Saving screenshots from the game

In this recipe, we will learn how to take in-game snapshots and save them to an external file. Better yet, we will make it possible to choose between two different methods.

Note

This technique only works when you compile to a Windows or Mac standalone executable. It will not work for Web Player builds, for example.

Getting ready

In order to follow this recipe, please import the screenshots package, available in the 0423_07_06 folder, into your project. This package includes a basic terrain and a camera that can be rotated via a mouse.

How to do it...

To save screenshots from your game, follow these steps:

  1. Import the screenshots package and open the screenshotLevel scene.
  2. Add the following C# script to the Main Camera:
    // file: TakeScreenshot.cs
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System;
using System.IO;
public class TakeScreenshot : MonoBehaviour {
  public string prefix = "Screenshot";
  public int scale = 1;	
  public bool useReadPixels = false;
  private Texture2D texture;
  
  void  Update (){
   if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.P))
          StartCoroutine(TakeShot());
  }

  IEnumerator  TakeShot (){
    string date = System.DateTime.Now.ToString("_d-MMM-yyyy-HH-mm-ss-f");
    int sw = Screen.width;
    int sh = Screen.height;
    Rect sRect = new Rect(0,0,sw,sh);
  
    if (useReadPixels){
      yield return new WaitForEndOfFrame();
      texture = new Texture2D (sw,sh,TextureFormat.RGB24,false);
      texture.ReadPixels(sRect,0,0);
      texture.Apply();
      byte[] bytes= texture.EncodeToPNG();
      Destroy (texture);
      File.WriteAllBytes(Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.dataPath) + Path.DirectorySeparatorChar + prefix + date + ".png", bytes);
    
    } else {
       Application.CaptureScreenshot(prefix + date + ".png", scale);
     }
  }
}
  3. Save your script and attach it to the Main Camera game object by dragging it from the Project view to the Main Camera game object in the Hierarchy view.
  4. Access the Take Screenshot component. Set Scale to 2 and leave Use Read Pixels unchecked.

    Note

    If you want your image file's name to start with something other than Screenshot, change it in the Prefix field.

    How to do it...
  5. Play the scene. A new screenshot, with twice the original size, will be saved in your project folder every time you press P.

    Note

    Please note that depending on the method used the file will be saved on a specific location within your game's folder. Mac users will have to right-click the executable file and select Show Package Contents in order to locate the file among the game data.

How it works...

Once the script has detected that the P key has been pressed, the screen is captured and stored as an image file in the same folder where the executable is. Unless Use Read Pixels is selected, the script will call a built-in Unity function called CaptureScreenshot(), which is capable of scaling up the original screen size (in our case, based on the Scale variable of our script).

There's more...

We have included the Use Read Pixel option as a demonstration of how to save your images to disk without using Unity's CaptureScreenshot() function. One advantage of this method is that it can be adapted to capture and save only a portion of the screen. The Scale variable from our script will not affect it needs, though.

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