SCP version of FRED 2

[Dragon1]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the great answers.

In FS2, I don't think the capital ships were shielded at all. How are you guys getting around that? Will the capships have shield impact effects like in Prophecy or no?

 

[Unregistered]

In the theorie shield for caps should work but practical it still causes instability for no known reason.
For that reason the ships have shields without the shieldhit effect. Its strage that it dosn't work with the effect but their isn't anything we can do about it at the moment.
Still I think it was the same in WC3 when you attacked a capship. You have seen that the shields got weaker but no shieldeffect...so it might be not that bad.
I still hope that someone would find out how to improve the shieldcode as beside the instability their is a problem that accours with corners. When you shoot at the very edge the effect is wrapped around the corner. From a logical point of view that is correct but looks strange ingame.

Beside that I am still waiting for the damage decals and real shadows to make some progress.
I have tested a early version of the shadow code and its a great thing when your ships cast a shadow over a carrier or when a big cat cruisers shadow slowly moves about a small transporter that is trying to run away.
It adds a lot to the atmosphere of a game in my opinion.

 

[Dragon1]

Cool.

From the SCP people I had heard that shield effects are still iffy at best. I really don't mind, I was just curious to see if you guys had a solution.

 

[Unregistered]

And dont forget that Prohecy has a different way of doing shields... Im sure LOAF knows the offical story behind it.

Ed

 

[Sphynx]

Yes, the Prophecy shields are what I called semi-permiable. You couldn't penetrate them to reach the hull, but you could take out turrets and shield generators with normal weaponry. Torpedo impacts on the regular hull were useless, but on the engine and bridge they did the ship in once both were down. WC Saga shields play pretty much identical to the WC3 experience. Anything can cause damage if shot long enough, and torpedos do damage whereever they hit (and wait until you se DaBrain's torpedo effect!)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

On a sidenote...when you would take what some books tell you about the armament of ships into a game you won't never be able to make a successful bombing run.
I don't rember it clearly but wasn't it discribed as the Kilrathi carriers had a lot of point defance weapons from the long rand flak to short range mass drivers and anti torpedo missiles?

I should just stress that I'm not talking about changing your game - rather, I'm talking about providing the correct specifications at the website regardless of how the ship is actually simulated. If someone were making an exact copy of Prophecy, I'd still urge them to list the Midway's heavy ion cannons in their 'ship guide' even though they don't appear in the game. Actually balancing a game is a technical issue that has nothing to do with continuity - if you don't think they can work or that they're not needed, don't use them... but it's harder to leave them out of the background materials.

 

[gevatter Lars]

Critic is noted and we are allready talking about it internal...still as everything it goes realy slow ^_^
On thought I might add about the specs on the page is that for newcommers...at least we hope that our project might get some attention from non WC fans...they could get confused when they read about the ship armament and compare it with the ingame stuff.
IIRC even the WC handbook stated only the armament that was realy ingame and the webpage is about the game. Like kind of an online manual to the game. For the real good background information players should go to the CIC database or some other place with informations like that.
We have also cut out a lot of fiction about the different ship with the thought behind it that the site is more like a teaser where the people gets to know the minimum of informations that he realy needs....more or less ^_^


Shields
Still it bothers me that we don't have the shields. We have a nice effect for that looks much like the movie shield effect. I still hope that the SCP get that fully running at some point...or we find another way to make it work.

 

[Viper61]

If you didn't want a Venture-class corvette, why are you using the graphic and name? If you don't like how a ship in Wing Commander works, make your own instead of watering down an existing design.

To give a sense of continuity, of familiarity. We've been told in novels that all the hardware we saw in WC3 is seriously old. This is a nice discontinuity considering we'd never seen these ships before and had just been running around in Confeds "newest" hardware in WC2 and Armada. We wanted a chance to show this (for both longtime and casual WC fans), the old design having to continually upgrade through the years to keep Confed running when WC3 rolled around. The Venture corvette was chosen as this "common thread" as we also wanted to be able to use it as the EW corvette Tolwyn describes in False Colors.

I think the key word here is warship. A transport is not a warship, a frigate is. I wouldn't look at a modern destroyer and assume it could carry as much cargo as a similarly sized barge.

I don't think it's at all possible to divine how much cargo space a ship has based on a picture, especially a ship which is not designed to carry cargo. It's certainly not worth altering an existing specification over.

