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A fun 2D retro platformer inspired by Sonic games and a game creation system

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#1 2010-12-12 01:48:03

MTK358
Member
Registered: 2010-12-12
Posts: 75

Graphics resolution

Why are all the graphics so small that they are pixelated when shown full size?

Why not make larger images in the first place, seems like it would look much nicer.

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#2 2010-12-12 07:26:26

d1337r
Member
Registered: 2010-09-20
Posts: 54

Re: Graphics resolution

MTK358 wrote:

Why not make larger images in the first place, seems like it would look much nicer.

For now, we still have problems drawing these graphics (that ARE compared to the original games' ones in terms of resolution), and making a higher resolution available will only delay the completion of the project further. The latest bleeding edge builds do have a "Smooth GFX" option that makes the graphics less pixelated (but not really any better), thanks to 2x and 3xSaI.

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#3 2010-12-12 18:36:05

Alexandre
Administrator
From: Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-27
Posts: 3,300
Website

Re: Graphics resolution

Welcome, MTK358. smile

Completing what d1337r said, we're making a retro game that runs on a wide variety of systems (older and newer). Also, the lack of artists for this free software game is a serious issue - plus we can't find committed artists anywhere. If you look at the threads around, you'll see that this community is struggling a lot to make a few original low resolution graphics and to adapt free art obtained from places such as opengameart. Lots of suggestions made in the forums are great, but we have to work with the resources we have. wink

But hey, retro games can look nice too. wink

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#4 2010-12-12 21:09:32

J0nnJ0nes
Member
Registered: 2010-05-19
Posts: 180

Re: Graphics resolution

Well, it would be interesting to have a higher-resolution game, just it would change the look of everything. Maybe whenever this game is complete, or at least very-well functioning and with the original plan complete, that can be made as well.

Instead, for now, could some level of Hqx filters implementation be tossed in the works? I've found the results to be very nice, retaining the retro-game style AND quality, while not straining your eyes on the modern (super-resolution) screens. On the Sega Genesis emulator 'Genecyst', run on DOSBox, it does wonders, although it may increase the processor's work load a tiny bit... it should at least be an option, depending on the system being run. All probably in the distant future... roll

On the issue of art, it goes a bit like this:

-On the one hand, low-resolution art is easier to make because there are fewer pixels to work with. However, it takes quite some effort to produce the illusion of details with so few pixels, and things have to be done on a generally pixel-by-pixel level.... all-in-all, VERY time consuming.

-On the other hand, high-resolution images require more detail, and theoretically more time and effort. However, more general tools tools can be used to produce larger pieces of art, easier, and quicker, and furthermore details become less important.

For example, using the spray can instead of the paintbrush or pencil in a drawing program. You've certainly seen what can be done using SVGs, and even more. SVGs do take some processing power to even view, but they can be converted to other image formats. I've actually tried this, but the resolution for Open Surge is too small, and the result is terribly blurred. Now, if the resolution converted to were slightly higher, the image would come out very nicely. For instance, the SVG images for Surge that I made were 345x467 pixels, and producing the PNG of that resolution image results in a very nice looking image of Surge, that could possibly be used (style tweaks, to the original image, abiding).

In summary, higher pixels per inch(or pixels per mm, etc.) in a game like this could make some pretty stunning things, without all that much effort. The animation sprites could be made in just a fraction of the time, with just a few simple clicks of the mouse (rotate-rotate-move-move-done).

Note that there are higher resolution games, in such retro sort of style. MUGEN even came up with some nice High-Resolution Versions of some of the characters. I personally think it looks pretty nice.

I'm just saying that this is a distinct possibility for this sort of genre, that has yet to be made open-source, and, considering the existence and even popularity of MUGEN (albeit rather illegally), is in considerable demand.

This project will continue though to the end, yes. But, it is possible to do such a thing.... just not here, not now. wink

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#5 2010-12-14 00:27:15

Alexandre
Administrator
From: Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-27
Posts: 3,300
Website

Re: Graphics resolution

J0nnJ0nes wrote:

Instead, for now, could some level of Hqx filters implementation be tossed in the works?

It could, but it's valid to remember that this very same feature had been requested in the past and the requester later has said that it was not needed anymore. It was in our TODO List, if you're curious. 2xSaI, our current filter, does a similar job already.

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#6 2010-12-14 00:46:51

jobromedia
Member
From: Stockholm, Sweden
Registered: 2009-11-01
Posts: 1,072
Website

Re: Graphics resolution

And besides, if this hasn't been said allready. Larger resolution spritesheets makes the game larger to download, and hence will people on slow connections stay away from downloading it on a slow connection in the first place. I was recently on FuertoVentura, and they had a 0.25 MB broadband connection. Let's also remember that huge parts of Asia, Africa and South America rely on slower connections. Sometimes even 56k modems is being used in the smaller villages far away from the big cities. 20 MB a reasonable size for a game like Open Surge. The original Sonic game came (iirc) on a 8 megabyte cartridge.

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#7 2010-12-14 10:01:13

J0nnJ0nes
Member
Registered: 2010-05-19
Posts: 180

Re: Graphics resolution

Whoops.... it does offer huge resolutions doesn't it (I've been designing the game mostly, rarely played it much).... it's just that the normal resolution seems a bit small at times... and the huge resolution is so big that it makes me dizzy from this distance from my screen. In-between that doesn't seem very likely considering "Many work only on specific scale factors: 2× is the most common, with 3× and 4× also present." --Wiki. The only solution might be to display it on a screen that's farther away, or hold my keyboard in my lap while backed up... both easily possible.

Actually, now that I've compared, 2xSaI just makes everything larger, with all pixels in place as they were when small... sometimes making things look grittier than they seemed at lower resolution, even though it's exactly the same. Hqx actually adds a somewhat smoothing filter as well, that makes many (but not all) things seem like they were drawn with pastels... interesting from an artistic standpoint, but some pixels that are supposed to make a surface seem smoothly round now become kind of smoothly jagged (rounds the pixels), as if the edge was drawn wobbly.... makes some things seem like intently drawn blobs.

And about the download sizes... well yes... even I remember the terrifying and frustrating days, so long ago (and occasionally when moving/in transit), when I used to have 56k. I begged the internet god to be nice, but in the end often nearly took an axe to the computer (even though it wasn't really its fault... had to take it out on something). Yes, that certainly is an issue, but broadband still is spreading like a wildfire. Many good games are quite large, and the solutions are many for slow internet, including torrent (particularly in terms of uncorrupted files), files split into many downloads, etc.

Then how about more efficiency maybe? I see "Use less CPU, especially when paused" is already on the To Do List, and certainly needed, as it uses 100% of one of my cores... definitely not good for old computers. Multi-threading does not seem to be on there though, and would definitely reduce the load... technically running Sonic 2 on Genecyst seems to use maximum between 20% and 90% of any one core, in what seem like sparse bursts, although the distribution of use between cores seems a bit awkward. Open Sonic uses 100% all the time, non-stop... many of my 3D games don't use as much. However, I've heard that it's often very difficult to efficiently (or even non-efficiently, for that matter) implement multi-threading, as nice as it would be. There's enough workload as it is, so I don't think that will be very soon at all.

Hmm... maybe optimizing some code at some point along the way (if that's possible)? But I guess that's the "Use less CPU, especially when paused" thing...

Anyway, a game with higher-resolution would be nice... although then it would take even more processing power, wouldn't it.... hmm

Also, shouldn't the GPU be doing most of the workload instead of the CPU? The GPU is many times more powerful... I think OpenGL is supposed to do that extremely nicely. That would help overall, I think.

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