MTM2.com

A Treatise on taking Screenshots in Tracked2...

For years now, everyone's been telling me that they can't take screenshots in Tracked2. Yet I've been able to do it like it's the most natural thing in the world. Phineus even goes so far as to attribute the hardware of my old computer with supernatural powers (ok he doesn't, but he's pretty stoked about it).

But... I'm willing to (tentatively) bet that you can in fact get Tracked2 to give you screen dumps, regardless of your hardware. Mine is no more a special case than yours. It's all down to the fact that probably everyone on the planet, bar myself, has been running the game under 3D hardware acceleration.

I just recently upgraded my old computer with a new graphics card. Previously I'd been using the onboard graphics adaptor, an ATi mach64 ProTurbo 2D accelerator with 1MB video memory. Over the course of the weekend I managed to procure a Trident 3Dimage 9750 2D/3D accelerator with 4MB video memory, and successfully installed it in my machine. With this new graphic adaptor, I was able to test out a hunch I've had for a while about Tracked2 and see whether your hardware really did make that much of a difference.

With the old graphics adaptor, I was forced to run the game under software acceleration in either of the two lower resolution modes - 320x200 or 320x400. Tracked2 uses MTM2's graphics settings, so whatever I set the game to, translated to what I ran Tracked2 in. These were the resolution at which I frequently took screenshots with which to amaze the world.

Now here's the clincher: I was never able to get screenshots out of Tracked2 when I set the game (and hence Tracked2 itself) to 640x480 mode. Tried it once, but when I hit Print Screen and switched to Paint Shop Pro, there was nothing to paste; and since the game did not run at all well on the old computer in 640x480, I never tried it again. At the time I just dismissed it, but the significance of this has become apparent after I tried out my newly-installed 3D graphics accelerator.

See, when you set the game to use 3D hardware acceleration, it locks the resolution to 640x480 mode - you don't get a choice in the matter. With my game set to use hardware acceleration (and hence, 640x480 screen mode), I ran Tracked2, and found that Print Screen wouldn't work - in fact the program crashed completely when I Alt-Tabbed out to try to paste the image into PSP.

But, turn hardware acceleration off in MTM2, and you can now pick your screen resolution. At 640x480 and no 3D acceleration I still couldn't get a screen dump, but set it to either of the other two screen modes and viola! I could get a screenshot from the program using Tracked2, and plus Tracked2 didin't crash when I Alt+Tabbed out of it.

So that's my theory... all it needs now is proving. So, if anyone has Tracked2, and they've never been able to get a screenshot out of it, and they've got a few moments to spare, try it out and see if it works. If I'm right then I shall be wholly vindicated, if not then I'll get me coat...

BTW, for those who don't know how, here's the method for how I do it:
Open your favourite paint program - I generally use Paint Shop Pro 4, but you should be able to use anything you like, even MSPaint should do the job. Start Tracked2 and, when you see something you want to grab a picture of, hit the PrintScrn key on your keyboard (it should be next to the F12 key). The press Alt+Tab to switch from Tracked2 to your paint program without closing Tracked2. To paste your image, press Ctrl+V or select Paste from the menu. If an image of the Tracked2 screen you were just looking at appears in your paint program, then it worked.
You should find that this will work so long as you have MTM2 set to use one of the lower screen resolutions. To change this, start MTM2, click the Options menu, and choose Graphics. Select either 320x200 or 320x400 from the drop-down menu (if this box is greyed out, you will need to set the Rendering to 'Software Only' to be able to choose the screen resolution).

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If it's a good idea,
Phineus has probably already done it.

[This message has been edited by Drive2Survive (edited 08-07-2002).]

I'm not saying you're wrong. But tracked2 has to be able to run at all before you can do anything. Currently, it bombs on my comp (a slice of nvidia geforce baloney). There is nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing that I can do even to get it to run, let alone take pics. On the other hand, you go from ATi mach64 ProTurbo 2D to Trident 3Dimage 9750 2D/3D and you want to talk knowledgably about hardware? Ouch! LOL. Maybe Tracked2 only takes pics in australia. And I dunno about you, but to me, this pic sure looks 640x480. How'd you manage that one? Seriously tho, there is something to the settings argument. Recently changing in game options made the difference between running and not running on a friend's computer. So who knows. (not me).

>> But tracked2 has to be able to run at all before you can do anything

Well, yea, of course if Tracked2 isn't going to run at all, then you're not going to get far. Forgot 'bout dat. But I suspect that at least some people wouldn't of thought of the different res settings. Even I can't get screen dumps when it's in 640x480 - it wouldn't surprise me if noone else can either. But, probably noone else ever thought of setting MTM2's graphics to a lower resolution without hardware acceleration - and why would you?
Anyway, if it runs for you under Windows, you're most of the way there - now hit the PrintScrn key for me and see what what happens.

>> this pic sure looks 640x480. How'd you manage that one?

I resized the image. Once you get a screen out of Tracked2, it comes out with the aspect ratio all wrong - it's either squashed flat or too skinny, depending on which of the two screen modes you've picked. I thought you'd prefer it this way. If you look closely you can see that the pixels are chunky, and not a uniform shape - most noticable in the text...