I can definitely see the point and I'm more often than not on your side of the argument. Though, IIRC, the non-referenced explanation you seem to like for the Caernaven being so big is it was built in an era that it had to carry a much larger quantity of its expendable munitions (missiles, torpedoes, etc). So, it can't be assumed that it has a large hold to carry cargo, but we can assume it's this large to carry all this firepower where exactly ?

You're mistaken regarding the events of False Colors.

You are correct. I am mistaken that the Juneau and Dover don't engage the Karga and company till later. There still is no passage that implies that the two cruisers can't carry fighters, though.

The TCS Coventry is a destroyer, the TCS Ajax is a cruiser - the Wing Commander III game tells us this. The novel does mix up classifications, but in an internal manner: the Coventry is called both a destroyer and a cruiser at points in the book (which is to say, it's not a case of the novel contradicting the game, it's a case of the novel making a mistake within itself).

Regarding fighters, the book claims "Only Coventry carried her own half-wing of fighters"..

Points taken. The wording of that quote (if you take it from an "open ended" standpoint - which is often required in putting together WC references ) still does not lock in stone that the other escorts cannot carry fighters, though.

A question outside the scope of this conversation. Why then do we believe that there is two squadrons of Arrows (one interceptor, one point defense) on the Victory (because its seems another case of the novel making a mistake) when all other mentions of I believe its Red Squadron (before the Victory even puts in anywhere in both the game or the novel to change fighters) references Hellcats?

I've certainly been on the record as not agreeing with the 'assumed' classifications on the old ships list for quite a while now. At some point I will develop a new list - if you think it'll help projects like Saga avoid these mistakes, I'll start working sooner than later.

I think it probably would, many fans reference that list for fan fiction and projects. We'll discuss seperating the Tally's fighter complement under the Saga specific format, though in the scope of the WC4 game/novel, the half-squadron seems to belong to a Tally.

Sarcasm aside, that's actually a shame - dropping flak cannonswas one of the bigger mistakes-for-easier-gameplay that the post-Armada games made. They gave cap ship missions in the earlier games a very unique and appropriate atmosphere that was lacking in the later ones. Still, my personal taste would be to see them listed even if they aren't used - we've have enough incomplete capital ship specifications for the sake of mirroring game mechanics over the years.

Those flak guns really did provide a great environment for bombing runs in the Broadsword without the afterburners. Once you started taking runs in Sabres though, I always felt that the urgency and sweaty palms you had when taking a 'sword in was just not as prevalent. It seemed that the directed AMG's became the bane of my existance.
As has been pointed out by a few people, its definitely hard enough for the torpedoes to get through the laser turrets as it stands in Saga as they are pretty damn accurate. There's virtually no way to pop a torpedo through them without skinning at least the turrets that are along the torpedoes vector. We had flak cannons on some older hardware at one point, but for the prologue, those ships have been removed.

As for having the flak cannons among the stats, I have to lean toward Lars' position. We aren't trying to replicate the CIC database, just give fans an idea of what to expect from the WC ships in Saga. Its something that will probably be discussed later.

If that's your aim you shouldn't have any problem (though I prefer the mass-defines-light/heavy/etc idea)! You can give it isometal armor! 7200/5400 certainly seem to be appropriate numbers if you really want to attach this kind of backstory to the ship.

Discussed long ago and that direction was not taken for the simple reason that I hope is evident from just looking at those numbers. Shields almost twice as powerful as a naval base and armor over 5 times that of any warship we know of? Not only is that very unlikely, the ship would be near indestructible. Where's the fun in defending a carrier that more or less can wade through the thick of things without a scratch? Gameplay (and practicality) won out over that option.

How so? Well, when I read it, it seemed awkward. There's nothing more to it than that - it's that last level of editing a paper where you read it back to yourself and write AWK in big read letters where it just doesn't flow properly.

Points taken.

But yeah, things like repeating 'war chest' feel bad. It's one of those instances where the first time you hear it you think the author is really clever... and then the second time you know the author thinks he's being clever too, and it just bothers you. It's the whole "I just learned a new word and I want to show it off!" problem.

I can see that. I looked through the rest of the write-ups and I apparently thought 2 was enough myself as it doesn't appear in any of the other descriptions I've finished. It just happens that those two appeared in the prologue and on the website .

