Screenshot deluxe: Anthemios

Screenshot deluxe  ist eine wöchentliche Serie zum Thema In-Game-Fotografie - man könnte das vielleicht auch Videogame-Tourismus nennen.  Diese Woche, frisch aus dem brandneuen Flickr-Pool: Anthemios.

Flickr-User Anthemios hat ein riesiges Portfolio fantastischer In-Game-Fotos auf Flickr und auf seinem Tumblr-Blog Video-Video-Video, und es verwundert kaum, dass er den historischen Architekturtheoretiker und Kupferstecher Giovanni Battista Piranesi und seine "Carceri" als einen visuellen Einfluss nennt. Der Screenshot deluxe der Woche hat eine interessante Vorgeschichte: Die Cryisis-MP-Map "Cubic", aus der der obige Screenshot stammt, hat der US-Amerikaner selbst gebaut.

Mehr Infos beim Weiterlesen.

I got addicted to modding [in Fallout 3]. My initial goal in the editor was merely to add new places for the player to explore, but that quickly gave way to a more fervent desire to create these insane, monstrously sized levels that fully exploited Bethesda's excellent catalog of game assets. The mod eventually reached a state where I couldn't even play the thing at a decent framerate because of the huge draw distances I was trying to fill. But instead instead of working to make the mod playable, I decided I'd do just the opposite and use it as a platform to take these really intricate screenshots. Of course ,there was also the realization along the way that many of the places I had constructed could not possibly accommodate any sort of contiguous navmesh, but that didn't really factor into my decision to shift the focus away from playability and toward making things look as crazy as possible.

Incidentally, it was in the course of trying to build a screenshot worthy mod that I came to see the very excellent design already present in Fallout 3. To improve my own maps, I would wander around the game scrutinizing all the little details I never gave any notice to before.Things like the spacing of trees or the arrangement of rocks became items of meticulous study. I would actually take screens for reference and give them these hilariously clinical titles like "interior debris scattering" or "raider clutter scheme." I think in the end all that really improved was my ability to take screenshots, but I don't count that a bad thing considering how important composition is to good design. It also gave me an appreciation for how much effort goes into building game worlds, especially of the open-world variety where things have to look good across multiple perspectives. 

 I think there's a very fine line separating the work of the original artist from the work of the "screen-shooter" in virtual photography. Admittedly, I'm not entirely comfortable with such a vague distinction, which is why a lot of the screens I take reference mods in the hope of putting some distance between myself and the game's designers. It's also why I use ENB. It definitely helps shift the visual style of a game toward something that is more user-defined. Occasionally I'll go into photoshop and make further adjustments to color and contrast or add a slight vignette to things, but mainly I rely on in-game modification along with console commands, weather adjustment, camera hacks, etc. to achieve the look I need. In any case, I'm not overly concerned with the so called "purity" of a screenshot. In many cases, the complexity of in-game injectors such as ENB (which is practically on the level of full blown image-editing software) makes the distinction between edited and unedited irrelevant in the first place. 

I feel as though tweaking ENB or FXAA is very much like working in a dark room--lots of trial and error, much frustration...and occasionally a very beautiful image for all your hard work.