Wednesday, November 11, 2009

How can you adjust the quality of screen captures in Wizard101?

Question from our through the spiral gate friend:
It's great that KI made it so screencaps are automatically saved in a special folder on the player's computer. My question is, is there any way to adjust what directory the caps are saved in and the format/quality of the images? As it is, the default is JPEG format which makes the quality terrible. Any help would be much appreciated!

Right! I know. For people who really get into their graphics, the ability to adjust screen captures would be really awesome, unfortunately, it's a little limited as of now.

The only way to adjust your quality as of now is to adjust your game's entire settings. Let me give some examples.

These are the lowest graphic settings possible in the game:


They result in a screen capture that looks like this. (click on all the following examples to view them more accurately)


These are the highest graphic settings possible in the game:


They result in a screen capture that looks like this. (once again, click it)


There is no easy way to adjust where your screenshots are saved unfortunately. HOWEVER, there is another solution. You can always go download Fraps! Fraps is probably the solution you're looking for. Here's Fraps's screenshot capture interface. Notice that you can select between 4 different file types and adjust where those screencaps are to be saved. It's a perfect little screenshot (and video) companion for the artistic gamer.


Just to illustrate a bit on the quality differences between a loss-less (and non-Internet friendly) .bmp file and the highest quality .jpg, I've zoomed in on the health and mana indicators of my screenshot and stretched them.

Here's the stretched .bmp from Fraps:


Here's the stretched .jpg from the highest quality setting in Wizard101:


You can see the color warping around the edges in the .jpg whereas the .bmp stays relatively smooth (considering it has been stretched). If you can't tell the difference, well . . . you really have no need to worry about it then. LOL.

Hope that helps (and helps illustrate what you're asking about for those that may not be in the know).

Happy Dueling!

5 comments:

  1. i already use Fraps for all of my pictures, but I don't like the video much. I use it for my pictures since it saves directly into my Pictures file instead of a random one where I can't find anything. *shrugs*

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  2. I hear ya!

    I've been loving X-fire for videos lately myself.

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  3. i never taken a screenshot picture I need to learn how so I can see my wizard101 charcter in a picture haha the problem is which one so far I love my ice wizard these days espicially with all the blue.

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  4. Aww, I was afraid that would be the only way to get a relatively good picture :P But hey, thanks for telling me about Fraps, I'll be sure to check it out!

    Thanks for answering my question, Friendly!

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  5. Hello Thomas, or Friendly, a others call you, I just opened a new blog, called The Necronomicon. It expresses about Death, an sice you are a death wizard, think you will like it! Here is the link: http://thenecronomiconofdeath.blogspot.com/ I have seen your other posts, and I have tried a death wizard on wizard101, and I love the game! If you could add me to your MMO blogger lst, I would really apprecciate it!

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