C-ya

 

[PopsiclePete]

Those flak guns really did provide a great environment for bombing runs in the Broadsword without the afterburners. Once you started taking runs in Sabres though, I always felt that the urgency and sweaty palms you had when taking a 'sword in was just not as prevalent. It seemed that the directed AMG's became the bane of my existance.
As has been pointed out by a few people, its definitely hard enough for the torpedoes to get through the laser turrets as it stands in Saga as they are pretty damn accurate. There's virtually no way to pop a torpedo through them without skinning at least the turrets that are along the torpedoes vector. We had flak cannons on some older hardware at one point, but for the prologue, those ships have been removed.

Make those laser turrets less accurate, then. What's the point in having the source code of the engine if you don't actually adapt the code to solve this kind of problem ? If you're lazy you could also remove a bunch of laser turrets.

Anyway, a torpedoe run should be very, very hard. If it was so easy to destroy a capship, why would the diferent factions take years and millions of credits to build half a kilometer-longs capships ? The flak cannon was the best battle atmosphere element in WC1/2, and I was mighty disapointed it was replaced with laser turrets in the later games. I strongly suggest you reconsider it.

 

[gevatter Lars]

Make those laser turrets less accurate, then. What's the point in having the source code of the engine if you don't actually adapt the code to solve this kind of problem ?

As we have allready said many times we don't have any coders. We depent on what the SCP does for us if we ask them.

If you're lazy you could also remove a bunch of laser turrets.

What should be that good for? It also contradicts what you said after that.

Torpedo runs are hard at the moment with the laser turrets. Also when dodging all these laserfire you won't miss the flaks.
Don't have to think that laserturrets in Saga are comparable with the WC3 stuff where their was just here and then some laserfire.

I would say wait till the release. If you then still want flaks we could speak about it or you can put them yourself to the ships via FRED2

I found an old screenshot. Its dark but in that case its good so that you see the laserfire better.

I hope you see the laserfire that is comming from the kilrathi cruiser.

Still its quite a different thing to play it but you should belive me that this heavy laserfire can kill you very quickly so that in a bombing run it would be better to let other wings first shot down some turrets.

 

[Tolwyn]

The flak cannon was the best battle atmosphere element in WC1/2, and I was mighty disapointed it was replaced with laser turrets in the later games. I strongly suggest you reconsider it.

Flak was never used in post WC2 games.

Make those laser turrets less accurate, then. What's the point in having the source code of the engine if you don't actually adapt the code to solve this kind of problem ? If you're lazy you could also remove a bunch of laser turrets.

Simply because it is not worth having a special WC Saga build. Freespace 2 engine undergoes major improvements and new features are being introduced on a regular basis. These changes can break existing features (it happened to our autopilot code once). So, all Saga specific changes are being developed by the SCP team. It slows down our progress, but ensures on the other hand compatibility to all SCP builds, that are available.

Finally, we don't see dense laser fire as a problem. On the contrary, it produces 'being in the game' feeling, if you know what I mean.

 

[ChrisReid]

I found an old screenshot. Its dark but in that case its good so that you see the laserfire better.

I hope you see the laserfire that is comming from the kilrathi cruiser.

I was going to make a joke about black holes, but they're just not dark enough.

 

[gevatter Lars]

What you can still see a thing...damn it I thought the stealth mode was enabled.
Next time you will see nothing I swear !
I am realy envious of your good eyes...where did you buy them?

Ok enough with that sarcasm ^_^
Chris we had this topic for a long long time. Get over it.

 

[ChrisReid]

What you can still see a thing...damn it I thought the stealth mode was enabled.

Heh, good one.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

To give a sense of continuity, of familiarity. We've been told in novels that all the hardware we saw in WC3 is seriously old. This is a nice discontinuity considering we'd never seen these ships before and had just been running around in Confeds "newest" hardware in WC2 and Armada. We wanted a chance to show this (for both longtime and casual WC fans), the old design having to continually upgrade through the years to keep Confed running when WC3 rolled around. The Venture corvette was chosen as this "common thread" as we also wanted to be able to use it as the EW corvette Tolwyn describes in False Colors.

