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HistoryMod - Automatic Screenshots

Hi everyone!

So what’s this about ?

Well, if you are like me and kept a lot of different saves of your city during the process of creating it, guess what, it means you have history records!

So how to make something cool from this ? Well, I wanted to make a timelapse of the evolution of my city during my +300 saves that I kept.

You are like me ? Then this mod is made for you ! Here is the kind of result you can get:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftSeY-8T3kk

• Set as much camera views as wished and access them at any time
  
• Make screenshot of all your views automatically on the press of a button
  
• Take screenshot of all previous saves from different views automatically (Even if you have +300 saves, but be prepare to let your game run all the night then to take the screenshots)
  
• Automatically export a CSL Map View when doing a screenshot session of the current loaded game or each saves too. If you have the mod.
  
• Automatically take day/night or both screenshots of your views
  
• Choose to take screenshot with current weather/time or with clean weather, day/night time or both
  
• Set a reminder to suggest you to let the mod take the screenshots of the current game every x minutes.
  
• Usefull filters to select only the saves you wish to load for the screenshot session (prefix, date before or after, ignore some saves, max number of saves, etc)
  
• Automatically shutdown the game if wished after a screenshot session
  
• Get clear log file of what is happening with the mod.
  
• ShortCuts to add views or stop the process.
  
• ShortCuts to see up to 9 of the saved views. (you can have infinite views and access them without the shortcuts)
  
• Switch to night/day view by clicking on a button
  
• Change weather to normal weather by clicking on a button
  
• Choose the screenshots pictures names and folder or way of saving
  
• Automatically retrieve a screenshot session if the game crashed to finish the job.
  
• Discover pepadocs.com/discover or citytourplayer.com :P
  
• Start the screenshot session from a specific save.
  
• On Windows, automatically restart the game during the screenshot session every x loaded saves, this is usefull if your game isn’t able to load a second save once it started due to mods.
  
• On Windows, automatically restart the game if it crashed during the session

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3LPSWCeaG0

Simply subscribe to the mod (+activate it/restart)

1. Then, open any save you wish and go to the options of the mod:
   Add views, views are camera angle on specific locations that can be added, thus you can also see them at any point and there are saved on disk, even if you restart the game.
   - This can be use as a standalone option that allow you to always go back on differents views to look to your city, the mod use them to take the screenshots
   
2. Once you added up to infinite number of views, set the following options:
   - Wich time of the day to screenshot ? Day, night or both ?
   - Include CSL MapView export ? This will produce a CSL Map export for every save, it’s a map that is like a metro map, learn more here: Discover the mod MOD REQUIRED for this feature to work.
   - What is the name of the screenshots files, or of the directory, so they are ordered as you wish.
   
3. Then start the screenshot session by either:
   - Pressing on the button to screenshot only the current loaded game
   - Pressing the button to screenshot the current game and the previous saves of the city that meet the criteria you defined.
   
4. Let the process do the screenshot, if you have 10-20 saves to load, it will take 10-40 minutes. But if like me you got like 400 different saves of your current city, well, please have a look on the video or read all the mod options explanations carefully to ensure the game doesn’t crash during the process, specially if you play modded.

No worries, there are options to handle this! (Mostly on windows)
But first, desactivate sleep mod on your computer and have enough space on your C:// drive for lot of screenshots
Also, if assets are missing, or errors messages are displayed during the session screenshots, usually it's not a problem, screenshots are still taken.
Finally, don't move the mouse during the session.

• When restarting game, automatically continue the screenshots ?: This option will on Mac and Windows automatically continue the screenshots sessions if your game crashed when you restart it, so if your game crashed, restart it, do not click on load previous save in the Launcher, but just on play, with this option activate, the game will automatically load the last not screenshoted saves and continue the session.
  This option will also on window start a batch terminal programme (source code on github) that will open a small black window on windows during the screenshot session, this window will check every 15 seconds that the game didn't crash, and if it's the case it will restart it automatically to continue the screenshot session.
  
• startFromThisSave this option allow you to put the name of a specifc save from wich to start the screenshots session. For example if your filters are selecting 100 different saves, but you already screenshotted the first 20, then put the name of the 21 save to start the session from there.
  This option is sometimes automatically changed during a screenshot session and emptied when finishing, because if a crash happen during the session, you can then directly now on which save name it happends and restart the screenshot session from there (if you didn't checked the option do to that automatically)
  
• Restart game every x loaded saves ? => explained in the mod, will automatically restart the game every x loaded save or every loaded saves, a must have if you are heavily modded.

• Creating the mp4 video automatically with the screenshots at the end of the session (with options)
  
• For those who don't have previous saves of the city: automatically deleting parts of the city between every screenshots to give a feeling of timelapse ?
  
• Taking Small Videos instead of only screenshots ?

I hope you like this mod, maybe you may help me:
I have my own IT company, where I create Tourist AudioGuides for Public Transport Companies, by using a smartphone, without an APP and sync by GPS. If you happen to know someone working in such a company, can you email us ? :) citytourplayer@nexswiss.ch Thanks !

We also make digital Reports, invoices, or quotation systems for any company that still uses paper when being on an intervention. They can then use our iOS/Android App to create the report and automatize it. If you have 2 minutes, would be nice to have a look at our website and let us know if you know anyone who may be interested :) https://pepadocs.com/discover


Any trouble, questions, specific points ? Let me know ! I will answer any comments too

Github: https://github.com/Dakirutz/HistoryMod (doesn’t mean you can copy the code for your own without authorization, it’s just there so you can ensure there is no malware or take inspiration for your own mods or suggest modifications)

MOD WASN’T TESTED ON MAC YET, if someone can comment and let me know if everything work fine it would be great, thanks !