Wintermute Engine Forum

Wintermute Engine => Technical forum => Topic started by: Daniel on April 23, 2004, 02:28:38 PM

Title: Save-Game Thumbnail
Post by: Daniel on April 23, 2004, 02:28:38 PM

Hi,

I want to implement a CMI-like save-game mechanism in which a thumbnail of the about-to-be-saved game is displayed on the save window. I have a few ideas regarding how to implement this but none of them seem good enough. Any suggestions anyone?

Title: Re: Save-Game Thumbnail
Post by: Mnemonic on April 23, 2004, 02:31:48 PM

I think the only way is to save the game first to some private slot, but it will take time. Taking the screenshot would take some time anyway.

Title: Re: Save-Game Thumbnail
Post by: Daniel on April 23, 2004, 03:29:09 PM

Quote from: Mnemonic on April 23, 2004, 02:31:48 PM

I think the only way is to save the game first to some private slot.

I used this technique when I was testing AGS, a couple of months ago, and it worked flawlessly, but the game saving in AGS is instantaneous with no delay, so it is not noticed during the game. Here it is not possible with the time it takes to save the game so this is no good. Any other ideas, maybe?

Title: Re: Save-Game Thumbnail
Post by: McCoy on April 23, 2004, 06:41:30 PM

hm... maybe a method that makes an screenshots and saves it as an sprite in some run-time created object or variable or whatever they're called now, where you can resize, and change any parameter just like with any other sprite/entity? It would be useful not only for this, but for special effects, like motion blur, "drunken" effects... but I don't know about the performance of the engine when it comes to taking screenshots, so I don't know if it's possible...