Running in higher resolution for prettier scaling & transformation?

[ipkevin]

I'm making a game with KOF sprites. I like the way they look at 480x272, but they get really gritty-looking or distorted when you use openbor to transform them (like shrink, stretch or skew) because of the low screen resolution. So I was thinking of setting game resolution to 960x540 (or higher if it's possible) and batch resizing all of my assets 2x bigger & redoing the offsets,etc. That way, I would still get the 'look' of a 480x272 game, but transforming the sprites during gameplay would result in much cleaner-looking results. For example, you could have a jumbotron in the distance showing your character on a screen and it would actually be clear instead of a pixellated mess. Obviously, you'd end up with multiple 'pixel sizes' on screen (ie, chars on jumbotron screen would look like they have smaller pixels) but I don't think I would mind that.

Do you foresee any problems with this approach? Will it slow things down a crawl or cause other issues?

 

[danno]

Could you post a video or screenshot? I don't want to assume too many things in my answer, that being said only upscale any sprite by 100% (x2 of itself) for example if something is 12 by 6 then double it 12 x 2 = 24 and 6 x 2 = 12 otherwise the ratio will be off and use nearest neighbour interpolation if using software like gimp or photoshop.

they get really gritty-looking or distorted when you use openbor to transform them (like shrink, stretch or skew)

Do you mean drawmethod?

 

[ipkevin]

Could you post a video or screenshot? I don't want to assume too many things in my answer, that being said only upscale any sprite by 100% (x2 of itself) for example if something is 12 by 6 then double it 12 x 2 = 24 and 6 x 2 = 12 otherwise the ratio will be off and use nearest neighbour interpolation if using software like gimp or photoshop.

Do you mean drawmethod?

Yup, drawmethod but it applies to any transformation openbor could do to the original image. So it could also be mode7 affine transformation (eg, turning on mode7 on a fglayer). Here's a screenshot from DC's world heroes mod to show what I mean:



Notice the image in the blimp screen is really blurry and missing detail and the floor rings/chain links aren't smooth. That's because the game's resolution is not high enough to clearly show those details once it starts scaling & skewing the sprites. For example, if your character's eye takes up 1px on your current game resolution, then trying to scale it down 50% to fit on the blimp screen isn't going to work -- the game's resolution is too low to show such a small detail properly).

Now imagine doubling the game's resolution, but also upscaling all of the art/sprites (to 2x size). So at first glance, the characters and eveything take up the same amount of space on the screen. Everything looks the same. But then you'd notice that the little screen on the blimp would no longer be burry because it has much more pixels to work with it can show finer details. Similarly, the floor rings would be less uneven.

Does that make sense? So my question is, do you know of any risks with doubling the resolution like that? Is it a huge resource hog or bog down openbor or cause any other major issues that I should be aware of? As you know, upscaling all my sprites and redoing all of the offsets/bbox/etc is going to be a significant amt of work, so it would be good to be aware of any issues before starting on it.

Thanks!

 

[oldyz]

@ipkevin

one thing you can also try is to have sprites created to look good at screen-filling zoom distance & force the game to shrink them down using drawmethod for their standard appearance...
or make them look good at half way distance..

basically your characters look good at say.. 450 height zoom kind of like this picture:

so in reality , your characters & enemy sprites are shrinked most of the time, & go to normal sprite size when zooming in...

it might slow down the engine tho

 

[ipkevin]

Thanks, @oldyz ! Good idea.

 

[danno]

I wouldn't use drawmethod at all for this, although quicker it has it's disadvantages, I would resize everything manually in photoshop, it would take longer but it would be more visually accurate for things like effects and layouts.

 

[ipkevin]

Thanks, @danno! Yeah, over the long run, that would probably be easier to work with. I need to do some tests to see if it makes the game chug though.

 

[danno]

Resizing everything to fit 480x272 certainly won't chug however using drawmethod on everything on screen is definitely a bad idea. I think I know what you're looking for so why don't you try video 420x240, you'll get nice size characters and a wider screen.