You guessed right. If the player is never going to see that view from within the game, the screenshot is pointless. It doesn't matter how pretty it looks, it is not a true reflection of the game.

I can, however, see that it is interesting from a mapper/designer's point of view i.e. just look at those sweeping curves I made, look at my neat joint work etc.

But I still look at a screenshot as a 'taster' of what to expect in a game hence my original comment.

I also think it is perfectly acceptable to show a vista with the intermission camera as that level is now finished and I know what it was all about. 

Like a map or a schematic, "impossible" screenshots give players useful information about the level even though they could never see that specific view. I don't think maps or schematics are considered misleading or misrepresentational.

Also, if an impossible screenshot is pretty, then it serves a marketing goal of making people want to download the level.

If your worry is that the level might be ugly during actual gameplay, that just means the level is bad. You could cause the same problem just as easily by posting a screenshot of the one good looking room in an otherwise ugly level, and even though the player will actually see that view, it does not represent the visual quality of the rest of the level. 

Noclipped screenshots are way better sometimes. You can show more of the level that way. For the screenshots in the Quaddicted archive I (and the helpers probably too) always try to catch the quintessence of the level in a screenshot, so the user sees the shot and can recognise if he knows the level. 

"I don't think maps or schematics are considered misleading or misrepresentational."

Neither do I. But that's not what I was talking about.


"Also, if an impossible screenshot is pretty, then it serves a marketing goal of making people want to download the level"

Precicely my point. I am a consumer, I want to see what I'm getting. Don't show me the roof of the car as the only view; show me the back, front, sides, or interior if it's only going to be one shot. I don't give a monkey's about the roof - I can't see it, I won't be sitting on it, and I won't be climbing some convenient staicase so that I can look down on it and marvel at its form and function.


"If your worry is that the level might be ugly during actual gameplay, that just means the level is bad."

It also means I don't find out until it's too late, which I am trying to avoid.

Now I don't want you to think that I am going overboard here, I am just responding to your points. The principle for me is: show me what I'm getting. And in relation to 'game play' only, if I can't get to the displayed vista, then I am not getting what I'm being shown.

At the end of the day I'm just a consumer. Well, perhaps I'm just a grumpy old consumer :) 

Surely, it would be more likely to be recognisable if the player had passed that way during the game?

However, you're talking about an archive whereas my comments were for pre-issue screenshots.

See my previous post.

(Grumpy consumer trounces out of shop muttering something about, "Wasn't like this in my day...") 

I took many of the screenshots for TSQLR using noclip and going into the scenery.

This was not to show a radically different perspective from the player, but because the player will be moving around and able to perceive a lot more of a particular scene in a short space of time. To capture that in a single image I often tried to get as far back as possible in that scene to get as much in view as possible - I think that gave a more accurate picture of what the player would experience.

As you might guess I don't have a problem with people doing it for normal screenshots, and in some ways it can be good to give a player a taster of the style without revealing what they'll see. Although Trinca's is a bit of an extreme example. 

:p Shambler u will die a lot in my next maps :p there are tree in progress!!! 

I like to keep my screenshots as desktop-layer.
in that way I stimulate my fantasy to the map.
So it had to be called glammershot!

no-clip screenshots are fine to quickly archive the event of a level.
but in game screenshots expose a more exciting moment of the level, ie monsters in action, no clipping ever will.
Therefore I claim it as the one and only screenshot!

I love my white, overall resolution of my monitor as the best, ever-lasting screenshot of Shambler. So I condamned it to be shot. 

 

Then I got a job, and reliezed how shitty and unrealistic they make my work, and wish only to have actual gameplay represented by screenshots, rather than 'marketting'. 

you forgot to respond to my final point, which is that true-to-gameplay screenshots can still be misleading. 

No, I didn't forget. 

maybe i'm missing the point here, but screenshots should be taken in whichever way looks the best and makes for a nice picture...

who cares if it's noclipped to an unreachable location on from a PoV of the player? 

Shambler pretty much wrote what I was thinking - that the purpose is often to try to cram in as many interesting bits as possible in order to try to sum up something that can not accurately be described in one image. 

the only way you should sell a game is from extended video footage of actual gameplay.

Yeah. I went there. 

do screenshots taken from areas reachable by means of (quad)rocketjumping act as gameplay screenshots? 

1. true-to-gameplay screenshots can be just as misleading as noclip screenshots

2. noclip screenshots can can be just as useful and informative as true-to-gameplay shots

3. therefore, noclip shots are not pointless or useless at all. They are just as good as the other kind for previewing a level prior to downloading.

Since you agree with #1 and don't make any comment against #2, why don't you agree with #3? 

Since you agree with #1 and don't make any comment against #2

Should read:

Since you agree with #2 and don't make any comment against #1 

jesus christ that was a good vindaloo

nice to be back 

unrepresentative of the game. After all, whoever is playing isn't playing exactly like you will, are they?

Seriously, noclip screenshots are not a problem. Deception and/or misrepresentation is a problem. This doesn't seem complicated. 

Have you ever been dissapointed becuase the name of a level is too good compared to the level itself?

I remember thinking "The Soul Grinder" must be some awesome, mythological machine buried at the heart of the level. Turns out it was just a bunch of rooms with monsters in it.

I once named a level "Concourse" becuase i figured that name's blandness matched the blandness of the level itself. 

I once named a level "Penile Devastation" and it had a giant penis in it, so I hope no one was disappointed.

Also, I once named a level "s4wk" but some people seem to think it's actually pretty good. 

I know I was severely disappointed when I played godfun.bsp and it was neither god nor fun. 

You misread; that was supposed to be GodfUn.bsp, and it WAS both godf and un. 

i guess i failed at sarcasm then :(