Exported sprites too small [SOLVED]

HAL · Sat 14/02/2015 06:54:09

Hello, first post, new user, just started using AGS and christ almighty I do believe I've found myself a new ultra awesome hobby for rainy days.

Just a quick question:

I'm making a bit of a game and some of it is fairly generic as I'm new to all this, so to try to add at least a bit of variety I want to change the colour scheme of the default character sprite. I know it's not much but then it's at least slightly 'my own'.

From the sprites folder I see I can 'Export all sprites in folder'.

I choose this option and it gives me all the sprites, at 18x40 resolution, in the designated folder.

I then spent ages changing the colouring of them all, and imported them all back in only to find they're now far too small. My character is now a midget.

What do?

Ok I guess I could just scale up every sprite in MS paint or photoshop or whatever. But I just think it's a bit weird. I have the fully functional default character sprites, which I export to my computer, and then when I export the very same sprites, simply with a new colour scheme, with the very same resolution they came out at, they come back too small!

Is there something I've missed somewhere? Or is there an easy way I can get around this?

What's the default resolution of the in-game character sprite? It exports at 18x40 but that's too small when I import it back.

Thanks all.

I should have a fully finished game in the next week or so, which I'll be sure to share.

Cassiebsg · Sat 14/02/2015 09:15:15

Hi and welcome.

Did you change the resolution of the game?
The default sprites are scaled for a 320x200 res. game. If you changed your game to run at 640x400 for instance, when you import your sprites back in they will scale for a 640x400 and not for the original 320x200... so they will look 2x as small... Is that what happened?

HAL · Sat 14/02/2015 09:52:49

Hmm, this could be the case.

I set my game to 640x480 from the start though and it's all been fine up until I decided to do this export/import thing.

It's not a big issue if I can't figure it out as I do still have the standard default sprites available. It just means my first game won't have its own character.

Cassiebsg · Sat 14/02/2015 12:17:59

You could just scale your hard work paint over to double, and then import them.

There are programs that allow you to do that in a batch, so you don't need to do one by one.
I use ImageConverter Plus, but am sure you can find others, even freeware am sure.

HAL · Sat 14/02/2015 12:30:19

Batching might just be the way.

Or, seeing as all I've done is change the colour of the guy's sleeves, hair and shoes, I might just not bother

It's only a first-go at making a game so the character isn't a giant issue. I aim to have it done by Friday. If I have time before then, I'll change the character sprites. If not, never mind.

Batching sounds like a good shout either way though. Thanks

Snarky · Sun 15/02/2015 19:47:32

IrfanView is a nice freeware app that lets you batch-process images. I just scaled a bunch of sprites with it, and it works great!

HAL · Tue 17/02/2015 15:44:01

Thanks for that, I've downloaded it and just gave it a try.

Unfortunately all the upscales were coming back all bitty with really bad edges.

I tried converting to PNG, BMP etc but no luck.

It's still definitely useful though, however for this project I'm on I think I'll just leave it as it's just a training project anyway really. Next time around I'll try to design my own or something

Snarky · Tue 17/02/2015 16:14:51

Bitty?

The character should be like it was originally (that is, in a 640x480 game, it will look very low-resolution compared to the rest of the game), just with the different colors you applied.

Maybe your IrfanView scaling options weren't set correctly? You need to turn OFF the "resample" checkbox (don't remember if that's the exact name... and of course the "don't upscale smaller images" checkbox), otherwise it will blur the pixels together and give you a pink fringe along the character outline.

HAL · Wed 18/02/2015 08:05:25

Quote from: Snarky on Tue 17/02/2015 16:14:51
Bitty?

You need to turn OFF the "resample" checkbox

Aaahhhhhhh, that did it.

However there's still something gone wrong somewhere. I just imported the new sprites in and when the character moves, it's very jittery and the clearly some sprites have different dimensions because the size of the character appears to flicker from small to big at certain points as he walks. How very odd! The 'bitty' aspect was fixed though, so that's good and it'll be useful for resizing inventory sprites etc in the future.

Either way, I need to confess I became impatient and finalised the game with the default red-sleeved character. I guess I've lost a touch of originality, but my real pride is in having programmed it and written the story, rather than the way the player looks. Maybe in the future I'll design my own sprites from scratch. Not any time soon though - it's an art form I'm yet to even dream of trying!

Anyway, game done, happy happy!

HAL · Thu 19/02/2015 03:01:32

I found how to fix the issue.

As I said, when importing the sprites back into the game, they were coming in too small.

Today I noticed, in the sprites panel, when you click on a sprite, the properties window tells you its resolution. All my game sprites were at "640x400/640x480", but when importing them back in, they'd been put to "320x200/320x240" by default.

So I just went through each sprite and changed its resolution property to "640x400/640x480".

Jobe done!!!

My character isn't Roger any more

HAL · Thu 19/02/2015 03:05:18

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Sat 14/02/2015 09:15:15
Hi and welcome.

Did you change the resolution of the game?
The default sprites are scaled for a 320x200 res. game. If you changed your game to run at 640x400 for instance, when you import your sprites back in they will scale for a 640x400 and not for the original 320x200... so they will look 2x as small... Is that what happened?

And now I finally understand what you meant when you said this........