Acetylene Games :: High quality videogame screenshots

[Masakari]

I'm starting a Hi-def game screenshot site to serve artists and fans as reference / repository of high quality, cristal clear screens (as opposed to the crap most sites have with compression artifacts and watermarks). Do you think such a site will be useful?

As both a fan and an artist, I'm always browsing the web, searching stuff, saving stuff to my inspiration folder, and collecting reference. A lot of that is about games. However, i'm increasingly running into artifact infested, compressed and watermarked images, sometimes of 1024x or 1280x (aka 720p) resolutions (or lower), and find them lacking, both in quality and size.

As I have a pretty good rig (quad-core Xeon, 8GBs RAM, almost 4TBs of HDD, GF8800GTX, dual screens, etc), I can get almost any game running in ultra high quality. I configured Mass Effect PC with some awesome quality, and was taking a crapload of screens for design inspiration, when it hit me this could be a useful resource for people who, like me, couldn't find them online.

It would be kind of like the great site Visual Walkthroughs, in that I would document everything of interest while i'm playing, but without the goal of being a walkthrough. It would help artists looking for reference on textures, lighting, models, level design, interfaces, etc.

Sizes would be 1920x (1080p), and 2560x.

I have the site setup, and currently testing it. It's using Imagevue X2, a nice Flash/HTML gallery that had pretty much all the features I wanted. It has some kinks in it, but i hear X3 is out soon next year, so i'm sure those will be corrected.

Tell me what you think, what kinds of shots are useful, and if you run into any weird stuff. The HTML version should work perfectly, the Flash version is fast, but has some issues here and there, specially with Chrome (the browser). Should work fine in IE and Firefox though.

First game i'm adding is Mass Effect.

Acetylene Games v3: Acetylene Games :: High quality video game screens for artist reference and fans!

[davidarcila]

well, let me tell you that this is very useful, because i've also been in that situation where i want to get good screenshots of games, just to evolve some idea or concept i'm working on.

I would like to see the website evolving (I know there are lots of games)

Have you tought of having different categories, for example iphone, psp, Xbox360, Wii, PC...etc?

[glynnsmith]

I think it's a neat idea, tbh

I would concentrate more on getting a decent, solid HTML solution and ditch the flash though - Anything you'd probably want to do with Flash is possible with HTML, CSS and JS.

Also, if you want them, I've got ~3GB of Mirror's Edge screens (1920x1200 @ max settings) I can upload somewhere for you for the cause. Interested?

[Masakari]

Thank you glynn! Did you try the HTML version of the gallery? Hum... actually, i now realized i see the link to that because i'm logged as admin. I need to add a link to that, atm it only shows up if a user doesn't have Flash installed.

It does have a few kinks and bugs to it, although everyone has been telling me it is fast, which is one worry everyone has when handling Flash. Basically it's in Beta for a few months, specially since the next version of the gallery will be released soon.

Yep, that would be great! How do you want to set that up? I have less than 3GBs free on my hosting, so ftp upload is out.

[glynnsmith]

Yeah, it might be because of this heavy cold and tiredness, but I don't see any HTML link! This is probably the point at which you point out how obvious the link is

I'll stick the images in a rar and upload them to my webspace over the next couple of days. Not sure how long it'll take, but I'll shoot you a PM or something when they're up.

Are you interested in having bugs, suggestions etc posted here?

[Masakari]

No, it's not your fault! I always saw an HTML version link because it shows up for the admin logged in. Since i'm always logged, I never thought it wouldn't show up otherwise lol

Anyway, I added it, it's on the main menu, second option, right below "Home".

Hey, anything, please post it! Like i said, this is still in Beta, and will be for a few months as I want this to really be a helpful resource, any and all feedback is apreciated!

Awesome about the Mirror's Edge shots, thank you! I encourage anyone to participate and send me shots of games, I only have four "requirements":

1. That they are either 1920x or 2560x

2. That I am provided with either uncompressed, lossless images for me to convert to JPG; or full quality JPGs with little to no artifacts (that would be qualities 11 or 12 in Photoshop, 11 is fine as it's almost perfect and has considerable filesize gains)

3. That they are taken at max settings, bonus points if they are tweaked even higher - for example, the Mass Effect shots are enhanced with nHancer using Anti-Aliasing: 8xSQ Combined (this mode combines 2x2 supersampling with 2x multisampling), which basically makes jaggies and shimering almost non-existent.

4. That they are relevant in the fields of level design, models, textures, lighting, art direction

[davidarcila]

Let me tell you that this is a great idea, and i really like the way you executed it. Sometimes i'm looking for inspiration and there is not an exact place where i can go and look at game screenshots. Maybe you can extend to iphone/psp screenshots also

[glynnsmith]

Yep! They abide by your rules Comes in 4 parts, found here:

Index of /acetylene

You might want to go through them, to get rid of the crappy ones - I took a whole bunch and didn't bother culling them down :P

I think this is a very worthwhile project. Best of luck with it

[Insulaner]

I could make some Crysis vegetation shots, if they are any use, this afternoon.
Probably not too many though, since I'm fairly limited in space right now..

[Masakari]

Thank you Glynn, got'em! Very nice screens, gonna go through them to select the most relevant ones. 1118 screens

Minor addendum to point 3: anyone who sends me screens, please disable motion blur. In the Mass Effect shots I disabled the motion blur and film grain filters to get clear images. It's not a problem in the Mirror's Edge screens because only a small percentage have blur, it's just to try to have all the image as clear as possible for reference, specially the environments around the character and texture definition.

Depth of field is ok though, imo it's useful for level design, ambience, and cinematography, motion blur is just eye candy that adds little to the artistic aspect of a game.

Thanks again Glynn!

Here's the list of preliminary games that, due to their relevance in the various fields of game art, I intend to add to the gallery in the next semester, feel free to suggest / disagree on any:

+ Bioshock / Bioshock 2
+ Crysis / Crysis Warhead (although I have to study this, even my PC can't run this on max settings)
+ Resident Evil 5 (completely ignored in all graphics goty awards, imo has some of the best graphics around, particularly texture work)
+ Mass Effect 2
+ World of Warcraft (best "lower poly" game art around imo, it's amazing what the Blizzard team do with the more limited resources the engine has)
+ Homeworld 2 (because it represents a landmark and a visual style)
+ Gears of War
+ Doom 3 (because it represents a landmark and a visual style)
+ Street Fighter IV (great art direction and visuals)
+ Riddick: Dark Athena (imo some of the best cinematography around, and really moody environments)