Hi resolution sprites and backgrounds.

J

JLDP

Guest
I work in Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC and with a Wacom tablet.
I am a digital (and traditional oil on canvas fantasy) artist getting into the gaming world. I am just about to create game art backgrounds and sprites (characters etc..). Which I eventually want to use in a game. I am NOT persuing the pixel style genre.

The art will be Hi-resolution painterly style. So the questions are:
1) I will create my backgrounds in Photoshop at H1920 x W1080, Res72pi (I know Res is not important) Is this ok for GMS2 default room settings, or is there a better setting I should know of? ( platform & topdown).
2) Concerning creating the art for characters, tiles etc..
- In Photoshop / Illustrator is there a general document size (Height x Width) that I should consider when creating these? As they are created seperately, and some will also end up in an animation programe like Adobe Animate.

Forgive my lack of knowledge, as I am new at this. Just need a little direction. So far I have learnt valuable info from the forum, especially from those I follow.

Big Thanks!!!
 
B

Binary Orange Studios

Guest
I can't remember where I read/saw this, but some general advice is this:

If you are developing a game with hi-res art, make sure your art is created at twice the resolution of your final game. So, if you want your game to run at 1080p, you should double it and then scale down. This will make the art look a lot better, with the added bonus of supporting multiple resolutions.

So whatever your minimum supported resolution will be, you may want to multiply your art rest even more. It really just depends. Are you planning on supporting any mobile devices, or just desktop?
 
J

JLDP

Guest
I can't remember where I read/saw this, but some general advice is this:

If you are developing a game with hi-res art, make sure your art is created at twice the resolution of your final game. So, if you want your game to run at 1080p, you should double it and then scale down. This will make the art look a lot better, with the added bonus of supporting multiple resolutions.

So whatever your minimum supported resolution will be, you may want to multiply your art rest even more. It really just depends. Are you planning on supporting any mobile devices, or just desktop?
Thanks for feedback. Will give it a try. At the moment I'll be going for desktop.
 
I make most of my games with 1080p as the base resolution. All my assets are drawn at that size, and when I scale the surface down to accommodate smaller resolutions, it still looks great. @kupo15 is one guy here working a great looking HD game, he would likely have some good advice I think.
 

RangerX

Member
That is one wierd advice. You downscale only if you really have to. You could make your game look fine and optimised for 1920x1080 (most common resolution) and the scale down only for people playing at lower res. And then again, it will probably look quite crappy for them. (not that you should mind much)

I can't remember where I read/saw this, but some general advice is this:

If you are developing a game with hi-res art, make sure your art is created at twice the resolution of your final game. So, if you want your game to run at 1080p, you should double it and then scale down. This will make the art look a lot better, with the added bonus of supporting multiple resolutions.

So whatever your minimum supported resolution will be, you may want to multiply your art rest even more. It really just depends. Are you planning on supporting any mobile devices, or just desktop?
 
Umm, no. Scaling down looks just fine most of the time, especially if you are designing your art with that in mind.
I don't know if this is what Binary was referencing, but the fighting game Skullgirls uses that technique, of creating all it's assets at something like double 1080p then scaling them down in game. It's a gorgeous game at any resolution.
 
B

Binary Orange Studios

Guest
That is one wierd advice. You downscale only if you really have to. You could make your game look fine and optimised for 1920x1080 (most common resolution) and the scale down only for people playing at lower res. And then again, it will probably look quite crappy for them. (not that you should mind much)

Downsizing because your game is running on a device that is below the optimized resolution would count as a "have to", wouldn't it?

This is the general accepted practice in the industry, so I'm not sure what your point is exactly. It is better to design your assets with a resolution HIGHER than your targeted optimized platform, so that scaling your art down will keep it neat and clean. Otherwise, you risk having to scale up, and that's not acceptable for most games (only pixel art games! :D).

Scaling down works fine with raster and vector graphics, to a certain point. Obviously if you take an image that's 1920x1080 and scale it down to something like 600x480 (ignoring the obvious aspect ratio change, just an example), it's going to be muddied up. But most displays run at a minimum of 1366x768 these days, so downscaling a 1920x1080 image won't cause too many problems.

EDIT: @Siolfor the Jackal, I was indeed thinking of Skullgirls as an example but didn't mention it originally. It's definitely a good example of how to use the technique.
 
D

Deleted member 13992

Guest
Keep in mind how much memory sprites at double resolution might take, especially if you have 100+ frames of animation. Also, texture pages.
 
A

Axyl

Guest
You guys really advising him to do backgrounds at 33 MB a piece?

Seems legit...
 
D

Deleted member 13992

Guest
Idealy you want to break up your backgrounds into several elements. Like clumps of rocks and soil as a sprite, some walls as a sprite, just clouds as sprites, dirt ground as sprites, etc. The magic is in how they're placed and the quality of their alpha channels. And this way the pieces can be instanced several times, so it's easier on memory.

It's absolutely possible to achieve a painted look with hand-placed background "parts". It's exactly how Child of Light achieved this. Lots of individual pieces, no one big background image.
 
Top