Taking screen shots of amiga games on a real amiga..

[bilko9070]

Is there a way to take a screen shot of a game while its running on the amiga?  I know you can do it on uae but id like to be able to take a high score screen shot of the whd version of `new zeland story` during gameplay while im playin it on my real amiga for my website..

[motorollin]

Not if the game turns off the OS. Even if it doesn't, you would have to be able to switch back to Workbench to run a programme to grab the screen.

--
moto

[Merc]

There's a small chance you can get the screen shot if you use a tool that searches chip RAM.  I forget the exact name of it, but there was a utility I used to use (GfxRipper?) that would let you visually scan chip RAM for graphics.  It also had a mode where it would try to find images automatically.

You would have to get the highscore table up on the screen, then reboot, and start the program; of course you'd want to have the utility installed on a floppy that did nothing but start it up on boot, so that you overwrite as little of your chip RAM as possible.

Good luck!

*EDIT* I just Googled it, and the program is indeed GfxRipper.  It has a utility to write the program to the bootblock of a disk, which would minimize the chance of overwriting chip mem while booting.

[motorollin]

So data in chipmem survives a warm reboot?  :-o

--
moto

[tonyvdb]

The only way I have been able to do it is using a genlocked output of the Amiga into the video input of my PC and grab a screenshot that way. The Video Toaster has this ability built in.
Also a digital camera placed in front of the monitor about 90cm  back with the flash off works good.

[Tricky]

motorollin wrote:
So data in chipmem survives a warm reboot?  :-o

Often it does, I sometimes used to rip title screens this way.  Not always easy to get the palette as well though, and of course you don't get things like copper rainbow effects or dual playfields.  Try doing it to Mr Beanbag and you'd get something very strange indeed!

[Legerdemain]

On an A500 you could try to use something like the Action Replay. I've grabbed quite some pictures using it, mostly from demos though. But it does of course not work in all cases...

[Tomas]

tonyvdb wrote:
The only way I have been able to do it is using a genlocked output of the Amiga into the video input of my PC and grab a screenshot that way. The Video Toaster has this ability built in.
Also a digital camera placed in front of the monitor about 90cm  back with the flash off works good.

Why the need for a genlock?? All amigas has built in composite output, which you can just plug into the video input of your pc/tvtuner card.

[tonyvdb]

Unfortunatly all Amigas do not have composit out. The A3000(T), A4000(T) dont for sure and the A500 did not either At least here in Canada they dident.

[InTheSand]

PAL A500s have monochrome composite out as standard - but to get colour composite, you have to use an A520 modulator...

 - Ali

[Speelgoedmannetje]

motorollin wrote:
So data in chipmem survives a warm reboot?  :-o

--
moto

Yep, that's possible, somehow.

[lempkee]

hi, yes you can do screen grabs on a real amiga with WHDLOAD, there is a option to add a key and just while u play press the key and when you exit you will find the screenshots in the progdir.

[fx]

As Legerdemain said, the Action Replay (atleast MKII and MKIII) could rip pictures, but ofcourse those pictures didn't include sprites and if the copper was in use it would look pretty screwed up.

[bilko9070]

Thanks for your help people!

@lempkee
That sounds just the ticket!  Dont suppose you know what the option i add should be? I suppose it would be a tooltype of some kind.. :-o

Edit.
I assume its someting to do with this.
http://whdload.de/docs/en/sp.html

If anyone has a fool proof guide to using it that would be a little helpfull!

[Rebel-CD32]

I always wanted an Action Replay for this purpose, never tried one though. How did the Amiga magazines take their screenshots?