Hi, in another topic we talked about picture file formats supported and recommended for unvanquished.
Unvanquished support the png, tga, jpg, webp and crn file format, and crn file format is recommended when lossless is not needed (like color gradient) or some special case (like skyboxes).
But the level shot is another special case. Unvanquished knows how to load whatever the format, but this file could be loaded by third-party tools.
For example it could be loaded by an online server statistic tool, or a server browser.
I'm maintaining the XQF server browser and I just fixed it to be able to load level shots from unvanquished pk3 files since there are now stored in the meta/mapname/mapname.ext path instead of levelshots/mapname.ext path. XQF now found the level shots, but in many cases it cannot displays the level shot because the level shot is stored in some not-well-known file format like like webp or crn.
If Unvanquished maps use file format like crn for level shots, it means that every third-party software must add support to crn file format, only to display the level shot of the current map played, which is a bit too much.
It's not a problem at all if all others textures are stored with some uncommon but effective file format, because this is an internal usage, but the level shot can be read by third-party software to display the server status.
Why not saying that even if other file formats are technically supported, a level shot in a very common file format like jpg is a good practice to ensure the best user experience?