Gates, Billboards and Super Jump project details

A follow-up to my original post about the Gates, Billboards, Super Jumps project. I thought I'd layout my method for obtaining the locations of the objectives and how I'm putting it into guide form.

It's basically a 3 step process: Locate, Capture, Process. I don't do everything at once because it's prone to errors or missing something. I will use 4 different profiles for the first two steps.

Locate

The majority of locating will be done with my default Live account (evild70). While scouting locations I can be getting what I need for achievements. I have the laptop sitting next to me with three Illustrator files for each of the objectives. When I come across something I haven't seen before, I can quickly add a point to the map. What I'll do is pick a section of the map and just concentrate on that. For instance, when the full game is released I will first go through the section that was the demo. Then I'll probably move to the section south of 4th St on the same side of the river. I drive slowly and take it street by street. I pull up to an objective and use the mini-map to place a point on the appropriate map. I'll then do it again to be sure I haven't missed anything.

Capture

Now that I've got more points on the map I can go around to those points and start capturing screen shots. This is something I can't do in my comfortable chair in front of the TV, so I bring the Xbox over to my desk, hook it up to the PYRO A/V Link and a 15" TV. I log in using a local account I've created specifically for gates, billboards or jumps. I'll pull up to an objective, get the camera placement just right and start recording. After a few seconds after the car shuts off and the HUD disappears. I'll stop recording after that.

Process

The movies captured are just Quicktime files. I'll open it and scrub to the frame I want and copy it. I have an Action set up in Photoshop that does the rest of the work for me. With one keystroke it'll open a new document, paste what I have copied to the clipboard, automatically pause asking what name I'd like to save it as, crop to the exact size, save as a high-quality JPEG and close the file.

After I'm done saving all the JPEGs I'll use the map to go though the points a write down the street location the objectives are near. Then I'll upload the photos to my Picasa album using the Picasa uploader. I can enter the captions from this app.

That's pretty much the nuts and bolts of it. As I'm going through the whole game I'm sure I'll find way to speed up the process or prevent errors.