Original screenshots are actually retouched

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PrinceOfFunky
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Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by PrinceOfFunky »

So, this probably isn't the only case, I found out that the screenshot from DM-Pressure was actually retouched using a clone tool:
Screenshot.jpg
pattern.PNG
Those are the same pattern, I wonder why they had to retouch it.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by Feralidragon »

I think this is just a classical case of the human mind trying to give meaning to what actually are naturally occurring patterns, especially in 256-color images.

In other words: it's highly unlikely they have been retouched at all, unlike you may think, since there's literally no reason to do it in what is by all standards a low resolution image and a direct screenshot of a map, which they could just take again much more easily in the first place.
It's just your mind focusing and trying to justify what you believe to be an artificial pattern, and it's not that good of a pattern to begin with, the colors are actually different and do not correspond to a clone, and even the shape in what you highlighted in red completely differs from everything else.

The human mind is very good at finding patterns, and it's how we became technologically advanced and learned about how the world works to an extent, but most of the patterns that it finds are actually bogus. :)
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PrinceOfFunky
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by PrinceOfFunky »

Feralidragon wrote:I think this is just a classical case of the human mind trying to give meaning to what actually are naturally occurring patterns, especially in 256-color images.

In other words: it's highly unlikely they have been retouched at all, unlike you may think, since there's literally no reason to do it in what is by all standards a low resolution image and a direct screenshot of a map, which they could just take again much more easily in the first place.
It's just your mind focusing and trying to justify what you believe to be an artificial pattern, and it's not that good of a pattern to begin with, the colors are actually different and do not correspond to a clone, and even the shape in what you highlighted in red completely differs from everything else.

The human mind is very good at finding patterns, and it's how we became technologically advanced and learned about how the world works to an extent, but most of the patterns that it finds are actually bogus. :)
I rly don't think this is the case, look:
way.PNG
You can clearly notice how that platform deforms and changes its color near those patterns I talked about.

EDIT:
As you can see here:
weird.png
where circles of the same color wrap the same patterns, those patterns are present in the texture, but the texture looks different in the yellow selection, that piece of the texture is missing from the original texture. Also, I tried removing the lamp and rebuild the lights several times but it won't delete.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by Feralidragon »

You're analyzing an image at the pixel level, which was:
- Print screened into a bitmap (and which you don't know at which resolution and quality settings);
- Reduced to a much lower resolution (and image reduction algorithms weren't that good in 1999);
- Reduced to 256 colors (probably using Bright).

This is the same as analyzing pixel patterns in a jpeg image.

In short: deformations and loss of information is absolutely expected when you're reducing a bitmap image, be it in color or resolution, and in this case it was both.
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PrinceOfFunky
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by PrinceOfFunky »

PrinceOfFunky wrote:
way.PNG
But facts are facts o.o Idk how much photoshop you have ever used, but this platform is retouched with a clone tool, anyway, to me that's a manmade pattern, I cannot believe it isn't since when someone wants to mask a change in a pic the first thing it does is usually usin the clone tool, and they used to retouch textures to make them a bit different each other(using clone tool too), you can check it in the texture packs, so they were surely good at doing so.

EDIT:
What about this line mismatching?
line_mismatching.PNG
I tried to take a screenshot, resize it to 256x256 and convert it into PCX, the resolution isn't the same, but the line is straight:
line_matching.png
EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCX
Under "Image data compression" it says:
"a simple lossless compression algorithm"
So the compression itself isn't supposed to create patterns to reduce the file size.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by Feralidragon »

It doesn't matter if the extension is BMP or PCX, they are both "bitmaps", or "raster images", just like JPG, PNG, GIF, etc, and when they are reduced in any given way, they always loose information and may create all sorts of artifacts and patterns because of that, depending on the reduction algorithm and settings used.

If you're going to use a modern image editing program, and reduce from a good resolution screenshot, with a modern renderer, 32 bits of color and whatnot, of course the reduction will generally be much better than whatever was used 20 years ago, if one was used at all.

"Facts" are things you can prove, and at most what you have here is an "hypothesis" of them having been touched due to some alleged deformations and patterns you saw in the screenshot.
Because you're lacking all the information and reproduction methods you actually need to be able to say that as a "fact":
- how did they take the screenshots: did they set the game with a resolution of 256x256 and took the screenshots, or did they resize them later from 640x480?
- what settings did they use: quality, FOV, color depth, render settings?
- if they used a program to reduce, which one did they use and which algorithms?

The only detail I noticed which is different from the map, is that in that screenshot the ripper is missing from the top, as well as the actual white corona from the light where you pointed out the "patterns", so this could simply be a screenshot from the map as it was right before it was finished, but not after it was finished (maybe it was the UT beta version of the map).
And all patterns thereof could be things that were or were not in the map before, and that lack of alignment can be caused by differences in lighting between the top and bottom, and what you think what the beam is, may not be perceivable above if the surface is more lit up than below.

And there's virtually no reason whatsoever to edit a low resolution screenshot like this, it would be much easier to just take another.
If there was something they wanted to hide, it would be much easier to modify the map a little and take another screenshot, rather than using techniques like those, I think they had better things to do considering they were already under pressure (no pun intended) to deliver UT on time.

