Bug Screenshots render background transparent

[Jananton]

I noticed today that screen shots taken with either F5, or F6 in v. 0.163 (release) display the space background as transparent. Probably a flag that's set wrongly for the *.png format. Needless to say this wasn't the case in the previous version 0.1617

Greets,

Jan

 

[der_scheme]

Do you have anti-aliasing on?

 

[Jananton]

Nope, all the settings found in the advanced settings view are default, so anti-aliasing is set to zero, I just checked. <g>
On the main connection screen the only things changed from default, if I remember correctly, are the screen resolution, Fullscreen on, Normal/Bump mapping on and Shadows on, with Best option selected.

Anything else you need to know?

Greets,

Jan

 

[Jananton]

As a little follow up I made a screenshot with a nebula backdrop instead of just black with stars and the result makes me believe it has to do with how the alpha channel is used in the game and is interpreted for the *.png screenshot export. It seems as if black is interpreted as transparent by the *.png format, maybe forcing a 24bits format here, instead of the current 32bits (RGBA) could easily solve this behavior.
An image says more then a thousand words, so...

result from pressing F6 (note the fade to transparency to the left)

and a mock-up of what one would expect. (black layer added behind the transparent image)

Greets,

Jan

 

[NeonSturm]

Had no issues without background.

Probably a custom sky-box or procedural generated backgrounds causes this.

 

[Jananton]

Hmm, I'm just using the default install of SM v.0.163 (release) with default settings apart from those mentioned before and installed it in a new subfolder as that's possible with launcher v.12, so all should be fresh and crispy.

EDIT: Ah, looking at the startup settings I noticed an entry for procedural background. That seems to be set to on by default (don't know if that was the case in 0.1615) since I didn't touch that before.
Switching it to off does remedy the problem, so now the question rises, what's the difference...

Greets,

Jan

 

[NeonSturm]

I guess it is because generated background does not write the black color onto each frame. Instead it uses a frame which is previously reset to black - reset is in a different part of the program.

 

[Jananton]

In that case it's probably just one line of code to force that reset to reset once when a screenshot is made. After going to a known nebula region with procedural background off I think I'll rather switch it on again and use Gimp for now, instead of traveling through only voids of blackness. ;-)

Greets,

Jan

 

[Crusade]

I've found this normally happens when the background isn't fully opaque. You may of noticed that it fades in and out when changing from one background to another. During this fading, the background does it's "Let's be invisible" thing.
You can observe the same behaviour by editing the hotbar texture with transparent areas (not fully transparent, it'll just render normally), this will cause the areas with transparency on the hotbar to render transparent in any captured screenshots. It is an odd bug.

 

[Jananton]

I've found this normally happens when the background isn't fully opaque. You may of noticed that it fades in and out when changing from one background to another. During this fading, the background does it's "Let's be invisible" thing.

You mean while playing the game, or when you make a screen-shot during these transitions? I can't say I've noticed it during game-play, but I must admit I haven't payed much attention to the display in that way.

I don't have much experience with Java programming, but I did a fair bit of C and C++ in my days and it's astonishing how often those hard to catch elusive bugs are caused by just a typo or oversight in just one line of code deep withing the logic, sometimes even in a used library itself.
I know the use of the alpha channel can be tricky sometimes certainly when two of those regions overlap, this wouldn't be the first game to have some peculiarities in that department I've come across. Lets hope the Devs can find that gremlin at some time. ;-)

Greets,

Jan

 

[Crusade]

You mean while playing the game, or when you make a screen-shot during these transitions?

When playing the game. I believe the background changes when moving from one void system to another, it'll do it's fading thing then. it simply fades to black and fades back in with a new pattern/colorscheme

This only works with the procedural BG enabled, of course. lol.

 

[der_scheme]

Could you give me information about your operating system and graphics card? It seems that me and most other people don't have that issue, so it has to be something very specific.