Good day! Hope everyone is enjoying their first full day of Demozoo availability. You've been a productive lot so far, giving us admins plenty to do. The one "mistake" I seem to come across more than any other is the re-posting of screenshots from other sites (pouet, csdb, kestra). A few have asked questions about why we discourage this practice, and I will attempt to explain as best I can.

One of the first things we implemented on this site was support for high-resolution, multiple screenshots. We were far from satisfied with the solutions employed by other sites (size restraints, single screenshots, sometimes split in 4, sometimes animated gifs). We wanted to do better.

Therefore, we discourage the reuse of screenshots from other sites, and encourage the taking of new, multiple, native resolution screenshots.

I've "outed" a few people in an other thread for this, but I see in retrospect these were not isolated incidents, and the fault is ours for not making this properly clear. So, apologies to anyone who feels wronged by my examples, but yeah - let's make stuff better.

:)

whoops :)

Obviusly you´re in need for partymeister API integration ;D

What are the criteria for proper Commodore 64 screenshots then, if the CSDb standard doesn't suffice? Specifically:

* What resolution should they be in?
* If emulated screenshots are ok, should they use any specific palette and/or display emulation feature (such as PAL emulation)?
* If screenshots should be made from a captured video signal, what is the recommended approach - post processing to make the colours look more realistic, or raw RGB values?

about c64 screenshots: main issue with csdb screenshots is that there is no standard for real, it is just theory. nethertheless a 100% standard would not do the system justice imo.

* there are old vic and new vic color schemes around, new vic is more common, but there are still artists that do their productions for the old one.
* same with newskool color standards like pepto. it is for sure a proper standard for physical correct displaying, but c64 has always been a system for analogue adjustments without default option. maybe it is not obvious, but the whole impression depends on which level of saturation was used during the creation process.
* for video captures (good idea btw) are very few proper setups existing to get authentic results. standard svideo cables + usual tv cards tend to alienate the whole color scheme. it would be quite hard to get this under control in an open system like demozoo.

my suggestion is as follows:

* vice capture with full border
* if it is not your own production standard color settings without crt emulation
* as long it is not really clear which vic was used (mostly only possible by the usage of the colors orange and violet), c64c pal settings as standard...
* flexible rules for color palette/saturation and crt emulation (because of color blending effects) for screenshot submissions by the original artist. imo it would make sense to place tags for these kind of adjustments.

one exception which is also questionable are graphics by us artists because of the aspect ratio. unfortunately simulating this by vice only looks nice with double scaled pixels and crt emulation.

btw is there an issue with pixelart screenshots with bigger sizes? i submitted a picture size 640x512 pixels but it was shrunk after upload (http://demozoo.org/graphics/95342/)

Screenshots can have arbitary sizes. My random guess: Did the screenshot JPG file probably contain a thumbnail? Thumbnails inside JPGs are just JPGs as well (yo dawg), so the image processor might have gotten confused. I don't knnow the code so it's really just a wild guess.

oops, yes. took the wrong file. the first one can be deleted (guess this has to be done by an admin)...

Done.

thanks :)

veto: My CSDb screenshots already fulfill all of the criteria you listed, and IIRC they are also identical to the de-facto standard that emerged after all the endless discussions on the subject (bar the "full border" clause which is still optional).

Wouldn't it make more sense to have rules like these printed out instead of "don't reupload screenshots from other sites" which doesn't really make sense (why can't I reuse my good CSDb screenshots here?).

radiantx and veto: You clearly have a much better understanding than myself what constitutes a good screenshot from the c64 specifically, so I won't elaborate on what you wrote about the subject.

radiantx: I think you need to re-read my post, I wrote "we discourage the reuse of screenshots from other sites, and encourage the taking of new, multiple, native resolution screenshots." You interpreted my "discourage" as "don't". If you feel your screenshots are as good as they can ever be, and you don't feel the need for multiple screenshots from demos with multiple parts, then be my guest - reuse your existing screenshots from csdb.

The problem we saw most was people taking other people's gifs from 2002 on pouet and reposting them - for systems with a higher native resolution than the limitations on there. Which is where my "Let's do better" thinking comes into play. In my opinion, it is more encouraging for a user to create higher-level screenshots if there are none present, actually. This is a much more valid point for systems with higher resolutions, naturally.

Ooops, wished I'd have read this thread before adding some pouet badly-sized screenshots. I'll try to fix it as soon as I have access to my "demoscene" computer where I can run the demos and take new screenshots.

Sorry about it. Is there a way to request screenshot removal (once I upload the good ones) or do I have to "fixmebeautiful" it?

Ooops, wished I'd have read this thread before adding some pouet badly-sized screenshots. I'll try to fix it as soon as I have access to my "demoscene" computer where I can run the demos and take new screenshots.

Sorry about it. Is there a way to request screenshot removal (once I upload the good ones) or do I have to "fixmebeautiful" it?

Jcl: Just request it on the forum, for now. We'll see about getting a smoother process for that in the future :)

Re: C64 screenshots

Sometimes C64 screenshots taken from emulators look quite different from the real thing. For example this fabulous PETSCII picture by Mermaid http://csdb.dk/release/?id=122538
...on a real C64 and Philips CRT monitor, I just couldn't make it look like it is on the screenshot, with any brightness and contrast adjustments. The gamma curve is just different, and if I make the details look right, then the background isn't black anymore.

The sad part is, I'm afraid more and more people judge prods by what they look like in emulators and screenshots. I would like to see things being steered away from turning into an "emulator scene".

Will it be possible to edit the screenshots one uploaded to a prod?

F.i:
- Rearrange the the order of multiple screenshots. (which comes 1st,2nd..etc)
- Select which should be the "main" screenshot (which is shown in the production lists)
- Delete screenshots you think are crap or uploaded by mistake (like that private one from that place in Thailand winter of 2004 :D)

tFt: The first two are not currently possible; feel free to suggest them as features in the appropriate thread. Delete screenshots we can do for you, just tell us. :)

Could you make public a url that lists all the productions that are missing screenshots please.

This way I can be of assistance and rectify the problem :)

dad1916: Actually, we're on it ;) But if you feel like getting started, any and all productions that currently doesn't have screenshots need one. Start clicking around and I'm sure you'll find lots to do in that department!

And thanks for helping out, it's much appreciated!

Hi guys
I am a little bit confused...again
What size should I use for the Amiga prods screenshots ?

I used to upload them in their original sizes ( 360x284 ) like for this prod : http://demozoo.org/productions/5312/
(even if we see them in 720x568).

And I found out that everybody use different sizes :

677x517 http://demozoo.org/productions/153815/
920x720 : http://demozoo.org/productions/153579/

So what size do you prefer we use?

SoLO: The simple answer is "as close to original as possible". I do 360x284 also for Amiga lo-res. The main advantage to this is that then WE can control zooming and such ourselves, and possibly other cool stuff in the future. Naturally that doesn't work as well if the upload is already double-pixeled.

On the flipside of this, we'd often like SOME screenshot rather than no screenshot, so ... yeah. Keep fighting the good fight SoLO, and we'll improve over time. In the meantime let's not be too upset with weird resolutions and let's rather try and replace them down the line if the production is worth it.