Getting the material for this post killed 3 birds with one stone! No, not real birds, metaphoric ones. :p After a long day of slaving over a hot blog, taking these screenshots gave me something to post about, gave me a chance to play with the FRAPS application I bought the other day and… it gave me an excuse to play SWTOR [Star Wars The Old Republic] during the afternoon, guilt free. Come, have a look!
The lady with the dreads is, surprise, surprise, my gunslinger Meeka. π I have had a Meeka in almost every single MMO I have ever played. Not one of them has ever looked anything like me – they’ve all been tall and deadly – but each one has had a little bit of me in there, in the wish fulfillment department if nothing else!
This latest Meeka is badass with an attitude but I like to think she has a heart of gold – all 24 carats of it. π [Click on the picture to get a better look].
Meeka is quite obviously my favourite toon [gamer-speak for character].
Next up we have a little eye-candy… for me. π Sadly, like WoW [World of Warcraft] and most western MMO’s, the males in SWTOR are all bog ugly, except for this one. Miir is the only cute looking male in the whole game. He also speaks with a very sexy British accent because he is a Sith and all Sith are evil. Something about that didn’t quite come out right… π
For those who are interested, most MMO’s are designed around two factions – one good one not good. The reason for this is to give the blood thirsty amongst us a reason to whack at each other in player-vs-player battles. So. Most of my toons belong to the Republic and hence are ‘good’ but Miir belongs to the Sith Empire so he is ‘bad’. Well actually Miir is probably one of the few ‘good’ Sith in-game because that’s the way I play him but you get the idea. Frankly he was just too cute to resist. π
And finally we have Ktah. She is a Republic Trooper and does the whole soldier-speak stuff, like saying ‘affirmative’ instead of ‘yes’. For some reason I find it hard not to role-play her as a poker-up-the-bum moron. No offence to any real soldiers out there. Ktah’s only redeeming trait is that she can be stubborn about ‘doing the right thing’, sometimes even if that means going against orders but generally she’s a bit boring. I also have a Jedi Knight but she is just tooΒ boring to post about. Whoever came up with the Jedi Knight concept needs to be shot.
So there you have it – a woman with attitude, a pretty-boy and a soldier. Are all three me? Not likely but they are a lot of fun. π
And now to something less frivolous. Was buying FRAPS a good decision or not? The answer to that is a resounding YES! I love it. However before I start singing the praises of FRAPS I should confess that until now I have been taking screenshots using the most basic of all tools – the PrintScreen button on my keyboard.
Yes, yes I know, only dinosaurs use PrintScreen and MS Paint but you see I really haven’t had to do much graphics work for years so scrooge that I am I made do with the primitive tools available for free. If you have used these two tools then you will know how primitive they are. If you haven’t then I won’t bore you with an explanation. Just take my word for it that it’s a horrible process.
Now to FRAPS. Installation was a breeze and setting the application up for taking screenshots was just as easy. I changed the destination folder from the default folder to a location where I knew I’d be able to find it again. Then I changed the default screen capture key from F10 to F12 and voila, all done.
Using FRAPS has been just as easy. When I see an image I wish to capture I just hit that F12 key and continue playing. Behind the scenes FRAPS takes that image, assigns it a name and automatically saves it to the destination folder I specified. Literally too easy. π
So the moral of this post is : if you take more than 3 screenshots in any given year then I highly recommend FRAPS as an easy to use alternative. I bought the application outright because I’m anal like that but I think you can download and use the free version if you want. There may be a few less functions and bells and whistles with the free version but it sure beats PrintScreen and Paint.
cheers
Meeks
September 13th, 2012 at 11:57 am
If I ever get back to Eve I’ll have to look up if there’s a character called Meeka there. Apart from WoW, Eve is the only MMO I’ve played, but I had to quit that because it ate all my time for a while. And my parents started to gruff about this thing called ‘outside’ and ‘friends’.
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September 13th, 2012 at 11:53 pm
A friend of mine was completely obsessed with Eve but I couldn’t really get into it. Sadly I got into a whole lot of other mmo’s and wasted oh… a lot of time online. π Now I’ve learned a little restraint but still tend to play for a bit after dinner. They are addictive.
p.s. There was a lvl 70 warrior called Meeka on WoW but that was about 4 years ago now. π
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September 11th, 2012 at 4:08 am
Don’t you know you can’t use a SWTOR when you bake a FRAP? The yeast is not going to take! And you will need so much butter… it’s not good for you. Instead, you must use a Miir. It works perfectly and the FRAP is most flaky and light. Don’t overdo the MMO’s, though. Too sweet.
But I love the pictures anyway… even if I don’t understand a WORD you are saying, oh Guru of the Digital…
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:18 pm
LMAO – oh nice, very nice! And yes, I do ration the MMO’s otherwise everything else tastes too bland. π
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September 11th, 2012 at 3:01 am
Thanks for the info. I’ll have to bookmark this post for future reference. Sounds like something I might like to download.
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September 11th, 2012 at 3:02 am
Is it just for games, or can it be used for other things? I’m not a game-player.
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
It can be used for anything. Let’s say you’re working in Word or Excell and want to show how something is done – i.e. the steps involved. You could take a screenshot of each step in the process and then put those images into another file with commentary. Or you could take a screenshot of your desktop or a website on display in your browser. Literally anything.
If however the image you want to capture is moving then you’d have to use the video function. π I believe that picks up sound as well.
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September 11th, 2012 at 8:01 pm
That would be very handy!
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September 11th, 2012 at 9:02 pm
π
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Yay! I knew I was pushing it with that post but that was all I had in my head. π
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September 11th, 2012 at 1:50 am
Always impressed with friends speak tech talk β it’s a foreign language to me. Go for it and SWTOR and FRAP…
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
lmao – I’m sorry! That was the baby nerd in me talking. π
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September 10th, 2012 at 10:18 pm
I nearly turned the post into a quick delete today the language was so bad. SWTOR and fraps, There’s just no need for it.I know I should have used exclamation marks in place of the words but in my head I knew I was saying them.I betyou’re going to get lots of complaints from parents whose children see this shocking display.
I hope you’re suitably chastened.
Hugs
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
lmao – you tyranosaurus rex you π I recognize tongue in cheek when I hear it! – or read it as the case may be :p
Hmmm…there are 2 ‘n’s in tyrannosaurus rex? Doh….
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September 10th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Dinosaur? What the!!!! Actually I don’t even know which key takes a screen shot…. I confess, I am out of touch. Really, my computer is just a typewriter with a screen….
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:04 pm
-face palm- on the far right hand side of your keyboard, up above and slightly to the left of your number pad are 3 round keys – PrintScreen is the middle one [on my keyboard at least].
The graphics side of things can be useful if say you want to capture a picture that the boys might like. Then you could print it out for them. π
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
*looking, looking*… oh, ok, you mean the one with ‘prt sc’ on it. Hmmm… shoulda guessed. Thanks for that!
It is funny, I am really good with gadgets, I am the one friends and family bring their digital cameras, phones, ipods etc to when they are playing up for me to work my magic.
But the computer though, yep, to me it is a glorified typewriter and photo downloader.
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September 11th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
I’m hopeless with all those things! Now I know who I’m gonna call. π
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September 10th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
I’m not a dinosaur! Though i’m using photoshop not paint π
If you want to take multiple images from within windows instead of games you can use the snipping tool. (included in Vista and Win7)
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September 11th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
-cough- Yes, well… still using XP so… :p Anyway, the nice thing about FRAPS is that I’ll be able to take videos as well. Haven’t played around with that function yet but I will!
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