Ah heck, if I'm gonna go through this, let's make it worthwhile...

If I try to take a screenshot in Tracked2 with the resolution at 640x480, it simply won't cooperate, hardware acceleration or no. If I take a screenshot at either of the other two resolutions - 320x200 or 320x400 - with "software rendering only" set, it will work. That's how it worked ith the old graphics chip, and that's how it works with my new(?) graphics card.

These pics are straight out of Tracked2 at 320x200; I did one of the menu screen, and one of the truck: http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/320x200_menu.gif http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/320x200_truck.gif

And these are 320x400: http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/320x400_menu.gif http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/320x400_truck.gif

Now you see why I resize the pics.

However, I'm probably biting off way more than I can chew... like, previously, I'd never gotten a pic of the game running in full-screen mode, though I never tried more than once. But now, this: http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/ingame.jpg

Somethin wrong with the sky. And note the framerate in the bottom right corner


And while I'm at it, here's that error I mentioned elsewhere:
<IMG SRC="http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/fullscreenerror.gif" border=0> http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/fullscreenerror.gif

Having learnt DirectX programming, I'd say that's an error at the stage where DirectX sets the screen resolution. To be fair, MTM2 does give a warning message when you change the Accelerated Graphics Port option that it may not work if your system does not support AGP. Clearly mine don't.

[This message has been edited by Drive2Survive (edited 08-07-2002).]

This is almost as good as talking about verts vs polys being the bigger problem.

>>probably noone else ever thought of setting MTM2's graphics to a lower...

Actually ever since I learned about the headlight trick, this one always comes to mind and that's how I thought to suggest it for running on xp. Still, you're right. It doesn't follow naturally.

>>I resized the image.

Ah, and here I thought all that wonkiness was because of software mode. In any event, they look great all things considered and do the job nicely

>>320x200 & 320x400

Lots of work getting them screenies. And those 320x400's sure looks strange. Do they look like that when you run it or does the monitor stretch them out?

>>a pic of the game running in full-screen mode

Compare. I assume that's on the trident. How's it look on the new one?

>>unable to switch...

Thankie kindly. I have a few now that I should add to the page.

To wrap up. I wasn't going to reply here for a while, but since you posted all them pics... I think I'm going to swap my geforce with my voodoo card just so I can get tracked2 working again. Or, some people claim success with other cards. I'd like to know which ones and what specs they use. Tracked2 is such a tempermental program.

>> those 320x400's sure looks strange. Do they look like that when you run it or does the monitor stretch them out?

They stretch to fit the monitor. If they really looked like that on-screen (and hence in-game) I think TRI would have a lot to answer for! As it is, they're pretty weird numbers - not in the normal ratio - though it's only noticable when you get it into a program like PSP and look at it under a default Windows desktop resolution.

Though I did tend to notice while playing the game under the low res that the aspect ratio of the graphics still seemed to be a little bit off. It seemed a bit wider than it should have been, so if you looked at the wheels, they weren't round but oval-shaped, kinda like what can be seen with the 320x200 pic. To make the wheels appear round, I had to adjust the way my monitor draw the image so that it wasn't a horizontal rectangle but almost square.

Good luck figuring out what I'm talking about there.

>> I assume that's on the trident.

Yes.

>> How's it look on the new one?

Lamentably I haven't tried MTM2 on the XP machine... I was sort of hoping I'd get my editing apps on here from the old computer at the same time. At any rate, I've got hundreds of our addon trucks and tracks that would take forever to transfer using floppies
That's why, if we get this networking thing to work, it'll be a good thing...

>> How's it look on the new one?
http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/stuff/mtm2xp.jpg
Answer: looks pretty darn good. The framerate is luvverly, limited only by the refresh rate of the monitor. I turned everything on (max view distance, all the effects, and threw in 4 AI trucks) and it didn't make a dent. There's some graphical glitches, like the tyre tracks occasionally interfering with the shadow as seen in that pic, but that only happens rarely. Oh, and the lights flicker when I drive near the trees. I guess there's some problems with transparencies and alpha blending on the same pixel.

Geesh, comparing the pics, it looks like that Trident is doing bad things to the game (though I did have the image quality turned down to try to salvage some fps).

While I was at it, I tried out Tracked2 as well. Looks like I owe you an apology - even though it runs just fine at any screen res, I can't get a screen capture out of it...

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Look, when I say things like that, what I obviously meant was "I'm an idiot, don't listen to me"...

>> even though it runs just fine at any screen res, I can't get a screen capture out of it...

I had to do some digging to find what the new card (128MB GeForce4 Ti4400) was. Welp, at least tracked2 runs, pics or no pics. Which is more than I can say for my geForce 3.

Bonus. You found another card that WILL take pics. Let's not dwell on the negative. Also, I had an old ati rage card. Might be worth trying agin. Never know...

