LoadScreens

Hail Aeneans !!!

Found this on the vault and I'd share it.. The collection has some 200 odd loadscreens, all of which are very impressive ...

As I was flicking through them places around Aenea came to mind, from Mt.Holme Castle atop a mountain to the depths of Demon Infested DarkRealms area's .... ..

It would be awesome if could add these to the AeneaHaks and put a good loadscreen (in the toolset) in for each of Aenea's area's ... ... ...

EDIT: Would help if I put the link in ... ... ... Here

Another possibility would be to have a friendly competition for folks to submit their own Aenea specific load screens, likely derived from actual Aenea screenshots. could sort through them and drop them in the hak release.

eeriegeek wrote:Another possibility would be to have a friendly competition for folks to submit their own Aenea specific load screens, likely derived from actual Aenea screenshots. could sort through them and drop them in the hak release.

I like this idea better. Except for the couple of areas that use the tropical beach tileset (and the world map and character creation area), all the loadscreens used in Aenea use images taken directly from in-game (the regular NWN loadscreens do this, and the one's I've made have also done this). Sure, there can be some pretty artwork that can be used as a loadscreen, but if it can't be found in the game itself, I'd rather not see it cross the screen.

If I do add new loadscreens, it'll be during a big hak update (with a whole new hak file with things like tilesets). Loadscreens are big image files, and they bloat a hak file's size very quickly.

If anyone wants to take a crack at getting some good images for loadscreens, here's some tips:
1. You need a nice, w i d e shot, preferably taken in full-screen mode. Loadscreen images are at least twice as wide as they are tall.
2. You don't want any trace of the GUI or PCs (or ghosted DMs) in the area destined to be used as a loadscreen.
3. I'd prefer not so see any of the "black tops" of tileset models, so taking shots from a lower angle for interiors is recommended...and turn off 2nd-story fade in the video options (everything looks better in-game anyway when playing when tops of buildings don't vanish).
4. You don't want to be using visual overrides (tilesets, creatures, etc.)...you want to show things everyone can see in-game with just the CEP + Aenea haks.

Yup, much more difficult to get such shots than regular ones that include everything, even PCs.

So it doesn't seem like this took off. I've been experimenting on how to accomplish capturing good shots for load screens and will begin to post them as I get good ones.

1. Install nwncx if you haven't done so already (Why haven't you already done this, NWN looks so much nicer with it!)
2. Empty your overrides folder of any visual modifications including tileset overrides
3. Take off your cloak and armor
4. Zoom ALL the way in with the camera so that the camera is occluding through the PC avatar
5. Move the PC around and play with the angles until you get the shot you want <- this takes practice (the WASD keys are your friend in this case, just don't make regular use of them per 's request regarding server and script impacts)
6. Hit 'H" to hide the interface (that's the default key anyway)
7. Be sure the mouse isn't selecting the avatar otherwise you will have a glowing "bloom" obscuring the shot
8. When zoomed all the way in the camera often gets "stuck" at that zoom level, hit "home" to restore to default zoom

Another way of getting good pictures is to find an appropriate zoom level and angle, then hide your PC behind a wall/crate/object... the ..sitlong command works wonders for helping with this....