O N V E R S I T Y Cataclysm screenshots

How to take high quality screenshots

1) The graphic card

having a recent card helps because some of the 3D features that are avaible in HW:C are not supported by old cards. You need at least a TNT2 or G400 to get all thoses features. More important is the memory size of the graphic card. 32 Megabytes would be the best choice but 16 megabytes works too. My own card has only 16 megabytes. When i say 'works' i mean with all settings set to high. Homeworld can work fine on an old voodoo 1 :) but not with all 3D features.

2) D3D or OpenGL

In Homeworld (HW) or Homeworld : Cataclysm (HW:C) you can choice between D3D and OpenGL. OpenGL usually gives the best results. But it can depend on the card's drivers quality. Try first OpenGL.

3) OpenGL settings

Most of the OpenGL's drivers have a Vertical synchronisation feature : Block transfert and page flipping. Block transfert gives the best result. But remember that it will slow down your frame rate. So when you play don't forget to reactived page flipping if it was set !

To find those settings, look in the advanced settings of your drivers. For Matrox users : download the matrox tech utilities 3.0 from Matrox's website.

4) Z-buffer

With some cards, you will need to manually set the z-buffer depth. This is the case for all G200/G400 Matrox cards. Go to the powerdesk option and set Z-buffer to 32.

5) How many memory do you need ?

Your computer should have at least 128 Mb of RAM. This will give you access to all HW:C's effect, like 'vertex lighting'

6) Homeworld : Cataclysm settings

Because HW and HW:C has very similar settings for video i will only use screenshots from HW:C to show you what the best settings are. From main menu go to 'options' then choice 'video'.

Resolution

There is a huge difference between 16 bits colors and 32 bits colors, so use 32 bits colors. About the size, it depends of the screen size of people who are going to look at your screenshots. A 800*600 screenshot will look fine on a 15" monitor, but a little tiny on a 22". I found out that the best average size is 1024*768. A 1280*1024 could be use in some cases but be carreful. The ratio size at 1280*1024 is 5/4, which is different from the 4/3 ratio you have at 1600*1200, 1024*768, 800*600. This implies that planets will look more like ovoids than spheres.

Model quality

set it to high.

model detail

Set it to full detail

Texture memory

Move the cursor to HI. This affects the size of card's memory used by the game.

Effects

Select 'high'. This will active the settings you can see on the picture below. If you have an old card select 'customers' and set yourself the settings. About the repair bots settings. you can desactive it. This will speed the game (a little) without affect the screenshots quality.

Number of effects

Set it to 'hi'

7) How to take a screenshot

The first thing to do is to press the P key. This will set the game in pause mode.

There is two ways. The easiest is to press the Scroll key. It will create a screenshot file in .jpg format in the /sierra/cataclysm/screenshots folder. The second way will give you better quality, but you will need extra/specialized software like Paint Shop pro, Photo-paint, PhotoShop, Climp, ...

How to proceed : In the game, press the 'print screen' key to take your screenshot. Quit the game and load photo-paint, paint shop pro, ... Go to the 'edit' function and 'paste'. The screenshot will appear. Save it.

Sure, this method is more complexed and not really fast, but you won't lose quality like you do when you take a screenshot in .jpg format using the scroll key.

8) HW:C screenshot mode

You can remove all strategic information that HW:C prints on screen when playing by pressing the 'V' key two times. If you press again they will reappear.

9) Conclusion

If you do not agree with some of my settings or if you prefer other, e-mail me at jfmaquine@wanadoo.fr