[url=javascript:void(0)]320x200[/url]

[url=javascript:void(0)]320x400[/url]

[url=javascript:void(0)]640x480 (resized)[/url]

Oh fer goodness sakes. And what, may I be so bold as to enquire, graphics card are you using? And btw, which size do you feel resizes better?

nVidia Gforce 256 with ddr drivers (this is the first in the series of gforce cards)
my os is win 98 se

320x400 resizes much better (sampled above) than the 320x200 which gets real pixelated

Phew! I was worried I was going to have to commit seppeku or something for being so badly off the mark with my opening rant. Thank you for coming to the rescue and vindicating my big mouth, Mal!

BTW, is 'seppeku' spelt right? I don't know...

I agree, 320x400 are best if you want to size your pics to 640x480. But the 320x200 are good if you want something half the dimensions of 640x480, ie size them to 320x240. I think I used some of those size on my Tutorial site.

[This message has been edited by Drive2Survive (edited 12-07-2002).]

Probably not. But dictionary.com offered a couple equally unlikely guesses:

seppeku 1
seppeku 2

Anyway, after considerable difficulty, I reinstalled the voodoo5. Still no luck.


P.S. After discovering that the reason tracked2 wouldn't run was because I didn't do a retail install ;-) I put the geforce3 back in and tracked2 now runs with that card too. But still no pics. I'm beginning to think D2S is putting me on, and enlisted Mal's help to strengthen the gag.


[This message has been edited by Phineus (edited 24-07-2002).]

:o)

nope, no gag Phin... I just followed D2S's method and wallah!...

I've tried taking screens before in Tracked but never thought to trying with the lessor resolutions.

my geforce 256 died last week and I replaced it with a 128MB GeForce4 Ti4400... I'll test that one out tomorrow and see if I can still get the screen shots.

Is that an AGP or a PCI card, Mal?

The Trident I got is PCI, so if yours is PCI then maybe we've finally stumbled across the common thread. Though I wouldn't know how to classify the ATi pro-turbo graphics adapter I was using before, which is an onboard video chip.

Actually, my bad... if you replaced it with a GeForce4 then it can't be PCI can it...

it's an AGP card...

the new one seems to work just fine too

dassen der picheimer

[This message has been edited by Malibu350 (edited 10-08-2002).]

> Maybe Tracked2 only takes pics in australia

Nice theory Phin, but nope, hehe.

D2S, you were right, great work! I tested out your ideas and well, my results were just like Mal's.

BTW, mine is an ATI Rage 128 (AGP), the single worst card for MTM2 in 3D mode.


> I didn't do a retail install

Export all those REG files there Phineus, put em with your "installed" backup, then in the future you can edit the paths in em to fit the system and click em on in. ;-)

I was going to put forward another theory. Maybe Tracked2 *doesn't* take pics if your name is Phineus, and noone else in the world besides us three or four cares

Nice to see you drop in, WK

>> and noone else in the world besides us three or four cares

New mtmg slogan : the few serving the many

Actually, if I could get it to work, I might think about looking at it more. You never know what might turn up if that happened.

>>Nice to see you drop in, WK

Yeppers.

Hardware reconfiguration. The monthly computer fair was on again the other day, so we took a trip down to look for some more goodies (it was where I got that Trident card that started off this whole discussion). I ended up with a Pentium 200 MMX CPU, and two Diamond graphics cards - a Stealth64 View VRAM and Stealth 2000 3D Pro. I had my eye out for any sort of Voodoo card, but none were forthcoming - but those two cards were $10 each, and the guy knocked it down to $15 for the two, and I at least recognised the Diamond name so I figured what the heck...

The CPU installation went easily enough - the hardest bit was setting the switches for the clock speed, which happened to be in an inaccessible place under the bloody expansion board, and which necessitated the removal of said board and all installed PCI/ISA cards with it to get at the dern thing. But other than that, it went perfectly.

Unfortunately, neither graphics card turned out to be any good - better than the old onboard ATi chip, but that's about it. As before, my benchmark was MTM2.

For the Stealth64, MTM2 refused to accept that it was even capable of Direct3D-compatible accleration - and I suppose it probably wasn't. The Stealth 2000 3D Pro got past the Graphics options in MTM2 when I set it to hardware acceleration (it normally notifies if the card isn't D3D-compatible and forces you to use software mode), but then when I tried to run the game it threw that same "Unable to switch to full screen mode" error and reverted back to running in a window. It did this no matter what graphics options I set (or didn't set) - the only way the game would run was under software rendering. (I thought you'd like to know this for your errors compilation, Phin.)

I didn't try taking screenshots in Tracked2 with either card (sorry) - at this point I was really only concerned about promptly reinstating the Trident card, and left it at that (it ***** at 3D rendering, but the 2D acceleration with Windows is the best I've yet seen on the old one). I suspect that they would have worked, but that's only conjecture on my part. I'm really starting to think that it has less to do with straight graphics cards, and more a number of factors combined. Like, I only just twigged that Mal says his new GeForce4 card is a 128MB Ti4400 just like mine - only his takes pics and mine don't. Unless manufacturers (mine's LeadTek WinFast A250) are making a profound difference, it looks to me like there's something else at work here...