So as far as my opinion goes, this is just you wearing a tin foil hat and trying to solve an inexistent mystery.
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OjitroC
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by OjitroC »

PrinceOfFunky wrote:You can clearly notice how that platform deforms and changes its color near those patterns I talked about.
That's surely the black light underneath the platform (distorted by the enlargement)?
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by papercoffee »

Lets say they edited this screenshot for what ever reason ...what do you hope to find out?
It's clearly a screenshot from a proto-map (the UT Ripper is missing). It's not unusual to reuse pictures.
Many screenshots of the default maps have some differences compared to the actual map.
They made this map for an Unreal expansion pack and afterwards did they turn it into UT as we know it.
We can assume, they had no time to make a new screenshot or just forgot about it, or didn't thought it would be that important ... there is nothing special.
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Cronoloop
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by Cronoloop »

only reason for them to retouch is if they took that screenshot, then turns out it was a bit distorted or corrupted in that part, so they retouched it instead of taking the screen again because they were lazy
this is highly unlikely though, it's just the compressed image
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by Barbie »

papercoffee wrote:It's clearly a screenshot from a proto-map (the UT Ripper is missing)
Also the step does not exist in my DM-Pressure:
Step.jpg
So I also think that the above image was edited to fit the modified map.
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PrinceOfFunky
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by PrinceOfFunky »

Feralidragon wrote:And there's virtually no reason whatsoever to edit a low resolution screenshot like this, it would be much easier to just take another.
They could have edited it when it was in a better resolution.
OjitroC wrote:
PrinceOfFunky wrote:You can clearly notice how that platform deforms and changes its color near those patterns I talked about.
That's surely the black light underneath the platform (distorted by the enlargement)?
It could be but the black light is placed right below the platform(at least in the final version).
papercoffee wrote:Lets say they edited this screenshot for what ever reason ...what do you hope to find out?
It's clearly a screenshot from a proto-map (the UT Ripper is missing). It's not unusual to reuse pictures.
Well I don't need to find out something, I'm just wondering why would they need to modify it.
I noticed most of the screenshots were taken from the proto version.
Cronoloop wrote:only reason for them to retouch is if they took that screenshot, then turns out it was a bit distorted or corrupted in that part, so they retouched it instead of taking the screen again because they were lazy
this is highly unlikely though, it's just the compressed image
The PCX compression doesn't create new patterns, unless they are already there before to compress it.
Barbie wrote:
papercoffee wrote:It's clearly a screenshot from a proto-map (the UT Ripper is missing)
Also the step does not exist in my DM-Pressure:
Step.jpg
So I also think that the above image was edited to fit the modified map.
That would have a lot of sense, if that's right it was made between the proto and the final versions.

This is a picture analysis I got from this website:
[Input: Luminance Gradient; Mode: Projection; Component: 3; Linearize: Off; Invert: Off; Enanchement: Stretch Contrast; Opacity: 1;]
analysis.png
analysis_zoom.PNG
The zoom on the place where I see those "patterns" reveals that the light is much different from the left part of the platform.
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by Feralidragon »

I am sorry, but I swear this is all starting to look like one of those ghost and conspiracy shows. :lol2:
Barbie wrote:
papercoffee wrote:It's clearly a screenshot from a proto-map (the UT Ripper is missing)
Also the step does not exist in my DM-Pressure:
Step.jpg
So I also think that the above image was edited to fit the modified map.
Or maybe it was just a prior version of the map which actually didn't have those floors aligned, and thus the rest of the map was also a little bit different?

It would be much easier to just take a new screenshot of the modified map, since every other difference is easier to spot than those anyway.
The fact that they didn't even do that, means that they just took the screenshot from a version, then kept working in the map and just never bothered to update the screenshot again, at all.
It's much harder to edit an existing picture, than taking another one.

Occam's Razor everyone...
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by papercoffee »

Feralidragon wrote:I am sorry, but I swear this is all starting to look like one of those ghost and conspiracy shows. :lol2:
Barbie wrote:
papercoffee wrote:It's clearly a screenshot from a proto-map (the UT Ripper is missing)
Also the step does not exist in my DM-Pressure:
Step.jpg
So I also think that the above image was edited to fit the modified map.
Or maybe it was just a prior version of the map which actually didn't have those floors aligned, and thus the rest of the map was also a little bit different?
That's what I meant with proto. Everything is a prototype before you made a final version... which is then a beta-version. :ironic:
Feralidragon wrote:It would be much easier to just take a new screenshot of the modified map, since every other difference is easier to spot than those anyway.
The fact that they didn't even do that, means that they just took the screenshot from a version, then kept working in the map and just never bothered to update the screenshot again, at all.
It's much harder to edit an existing picture, than taking another one.

Occam's Razor everyone...
^This
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esnesi
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by esnesi »

Feralidragon wrote: Occam's Razor everyone...
:lol: :gj:
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makemeunreal
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Re: Original screenshots are actually retouched

Post by makemeunreal »

It's a nice find tho. Really interesting.

What if it was the crosshair they "edited-out"? Did the same myself back then.