User interface takes a lot of time to make, so you'll naturally want to show it off in your screenshots (I know I do). All in all, you're making pictures if you want to say something with text, you'd better write it separately. Text, User Interface and MenusĪvoid putting too much text in your screenshots. The view can be quickly scrolled with the mouse and the character can be teleported to the cross-hair with a single button press:Īnd, again, you'll find this feature useful for other things, too, like testing your levels and mechanics or debugging your game. In my game LEVEL UP! I have a "view mode" which is activated with a single key press. You don't need to get to any place in one jump, but getting anywhere in a few seconds is essential. No-clip turbo movement mode works well, too. The exact method varies depending on your game, but something like "point and press a button" or "hold a button and point" is usually the best. Save yourself a lot of time and trouble by making it easy to move it anywhere you want in your level. The player-controlled character is often an important piece in the composition of your screenshots. Guidelines can also be used to preview how the image will look when cropped to various aspect ratios.
Make sure not to include these guidelines in the actual screenshot, though! Of course, you can always just eyeball things, but if you have trouble with that, guidelines are useful. The rule of thirds is a common way to compose images, and you might find golden ratio useful too. The topic of composition is beyond the scope of this article, but there's one simple thing you can do to help yourself out: add guidelines. The purpose of having the pause mode with active camera is the composition of your screenshots. This will help you to capture the right moment of the animation (in addition to the camera angle) and is very useful for debugging as well. You can improve that pause mode even further by adding a button to single-step your game or run it in slow motion. You can also use it to debug your game, pausing it to analyze the situation, which is even more useful if you have visual debugging aids.
You can get close-ups of the scenery or characters. You can capture any images, whether the player can see them in the game normally or not. The same scene, but from a different viewpoint. This is not the best angle for the screenshot. The solution? Add a button that pauses your game instantly (and unpauses it when pressed again) while allowing you to move the camera to get just the right angle for your screenshot. Or that particle effect you want to capture is just so elusive. You want to make a nice screenshot, but the enemies run away or appear suddenly and attack your character. Fortunately, it's already done for you in many engines you'll just need to tune it to your needs. Unfortunately, this might be not an option (or might be too difficult) in some engines. Once you've got it, it's easier to add extra features like recording short animations or making huge screenshots for posters by rendering multiple images.
You can post-process images if necessary.You can automatically add things like watermarks or your game's name and website's URL.You can automatically hide things you don't want in your screenshots (like on-screen debugging information, guide lines, or the HUD).
You can save screenshots where you want them, in any format you want.Any time you get that "Wow! Great view!" moment while testing your game, you can just press a button to capture it. It's always there you don't need to remember to run any programs to make screenshots when you need them.While there are external tools to make screenshots, making your game capture screenshots by itself is useful in several ways: They are a good source of your game art for advertisements and marketing materials.Īnd of course, good screenshots will make all those things better.You'll need them for store submissions.They should be put into your press kit and emails so reviewers can easily use them.You'll need them for marketing your game on your site.People will recognize your game by screenshots before they'll look at an article or a video.Sharing a picture is an easy and effective way to spread the word about your game.You can showcase the game in the best light.Screenshots are important for many reasons: I'll talk about tools that help you to choose better view position and angle, user interface considerations, ways of improving screenshot colors, cropping issues, and more. These tips are generic enough to be applied to most games, whether 2D or 3D. In this tutorial, I'm going to describe several simple tricks that will improve the quality of your screenshots. A good screenshot can really sell your game.
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