Screenshots using Python

We'll be taking screenshots with Python and saving them to our desired directories and preventing screenshots from being overwritten, let's get started/

Creating A Scene

Let's create a simple scene by adding some lights, some cubes adding some mist to the scene, etc. I added:

• A cube with a python code that helps the cube to move
• Sun with a bigger shadow frustum size of 40.0
• Mist with start at 5.0 and depth at 30.0

Just a rough scene, we just want know how the screenshot is taking with python.

The Code

We'll working without the keyboard logic brick this time. Let's import our main module which is Range if it is Range Engine and bge if its UPBGE and we'll specify our directory with logic.expandPath() like so.

try:
    import bge
except:
    import Range as bge
from os import path

user_name = path.expanduser("~") # Get user's directory
dir = bge.logic.expandPath(user_name+"\\Documents") # Join with Documents folder

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
def scrnsht(cont):
    keysdown = bge.logic.keyboard.activeInputs
    space = bge.events.SPACEKEY

    if space in keysdown:
        print(dir)

The code might look complicated but lemme break it down for you:

• Try importing bge module, if failed import Range as bge

Because Range developers has changed the bge name as Range. So we import the module, as bge so our code is easy to edit.

• Get the user's name and directory
• Join the user's directory with \Documents

So when the print the dir from the python code its prints your user name with the documents folder.

• To make the code shorter we've defined "keysdown" and "space".
• If the user has triggered space the we print the dir.

This help us to execute the code a lot easier without the need of changing the user name when the path has another user's name and shared with others. If you've gotten the directories printed more than one time, we need to setup a property that only triggers the print(dir) once.
We add a property "once" and use it to prevent from triggering thr print() more than once. Here's the code.

try:
    import bge
except:
    import Range as bge
from os import path

user_name = path.expanduser("~") # Get user's directory
dir = bge.logic.expandPath(user_name+"\\Documents") # Join with Documents folder

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

def scrnsht(cont):
    own = cont.owner
    
    if "once" not in own: # Add "once" property if it doesn't exist
        own["once"] = True # Set it as TRUE
    
    keysdown = bge.logic.keyboard.activeInputs
    space = bge.events.SPACEKEY

    if space in keysdown and own["once"] == True: #If user pressed and once is true
        print(dir) # print our "dir"
        own["once"] = False #set "once" as FALSE, prevents from running again.
    if space not in keysdown: # If "space" is not pressed
        own["once"] = True # Set "once" to True

Nice, now for the screenshot part we need to add bge.render.makeScreenshot() and inside the function parenthesis, we'll add our "dir" which holds our directory data and our image name which looks like this.

try:
    import bge
except:
    import Range as bge
from os import path

user_name = path.expanduser("~") # Get user's directory
dir = bge.logic.expandPath(user_name+"\\Documents\\bro#") # Join with Documents folder
# and take multiple shots without overwriting the image

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

def scrnsht(cont):
    own = cont.owner
    
    if "once" not in own: # Add "once" property if it doesn't exist
        own["once"] = True # Set it as TRUE
    
    keysdown = bge.logic.keyboard.activeInputs
    space = bge.events.SPACEKEY

    if space in keysdown and own["once"] == True: #If user pressed and once is true
        bge.render.makeScreenshot(dir) # Take screenshots
        own["once"] = False #set "once" as FALSE, prevents from running again.
    if space not in keysdown: # If "space" is not pressed
        own["once"] = True # Set "once" to True

nice, it works here and it must be working for you too.

Download the project file here.