I can't help but be reminded of the promotional artwork for The Secret Missions SNES -- for whatever reason they decided Ventures were the thing that made the new release special, and the official Nintendo Power preview included multiple drawings of them (including one of a large fleet of only Ventures). Ventures will make this right!

But seriously, Saga does seem to suffer from 'WC3' syndrome -- which really isn't correct when treating Wing Commander as a timeline instead of a series of linear games. Does including a Venture make that better or just remind everyone that something is wrong, though?

I can definitely see the point and I'm more often than not on your side of the argument. Though, IIRC, the non-referenced explanation you seem to like for the Caernaven being so big is it was built in an era that it had to carry a much larger quantity of its expendable munitions (missiles, torpedoes, etc). So, it can't be assumed that it has a large hold to carry cargo, but we can assume it's this large to carry all this firepower where exactly ?

Modern destroyers also carry a large amount of munitions -- that doesn't mean anyoue would ever see one and assume that it were outfitted as a bulk transport. There's also some context to the particular incident that you're leaving out: before making that remark, Blair already believes that the frigate in question has been modified to support a group of strike fighters.

Besides, your logic doesn't follow through at all on this. If *you* know that the Caernaven-class is 'variable', then so would *Blair*, who would then be unable to dismiss the computer's identification of the ship's class as being 'too small' to haul loot.

For the record, while it's not formally linked to the fact that the frigate is so large, we do see them carrying more expendable munitions than other capital ships... and we see them being used to move personnel in both WC3 and WC4. It's not an explanation created out of nowhere.

You are correct. I am mistaken that the Juneau and Dover don't engage the Karga and company till later. There still is no passage that implies that the two cruisers can't carry fighters, though.

Well, they didn't engage it alone, anyway. Presumably if the earlier fleet included every ship in the region, the cruisers were probably there.

It certainly doesn't absolutely say that they don't carry fighters, but you must admit that it certainly points in that direction. No fighters show up in this battle in spite of the fact that the Juneau's bay clearly continued operating through the end of the fighting.

A question outside the scope of this conversation. Why then do we believe that there is two squadrons of Arrows (one interceptor, one point defense) on the Victory (because its seems another case of the novel making a mistake) when all other mentions of I believe its Red Squadron (before the Victory even puts in anywhere in both the game or the novel to change fighters) references Hellcats?

Well, that really depends what you mean by we -- I certainly don't believe that there are no Hellcats on the Victory before the end of the Tamayo series. The game pretty much requires there to be some in the Orsini series.

Now, what does that mean exactly? Does Red Squadron fly only Hellcats? Or do they fly Arrows and Hellcats, to make both the references in the novel (which mention both repeatedly) and in the game (which, of course, shows both on the Victory at the start of the game)? The latter seems more likely.

I think it probably would, many fans reference that list for fan fiction and projects. We'll discuss seperating the Tally's fighter complement under the Saga specific format, though in the scope of the WC4 game/novel, the half-squadron seems to belong to a Tally.

I will work on that this weekend.

That said, the TPoF novel doesn't actually give a class for the TCS Bainbridge; the idea that having a 'half squadron' made it a cruiser seems to be based on the possibly incorrect fan assumption that this is the signature of a Tallahassee-class ship.

If I were assuming today, I would probably call her a Shffield/Coventry-type ship. If I were makin ga reference list, I would call it unspecified.

Discussed long ago and that direction was not taken for the simple reason that I hope is evident from just looking at those numbers. Shields almost twice as powerful as a naval base and armor over 5 times that of any warship we know of? Not only is that very unlikely, the ship would be near indestructible. Where's the fun in defending a carrier that more or less can wade through the thick of things without a scratch? Gameplay (and practicality) won out over that option.

While I agree that the lower numbers I provided are more reasonable, I think that this is a very poor argument. Where's the fun in defending a carrier that can more or less ade through the thick of things without a scratch? See almost every scramble mission in the first three Wing Commander games...

The Tiger's Claw, Concordia and Victory were never really in any danger even from a gameplay perspective -- but I'm still humming the scramble theme music fifteen years later.

As for having the flak cannons among the stats, I have to lean toward Lars' position. We aren't trying to replicate the CIC database, just give fans an idea of what to expect from the WC ships in Saga. Its something that will probably be discussed later.

