[SOLVED] Not sure how to make low res characters work with high res environments

I'm currently working on a game that uses lower res character models (32x32) but uses tiles that are a lot higher res (640x640 is the one I was given by my artist). The resolution of the game itself is set to 640x360. I'm unsure of how to make the two resolutions work together. The only options I can think of is either upscaling all the low res models so that they match the relative size of the tiles or downscale the tiles to fit the size of the characters (though in this case I am not sure how to do this in mass nor am I sure how to prevent it from being all pixelated looking). I'm fairly new to gm so any help I could get with this would be fantastic. Thanks in advance!
 
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NightFrost

Member
Well, if you upscale your small sprites you cannot conjure information where none exists, so they will be blocky. But if you downscale your large sprites you will be losing information in uncontrolled fashion, so they will most likely look ugly. It sounds like you didn't communicate to the artist clearly enough the scale you needed ("make backgrounds in scale that works with 32-pixel tall characters"), or you did and they chose to ignore it. The characters are probably easire to redraw to scale, but that may be a problem if your game has been written for that particular scale.

Or you could just upscale the characters but in my opinion different pixel scales never look good.
 
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Deleted member 13992

Guest
What do you mean the tilesets are a lot higher res? Tilesets by their nature are supposed to be a lot higher res than an individual tile because it's a "set of tiles". You have many tiles within it. I may have misunderstood what you meant, though.

You shouldn't need to upscale any sprite data. Just scale the object/sprite in-game (without changing the sprite data, like upscaling) so that the pixel ratio matches your game resolution. If that still doesn't work to your liking, maybe post what a sprite looks like (unmodified) and a view of your game (also unscaled)?
 
Well, if you upscale your small sprites you cannot conjure information where none exists, so they will be blocky. But if you downscale your large sprites you will be losing information in uncontrolled fashion, so they will most likely look ugly. It sounds like you didn't communicate to the artist clearly enough the scale you needed ("make backgrounds in scale that works with 32-pixel tall characters"), or you did and they chose to ignore it. The characters are probably easire to redraw to scale, but that may be a problem if your game has been written for that particular scale.

Or you could just upscale the characters but in my opinion different pixel scales never look good.
It's a stylistic choice. I want the characters to look retro but I want the environment to contrast it. The main issue is getting the sizes to work appropriately, but it sounds like upscaling the characters is going to be the way to go.
 

FoxyOfJungle

Kazan Games
Remember to upscale the characters always X2, so it will not distort your pixels!

Edit: I made a little preview:
 
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