Take Screenshots From Your Gp2x

[efegea]

Here is an utility I made that takes screenshots of GP2X's screen

It's an script that launches "fbgrab" executable and outputs a file named fbdump.png 10 seconds after running the utility.

I don't have my GP2X yet, so it's a pre-alpha-beta-gamma version ^_^ Yes, it's not great but will be improved when I get my unit. No overwriting previous screenshots and instead of 10 seconds, a trigger, like "L+R+Select" to take the screenshot, are features to be expected. But I no promise anything

Anarchy has tested it (thanks!!!) and he says it works

http://usuarios.arsystel.com/frangongue/fbgrab2x_v01.zip

 

[Aaaaaaaa]

cool. useful for devs screenshotting their programs



I think its great to see people making stuff for the comunity.
But whate even good-er if they make it for the community and they aint got the console themselves

 

[Guyfawkes]

just tried it out and works fairly well. a manual trigger to take the screenshot would be great, as well as incremental filenames i.e. fbdump.png, fbdump2.png etc

let me know if you need any help in testing a new version as i am very interested in this useful utility.

 

[wraggster]

please all coders will you watermark your images, im sure every site would rather see GP32X or Emuholic etc on than someone stealing your screens then claiming the work for themselves.

 

[Optimus]

Cool!

Actually a question about the plain GP32: Is there a screen grabbing tool for it too? I haven't found anything. Is the videoram of GP2X similar to the GP32? (Actually I would prefer they have changed it to a new one in GP2X instead of the sideways of GP32 as it is annoying for porting PC gfx code ;P). Can you port it or rewrite a screengrabber for GP32 too? Anyone thought of doing this?

 

[EvilDragon]

The GP32 doesn't multitask - whenever you run a program, EVERYTHING else is wiped out from the memory, so you can't have a screengrabber running while running other programs.

 

[Optimus]

The GP32 doesn't multitask - whenever you run a program, EVERYTHING else is wiped out from the memory, so you can't have a screengrabber running while running other programs.

​

Hmm,. that explains it! So, is it the free launcher that wipes everything from memory before running a programm or is it the startup code included in your programm that does this?

Wouldn't there be another way? Solution one: emulation? Too slow..
Solution two: Couldn't someone programm his own launcher with an additional screen grabber, which reads and copies a programm in memory and tries to jump to it's starting position? Or ignore the specific part in start up code which cleans memory if that is? Or am I missing something?

 

[codesmith]

Solution two: Couldn't someone programm his own launcher with an additional screen grabber, which reads and copies a programm in memory and tries to jump to it's starting position? Or ignore the specific part in start up code which cleans memory if that is? Or am I missing something?

​

You're missing something
On the GP32, programs assume that thay have full control of the hardware, so when they allocate memory, they grab from anywhere - there's nothing preventing the screengrabber's code and data from being overwritten with game data. The solution to that problem is well understood, it's called a monitor or operating system. Even something as simple and primitive as MS-DOS prevented that problem, because programs that ran under DOS "knew" that they had to allocate memory and other system resources in a standardized way or else risk crashing. That's why DOS programs basically took over the machine, yet you could still have programs like the Norton utilities that popped up when you pressed a hotkey. I hope that the HH libraries will have some basic resource management like that built into them, that way we can have the low-level access as well as useful utilities like screengrabbers at the same time.

 

[torpor]

from what i can tell by inspecting the various *.gpe releases out there, the only reason things don't "multitask" is because the launcher is not designed to do so; it hands control over to the *gpe, and then waits for it to return. thus, *gpe's have 'complete command over the hardware'.

this does *NOT* mean that the system is not capable of multi-threading, or having 'background daemons running concurrently', it means that the interface to handle management of these different apps is not there, in the Launcher interface, of the GP2X ..

it'd be nice for future versions of Launcher to have a 'daemon management' view, so you could inspect processes that are running, HUP them, etc. but i imagine that this isn't a priority for something that is supposed to be an easy-to-use, low hassle games machine which functionally adopts the 'one-game, one-app at a time' model of other games machines ...

 

[pkostrze]

Everytime I use fbgrab to try to snag a pic of my gmenu2x screen all I get is a big black box... why are all of my captures black?

 

[Vimacs]

I heard it dosn work with gmenu2x for some reason.

 

[krosfyah]

Hm.. what's the best way to get screen grabs of gmenu2x then?

 

[pkostrze]

I'm sort of curious too... is there another screen grab program? I don;t have a digital camera so that's not an option.

 

[DaveC]

from what i can tell by inspecting the various *.gpe releases out there, the only reason things don't "multitask" is because the launcher is not designed to do so; it hands control over to the *gpe, and then waits for it to return. thus, *gpe's have 'complete command over the hardware'.

this does *NOT* mean that the system is not capable of multi-threading, or having 'background daemons running concurrently', it means that the interface to handle management of these different apps is not there, in the Launcher interface, of the GP2X ..

it'd be nice for future versions of Launcher to have a 'daemon management' view, so you could inspect processes that are running, HUP them, etc. but i imagine that this isn't a priority for something that is supposed to be an easy-to-use, low hassle games machine which functionally adopts the 'one-game, one-app at a time' model of other games machines ...

Plus multi-threading would slow things down and/or cause occasional screen hiccupps. Probably best it doesn't do it as that would be kind of crappy for a games machine.

 

[PSyMastR]

Why on earth was a year old thread revived and DaveC backing up an argument that has long since changed. The cpu/lcd changer has a daemon mode...

 

[ryosaeba]

Hm.. what's the best way to get screen grabs of gmenu2x then?

I take them from a version compiled from windows.
I have a suspect that something regarding the autorun feature messes with the way screenshots are taken since I verified that it actually messes the tv-out (not gmenu2x fault)