

[This message has been edited by drewski (edited November 02, 2000).]

Purple · November 2, 2000, 16:21

Right you are Drewski. My face is red.

Ctrl-V for paste!

To go back to the original question, I use a shareware program call SnagIt for screenshots. Very flexible and easy to use.

Helium Pond · November 2, 2000, 17:08

Well, I've got my bugs sorted out in a very klugey way: I did something I didn't understand to the registry, and now I can write .AVI files. Scary, but as long as it works. I'm using a shareware program called ScreenTaker for the screen shots, I think I looked at SnagIt and it didn't work on SMAC...

Thanks for the suggestions, y'all... now maybe in half a year, hopefully, I'll have finished a PBEM game and be able to produce a cool little .AVI from it...