Factorio Forums

Hi (;

With stable 1.0 Factorio and GNOME 3.36 there are some very weird and annoying bugs with doing a print-screen key screenshots:
1. If you do a screenshot of the whole screen (just print-screen) then the game window is just not visible (*). You see a checkerboard instead of it (same thing as graphic software use for marking transparent background).
2. If you do a screenshot of active window (alt+print-screen), then in majority of cases GNOME session will crash. No screenshot is done.
3. If you do a screenshot of selectable area (shift+print-screen), then it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Maybe it's something like "doesn't work the first time", hard to tell.

There was absolutely no issue like that with Factorio 0.17.79 and GNOME 3.34. I did not check with Factorio 0.18.xx. I have no idea how to tell you whether the problem is more in Factorio or more in GNOME, however my brother (who has a similar PC, similar OS and also GNOME) has the same issue.

Any ideas on how could I narrow this issue down for you?

(*) - I'm mentioning this and separating 1. from 2., because I have 2 monitors. Maybe this is related, maybe not.

Freddie Chopin wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 1:48 pm

1. If you do a screenshot of the whole screen (just print-screen) then the game window is just not visible (*). You see a checkerboard instead of it (same thing as graphic software use for marking transparent background).

Seems to be a known bug in GNOME.

Freddie Chopin wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 1:48 pm

2. If you do a screenshot of active window (alt+print-screen), then in majority of cases GNOME session will crash. No screenshot is done.

This too.

Either way, programs don't handle their own screenshots being taken. You could try using GIMP for taking screenshots, that's always worked for me.

Thanks for the info. It's a pity this doesn't work in GNOME properly now. While I know that there's a way to make screenshots in game with a command, this way has a pretty serious limitation - it captures what is around player, not what is on the screen. If I would like to make a screenshot of the map view, then this doesn't seem to be possible. Would you consider such feature request worthwhile and doable?

If you happen to use Steam, it provides its own screenshot feature. By default you can press F12 to take a screenshot of the running game. This works very well with my Gnome on Archlinux.

Unfortunately I'm not using Steam, I have the "direct" install of the game. I assumed that by buying it directly on the website, Wube will get more cash, while Steam is probably already profitable enough (;

Freddie Chopin wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:04 pm

Unfortunately I'm not using Steam, I have the "direct" install of the game. I assumed that by buying it directly on the website, Wube will get more cash, while Steam is probably already profitable enough (;

You're correct in that assumption, but you can get a Steam key after buying it from the website (I'm not sure exactly where, but log in with your account and poke around).

Freddie Chopin wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:04 pm

Unfortunately I'm not using Steam, I have the "direct" install of the game. I assumed that by buying it directly on the website, Wube will get more cash, while Steam is probably already profitable enough (;

make a global keybinding in GNOME to have your own F12 global shortcut that runs:

scrot -u "~/Pictures/Screenshots/scrot-$(date +%s).png"

Jap2.0 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:31 pm

Freddie Chopin wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:04 pm

Unfortunately I'm not using Steam, I have the "direct" install of the game. I assumed that by buying it directly on the website, Wube will get more cash, while Steam is probably already profitable enough (;

You're correct in that assumption, but you can get a Steam key after buying it from the website (I'm not sure exactly where, but log in with your account and poke around).

Steam is a waste of CPU, just for taking a screenshot with.

ptx0 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:33 pm

Steam is a waste of CPU, just for taking a screenshot with.

Most likely (although Factorio doesn't really waste CPU, so obviously you need something to do so ), but presumably it would actually work for taking screenshots, unlike Gnome. Scrot appears to be something that would also work, from my brief glimpse over Linux screenshot tools.

Of course, there's always also the possibility that Steam could or would be used for things other than taking screenshots, and it seems a reasonable thing to provide that option.

Jap2.0 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:41 pm

ptx0 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:33 pm

Steam is a waste of CPU, just for taking a screenshot with.

Most likely (although Factorio doesn't really waste CPU, so obviously you need something to do so ), but presumably it would actually work for taking screenshots, unlike Gnome. Scrot appears to be something that would also work, from my brief glimpse over Linux screenshot tools.

Of course, there's always also the possibility that Steam could or would be used for things other than taking screenshots, and it seems a reasonable thing to provide that option.

no, when I say Steam is a waste of CPU, i mean, it's been known to (on Linux especially) cause unnecessary CPU use in some web browser portion of the Steam application, which actually hurts Factorio performance. this is why I switched to Standalone copy on Linux.

ptx0 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:44 pm

no, when I say Steam is a waste of CPU, i mean, it's been known to (on Linux especially) cause unnecessary CPU use in some web browser portion of the Steam application, which actually hurts Factorio performance. this is why I switched to Standalone copy on Linux.

Ah, interesting. If I remember correctly basically all of Steam is just a webview.

ptx0 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:32 pm

make a global keybinding in GNOME to have your own F12 global shortcut that runs:

scrot -u "~/Pictures/Screenshots/scrot-$(date +%s).png"

Interesting idea, I'll try that! Thanks!