Games as Art

No, this isn’t about so called ‘Art games’, but using games as Art.

A year and a half ago my bedroom was completely re-done, paint, furniture, carpet, the works.  This was the first full change since we moved into the house over 20 years ago, everything that is now there I chose.  My bedroom is my sanctuary and it is where I spend a lot of my time, one part I neglected however were the walls.

Most of the walls are covered, (by my desk, wardrobe, window etc.) however there is one exposed section in the form of a chimney breast.  It is the first thing, after the wardrobe, that you see on entering my room, so I thought it’d be a nice idea to put some kind of artwork on there.  I’m not a big art person, I appreciate it and enjoy looking at any I pass but I wouldn’t say, go to an Art gallery.  But I thought something nice would look good and help complete the room.

As you can see it’s a reasonable sized space so I wasn’t restricted in my choice, but that didn’t make it any easier.  I liked some of the paintings available in The Sims 2, such as the one of the Golden Gate bridge, but I wouldn’t know where to start in getting something like this, and I wasn’t looking for something original.  The second idea would be posters, there is a very nice one available from Introversion here.  But I didn’t really want to pay that much, and I find posters to be a little unoriginal.

Then I hit upon an idea, it would be unique and interesting even for the casual observer (not that I get many of them in my bedroom…) but it would also fit well with my interests.  I wasn’t nearly brave enough to attempt anything like the Norwegian artist who painted a mural of Purple Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle, (WARNING:  Do not click on the link for the English version, when I did sirens started wailing and my anti-virus blocked the connection.  It may well be nothing but you can’t be too careful.) but I thought some high quality prints of various gaming scenes would do nicely.

Coming up with a list was reasonably simple, all but one (sort of two) of the games would feature on my ‘Top 10 games of all time’ list (if I could ever decide on ten) and the one that wouldn’t is Crysis.  I’m sure you can understand at least one of my reasons for including this game, but I did also enjoy playing Crysis.

The next step was obtaining the pictures.  I couldn’t just search for some on the Internet, firstly because almost all of them are low quality and those that aren’t have watermarks on them, secondly I wanted these pictures to be a representation of my personal gaming experiences.  Plus if I take them myself I can choose exactly the shot I want.

My first was with Crysis, using the commands below I managed to get a really high quality, scenic image.  Once I’d found the position I upped all the setting to maximum (AA at full crashed the game so I had to take it down to x8), the FPS went right down but it was still running.  The beach is the point in the game which is most calm and the sea looks brilliant.  This is the picture I took, slow connections beware, it’s 12MB.

Since my last piece on Multiwinia I knew I wanted something from this or Darwinia.  But as I don’t currently have Darwinia installed I stuck with Multiwinia, this does have the big advantage of allowing my to start instant skirmishes.  I knew I wanted one of a green formation taking on a red and one of a falling crate, I also took lots of others when I thought it appropriate but none of them were quite right.  I’ll keep an eye out in future games.

Psychonauts was also a definite, from another recent piece I wrote, I wanted one of the Collective Unconscious.  Then one of my favourite level, The Milkman Conspiracy.  I really wanted one of the secret agents holding an item but the curvy world makes obtaining a clean shot difficult.  The disappointing thing about Psychonauts is that you cannot get rid of the icons down the side, I would have liked a clutter free version of the third, but I don’t want to cut it down.

The last game I particularly wanted a picture of was Team Fortress 2.  I didn’t want a violent one so I’ll have to keep an eye out for a good clean action shot, but in the mean time I took several of various maps.  2Fort, Badlands and Hydro.  Whilst I was taking these in Garry’s Mod I also thought about Half-Life 2, it doesn’t look to brilliant now though so I went for Episode 2 which I had enjoyed a lot.  Along with the well known opening section, I also went for a random one of a hill-side complex.

I’ve still got all the screenshots I automated during my Non-stop play of Zeno-Clash, I had a quick look through and thought this one was worthy of printing.  I’ll never forget how long I thought it was the whale speaking…

My poor layout skills aside, I’m reasonably impressed with how they’ve turned out, particularly considering the age of our printer.  They are a little darker than I would like though.

This is by no means final, I like all the ones here but I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, and there is more space that could be used up.  I have even toyed with the idea of turning it into a sort of collage, with them all coming together into one big image.

So there you go, comment, criticisms, ‘why didn’t you include…’?  Feel free to post. 

---

I have picked up some useful tips along the way, the biggest one being for Crysis.  I wanted the pictures to have more of an art-slant than simple screenshots, using console commands you can make a lot of changes:

Crysis

First press what is usually referred to as the tilde ~ key.  This is the same one used by many games so you should hopefully know where it is.  It’s actually only the tilde key for US keyboards, but I think on most layouts it’s simply the one to the right of the 1 key, along the top of the keyboard.

With the console menu up, type in:  con_restricted 0

This unlocks the various commands you need.  As far as I know you need to re-enter these commands every time you enter the game.

cl_hud 0 – Turns the HUD off, 1 turns it back on.  (This won’t remove the guns, simply switch to fists and stay still to get a clear screenshot)

e_screenshot_width= & e_screenshot_height= – Sets the resolution for the image.  That’s right using these commands you don’t have to stick with the maximum your screen can manage.  Simply add a number onto the end, I used 7860×4320 simply because that was what the example I found used.

e_screenshot_file_format= – I’m not quite sure what the options are for this, some guides said it knew bmp and png but they didn’t work for me.  Default is tga so if you want to keep things simple and use the Windows preview tools then you need to switch to jpg.

e_screenshot_min_slices= – Not quite sure what this one does, again I just followed the example I read and set it to 4.

e_screenshot_quality – Same as above, simply use 100.

e_screenshot 1 – Last command, this one takes the picture.  If you have chosen a high resolution then it will take many images from all over the screen and stitch them together automatically.

If you type any of these incorrectly it will warn you that it’s not a valid command.  Before you get into the game you may need to setup the folders, I’m not sure about XP but using Vista I think I ran into permission errors.  If you’re using UAC simply create the folder before hand and change the permissions to allow your user account.

The output folder is found at:  \Crysis\Game\ScreenShots\HiRes

Multiwinia

Just one simple keyboard command can do wonders with your screenshots.  To remove all HUD elements press Alt + X.  You can also use the games built-in screenshot command with P.  Output directory:  \Multiwinia\screenshots

Source games

Not really a tip since not everyone can use it, but if you happen to own Garry’s Mod you can load up the maps and take as many screenshots as you want (F5 or external program), from any angle (v for noclip) and without any HUD clutter (number 6, first weapon).  That is what I used to take mine ones of TF2 and HL2:Ep2.  Output directory:  garrysmod\garrysmod\screenshots

Advertisement