Then consider it more of a request than a criticism; there are practically threads at the CZ every day with people repeating errors from Fleet Tactics. You may be clinging to some odd ideal on this point, but if your mod is popular than there are going to be a lot of people who end up here for us to yell at who've taken your statistics as the official writ.

Flak was never used in post WC2 games.

That's incorrect. Flak was used to great effect in Wing Commander Armada (1994). Armada was also the source for the Lexington-class heavy carrier, which is the ship being discussed here.

Chris we had this topic for a long long time. Get over it.

While I agree that trolling doesn't help anything, I believe the claim at the time was that the lighting would be fixed at some point -- is this an older screenshot?

 

[Sphynx]

You're right. It certainly is an older screenshot. In response to your question, players can chose their own level of ambiant light, even making it as bright (or brighter) than what was represented in WC3 (noonday sun from all directions, roughly).

(By the way, if you really want it to look more like WC3, try putting the resolution on 640x480, turn down the graphical quality most of the way, and pump up the ambient light... the resemblence is spooky.)

I digress, however. Players have always been able to choose their lighting. It just so happens that in many of our older screenshots, the playtesters prefered darker setting so they could enjoy the glowmaps, lighting effects, etc... Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I like my lighting somewhere inbetween.

To tell the truth, though, I don' think a screenshot would do justice to the firestorm that cap ships put out in WC Saga. People will just have to wait to try it out for themselves to really get the full feeling. I don't have any screenshots handy of our latest version, or I would post one myself. But, one way or the other, I think players will find cap ship battles to be satisfyingly challenging.

 

[Viper61]

But seriously, Saga does seem to suffer from 'WC3' syndrome -- which really isn't correct when treating Wing Commander as a timeline instead of a series of linear games. Does including a Venture make that better or just remind everyone that something is wrong, though? ?

We do have alot of 'WC3', thats why I like having the Venture and a few WC2 vessels around to "stir the pot" a bit. Given fan projects want to finish in a reasonable amount of time though (hehehe, how many of those deadlines have come and gone guys? ), it seems that more "face time" is given to the ships from the era and the "tone" its set in.

There's also some context to the particular incident that you're leaving out: before making that remark, Blair already believes that the frigate in question has been modified to support a group of strike fighters.

Actually, I did mention that in the first response. He makes the comment after he's discounted that the ship by itself is too small for cargo, not that it has no space because of the fighters.

"No warship that small had enough cargo space to make a pirate raid profitable. Blair was willing to bet that whatever hold space the frigate did have was tied up in servicing fighters."

Besides, your logic doesn't follow through at all on this. If *you* know that the Caernaven-class is 'variable', then so would *Blair*, who would then be unable to dismiss the computer's identification of the ship's class as being 'too small' to haul loot.

Maybe its late but I don't follow. How is Blair then unable to dismiss the computers identification (nitpicking, the computer doesn't declare the ship too small, Blair does after turning to the warbook page and after getting closer for a visual inspection) of the ship's class as being too small if he knows its variable?
If Blair knows the class is variable so does his handy dandy warship book which would list the "sub-types" if you will, just as fighters would probably be (be good to know if you were up against a bomber Sabre or a heavy fighter one, etc). Whatever information that warbook has in it and whatever he saw in his visual inspection seemed to sway him whether or not it could carry enough cargo.
After refering to the warbook, the novel then makes the point (whether it was intended or not - I would guess not, but oh well) of saying that "the frigate killed the notion that the attack had been a botched raid for booty", not the fact that it was a Caernaven. I guess the wandering point I have is that its only after Blair goes to the warbook and makes a visual inspection that he deams it too small to carry cargo, not based on the fact that its a Caernaven alone.

It certainly doesn't absolutely say that they don't carry fighters, but you must admit that it certainly points in that direction. No fighters show up in this battle in spite of the fact that the Juneau's bay clearly continued operating through the end of the fighting.

Very true. But that not to say either ship was outfitted with fighters in the first place, even if they have the ability. We are talking about an already depleted Confed sending two cruisers (and I'm guessing a bit more) to help the Landreich . We also join the battle pretty deep into it. The Dover's about to go up and it doesn't take much to finally take out the Juneau. The fighters could already have bought it (we are only talking about 10 light fighters if both ships were outfitted).
I don't see how the bays launching shuttles would have any bearing on fighters or no fighters, especially if the fighters had been destroyed. The fact that the bay was operating through the thick of everything might actually be seen as a shred of circumstantial evidence that there were fighters that were already destroyed (bay was already active). Why be so ready to launch shuttles? They aren't going to help you in the battle? Anyway, neither here nor there.

