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Joined: Dec 2, 2005
Messages: 21413 Offline
In trying to look something up for CoolIceT this morning I happened across a few useropts settings that can change the behavior of the in-game screenshot function. If you guys already know these, then just call me silly.
Please note that we do not officially support these commands, so use at your own risk.
First, these must be entered, singly or in whatever combination you want, in a "useropts.cfg" text file in your game directory (the one your screenies get saved to by default). They might be case-sensitive, I'm not sure. Here are the commands and their default values:
ScreenShot_Filename_Base = "./screenshot"
This can set the name of the root filename of your screenshots. The default saves them as "screenshot_0.jpg," "screenshot_1.jpg," etc, in the same directory as your game client. I tried
ScreenShot_Filename_Base = "./screeny"
and sure enough, it started saving out my screenshots as "screeny_0.jpg," "screeny_1.jpg," etc.
Now, I'm guessing that you can also change the directory they're saved to by messing with that "./" part at the beginning, but I didn't try that myself.
ScreenShot_JPG_Quality = 85
This sets the quality level of your jpg screenshots. If you want smaller files (but blurrier images), lower the number. If you want sharper images (but potentially much larger files), raise the number.
ScreenShot_Pan_Enable = 0
This is where things get...a little weird. Set this to 1, and then when you press the usual screenshot key, instead of just one screenshot, the game will take a series of them. They are taken from what the game considers your character's exact middle, which is somewhere around navel height (doesn't matter if you're standing or sitting, it's always at the same height relative to the ground at your feet). I suggest you sit or go invis or both, unless you just want a lot of images of the inside of your RSI.
Also, it seems that for reliable results with panning screenshots, you have to run in Windowed mode (check the box in your Video Options panel) while taking them.
If you just set the setting above to 1 and press the screenshot key, you'll get a bunch of distored screenshots of seemingly random angles. That's because the default settings are rather bizarre. In fact, I could really only get one specific set of options to give me non-distorto screenshots for a horizontal pan group (didn't try vertical). Here are the panning options and their default values:
This results in nine screenshots, taken as if a camera was rotating in a circle at your waist, taking screenshots at regular intervals.
You'd think that those options would let you change the number of screenshots and so forth, but when I tried any other values, I got distortions. If you guys want to experiment, well, good luck, and remember that these are unsupported options.
Joined: Jan 18, 2006
Messages: 2491
Location: Big Sky Country
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Ooh...nice. I swear there was a way to take those panoramic shots along time ago without changing any useropts.cfg though. Anyone remember? When you took the shot it would say Cubeshot..... Maybe control+f12? I don't remember. Anyone from the olden days got some input?
Aside from the in-game settings, Battlefield 2 has a large number of config (.con) files spread throughout its directories. These files can be edited using a text editor like Windows Notepad or Wordpad. Before editing any .con file, first make sure you make a backup copy of it.
However as you may have noticed, editing many of these .con files can prove pointless as the changes seem to have no impact. I have found that the main configuration files which do have an impact are found under your \Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles\ directory, with the settings for each profile (whether an online or offline profile) are listed under a numbered directory (e.g. \0001 for the first profile, etc.). Note, I don't recommend that you edit the files under the \Default directory. To see which particular profile is currently in use, open the Global.con file under the \Profiles parent directory first, then see which number it mentions, and go to that particular numbered directory to find the files mentioned below.
Video.con
VideoSettings.setResolution 1280x960@75Hz
This setting controls your current resolution in Battlefield 2. The format is Width x Height@Refresh Rate. If you cannot start up BF2 and change the resolution from within the game, try altering it here to help you startup the game. In particular when you want to launch BF2 for the first time and the game just crashes back to desktop (See Troubleshooting Tips section), you can change the resolution from its default of 800x600@60Hz to one your monitor supports. Note however that certain resolutions are unsupported and entering them here will not work - see the Command Line section further below.
VideoSettings.setTerrainQuality 4
VideoSettings.setGeometryQuality 4
VideoSettings.setLightingQuality 4
VideoSettings.setDynamicLightingQuality 4
VideoSettings.setDynamicShadowsQuality 4
VideoSettings.setEffectsQuality 4
VideoSettings.setTextureQuality 4
VideoSettings.setTextureFilteringQuality 4
All of the above settings can be adjusted from within the in-game Video settings. However the highest they can be set to is High from within the game (a value of 3). By setting them each to 4 in Video.con (as shown above), you will have them displayed as 'Videosettings_Ultrahigh' in the in-game Video settings screen, and some people believe this increases the graphics quality to Ultrahigh levels. I didn't see any impact from this change, but if you want the absolute best quality in BF2 give it a try.
now that we can save the screenshots in a folder it fantastic! but, everytime we patch the game will it delete that folder since its not in the origional game files? I thought that the patcher did something like that.
having a folder containing the screenshots will help with this games fragmentation a ton because the main mxo folder won't be expanding and contracting so much at 3mb's at a time. Thats some major lag due to fragmentation!
