Hi! So I've been making default replacements recently, and learning how to use cameraman mode so I can take nicer preview pics. I've noticed that sometimes when I take a screenshot, all seems well, but when I look at my screenshot folder later, the screenshot is of my empty lot and skyline. I attached two screenshots - the one below is what I get, the screenshot of the sim is similar to what I should have gotten.




I've searched around a little bit to see if there are existing threads on this, but I'm not exactly sure of the right keywords for this.

Relevant info - I'm using my computer's print screen button for screenshots, in cameraman mode.

My game has a lot of mods. I'm not sure which ones might be relevant. But for a start, I have GreatCheesecakePersona's skylines, Lowedus' Great Sky of Totalitarianism, SimNopke's skyfix, and probably most importantly, Lowedus' Camera Mod Compilation. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Are you using fullscreen mode?
Are you using a printscreen program?

From experience I know some printscreen programs can have certain glitchy behaviors in fullscreen mode, anything from not capturing everything on the screen, to capturing a black screen (I had this issue with an earlier version of Gadwin Printscreen). The easiest way to get around this is to use windowed mode, because it forces the screenshot to capture what's on the screen. If you aren't using a printscreen program, trying windowed mode can still be of help.

I don't know if Lowedeus' camera mod compilation has anything to do with this (if anything on that list, this is probably the most likely since I don't have any experience with that particular camera mod). The others I've used variants of and I haven't seen these kinds of issues (but that doesn't mean they're completely ruled out, of course).

You can test if it's the camera mod by replacing the default cameras in the backup file from Lowedeus' link and taking some pictures. If you get the same issues it's not the camera mod, and you can put the modded files back again.

windowed mode ^^ I second that - in general (techbabling warning) capturing DX9 programs is kind of tricky because of the way how drivers communicate with hardware and system layer (and eventually actual viewport), and for only Maxis knows what reasons particularly difficult with Sims 2 (on Windows ofc).For example: Greenshot - a popular, free capture tool which works very well even with some strange games (like Dungeon Siege II, MS can screw things best) completely opt out of working with Sims 2 in fullscreen. In Windowed mode, it's OK.

Next things are a distance fade and viewrange. I suppose you already set up this to the max for the screenshotting session (in normal gameplay it's not really needed until you just want to add some Watts to the global heating for some reason) but

[BUT]

there are angles. Very irritating ones. Sometimes at certain angle/distance of camera from the "base point" lot dissapears or horizont gets weird, or something else (including random taxi/NPC spawning exactly before your viewpoint). It's just another SIms 2 mystery never solved (yet)

Thanks, guys. It's just the vanilla print screen key on my Windows 10 computer, in fullscreen mode. No special program installed.

I'll try out windowed mode for taking preview pics and see if it happens again. Doesn't happen every session, so I don't know if there's a definitive way to tell if it works, but I'll report back if it does happen again.