Well, that really depends what you mean by we -- I certainly don't believe that there are no Hellcats on the Victory before the end of the Tamayo series. The game pretty much requires there to be some in the Orsini series.

Now, what does that mean exactly? Does Red Squadron fly only Hellcats? Or do they fly Arrows and Hellcats, to make both the references in the novel (which mention both repeatedly) and in the game (which, of course, shows both on the Victory at the start of the game)? The latter seems more likely.

Well, Blair comes on the Victory and lists the 40 fighters on the carrier. Two squads of Arrows, one of Bolts, one of Bows. Arrows are never referenced again as flying in Red Squadron and before we stop at any base to resupply in the book or in the game, the references to Red Squadron consists of Hellcats. I guess there could have been differently armed Arrows that were replaced by all Hellcats at some point (since Tolwyn says hell trade off the Bows for another squadron of Hellcats) but it seems as though its just another "mistake inside the novel", not worthy of making up someting to make both references right (just like we don't make up anything to make the Coventry a destroyer and a cruiser).

That said, the TPoF novel doesn't actually give a class for the TCS Bainbridge; the idea that having a 'half squadron' made it a cruiser seems to be based on the possibly incorrect fan assumption that this is the signature of a Tallahassee-class ship.

If I were assuming today, I would probably call her a Shffield/Coventry-type ship. If I were makin ga reference list, I would call it unspecified.

I don't see how it does not give the class for the Bainbridge. Eisen specifically tells Blair that Dunlevy ended up in cruisers, commanding a half squadron off the Bainbridge.

While I agree that the lower numbers I provided are more reasonable, I think that this is a very poor argument. Where's the fun in defending a carrier that can more or less ade through the thick of things without a scratch? See almost every scramble mission in the first three Wing Commander games...

The Tiger's Claw, Concordia and Victory were never really in any danger even from a gameplay perspective -- but I'm still humming the scramble theme music fifteen years later.

I know I always found scrambles one of the most dissappointing types of missions. You're right, the carriers were never in any real danger. Did that not suck away some of the fun and involvment knowing that you could stand back, do nothing and still win the mission because your carrier would still be there? I do agree that the first set is more reasonable, we might have another round of discussion about it, but I think the big downside that will keep coming up is shields weaker than a light carrier .

Then consider it more of a request than a criticism; there are practically threads at the CZ every day with people repeating errors from Fleet Tactics. You may be clinging to some odd ideal on this point, but if your mod is popular than there are going to be a lot of people who end up here for us to yell at who've taken your statistics as the official writ.

Well, if I can get what I want added to the website (making the non-canon stats noticably "Saga-specific" like the tech database), it will be a whole lot easier for you .

While I agree that trolling doesn't help anything, I believe the claim at the time was that the lighting would be fixed at some point -- is this an older screenshot?

He said as much right above the picture.
I really don't know how anyone could enjoy playing in the pitch black . I usually turn up the ambient light to almost a WC3 "christmas tree" scheme, I just leave it dim enough that the system light source still barely casts shadows on the backsid eof the ships.

C-ya

 

[ChrisReid]

You're right. It certainly is an older screenshot. In response to your question, players can chose their own level of ambiant light, even making it as bright (or brighter) than what was represented in WC3 (noonday sun from all directions, roughly).

Until something gets released, it doesn't matter if you can if the screenshots released never do. We keep seeing, over and over, ships 50% indistinguishable from the background of space.

 

[Tolwyn]

Until something gets released, it doesn't matter if you can if the screenshots released never do. We keep seeing, over and over, ships 50% indistinguishable from the background of space.

Understandable if you haven't seen newest pictures.

http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/launch01.jpg

 

[gevatter Lars]

While I agree that trolling doesn't help anything, I believe the claim at the time was that the lighting would be fixed at some point -- is this an older screenshot?

Yes it is...and I said it just above the picture.

About the topic that we only release dark screenshots where you can't see a thing...what about these?
Hellcat
Thunderbold
They have been around in the screenshot thread for quite some time.