Lo-res scaling in Hi-res game

[joelphilippage]

Hello. I was wanting to know if there would be a way to scale sprites in lo-res if the game is running in hi res. Sort of like in Kings quest 6. They have high resolution portraits but lo-resolution sprites and backgrounds. Thanks for the help.

[subspark]

I think your best bet is to design your game in 640x480 or 800x600 and then build your sprites for a 320x240 resolution and export the sprites double-sized from photoshop. Your effectivley faking this effect using your graphics program rather than fiddling around with AGS scaling.

Cheers,
Paul.

[Makeout Patrol]

I think your best bet is to design your game in 640x480 or 800x600 and then build your sprites for a 320x240 resolution and export the sprites double-sized from photoshop. Your effectivley faking this effect using your graphics program rather than fiddling around with AGS scaling.

Cheers,
Paul.

Make sure that you have a program that will just double the size of the pixels if you go this route, though. I know that you can do this in Graphics Gale, though it's a little bit cumbersome. I'm pretty sure that if you try it in photoshop it will result in blurring.

[Khris]

There's no way to do that, sprites are always scaled using the game's resolution.

And I don't see how photoshop tips are relevant here as joelphilippage is obviously already using lowres sprites in a highres game.

Mixed resolutions usually look shitty anyway.

[joelphilippage]

Mixed resolutions usually look shitty anyway.

Well that's your opinion. I like having detailed talking portraits and lots of good games that were made with ags such as Kings Quest III Remake and The Blackwell games have done this. I think it would be a good feature for Ags if possible.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Blackwell mainly used a higher resolution to take advantage of the font scaling loophole that CJ has since removed, which most likely means that Convergence will either be 320x240 OR Dave will continue to use an older version of the editor, though that means sacrificing the non-block dialog fix .

[mkennedy]

What if you make the game in 320X200, but play it at 640X400 ? Will the character portraits also get scaled up or will they be kept at the original size?

[TheMagician]

What if you make the game in 320X200, but play it at 640X400 ?

Unfortunately CJ deleted this option from Winsetup in the newest AGS Beta.

[Khris]

If you select 640x400 instead of the x2 filter, scaled characters appear smoother because the scaling makes use of the extra pixels. Everything else will look the same as before, just twice as big.

[Snarky]

Blackwell mainly used a higher resolution to take advantage of the font scaling loophole that CJ has since removed, which most likely means that Convergence will either be 320x240 OR Dave will continue to use an older version of the editor, though that means sacrificing the non-block dialog fix .

Or he could run it in 640x480 and just x2 all the graphics. Everyone knows filesize doesn't matter for commercial games anyway.

[Dave Gilbert]

Everyone knows filesize doesn't matter for commercial games anyway.

Oh, I wish!  Game portals are less likely to take a game that's over 50MB because it's more expensive to host.  It's been a big problem for me.

[Pumaman]

You can create a 640x480 game, but import low-res sprites and then change their properties in the Sprite Manager to "320x200" which will cause the engine to double up the size.

[Snarky]

If the same option were available with backgrounds, then people could get the high-resolution fonts they want and use low-res graphics for everything else, even if the game is technically high-res. That way, Dave, Vince, ProgZMax, subspark et al. wouldn't need to stay with 3.0.2.

(I assume that this solution would lead to half-pixel scaling of sprites, and half-pixel positioning of cursors and characters, just like in the current games that take advantage of the hack?)

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Unless there was a settings option to auto change (or auto-import) graphics at a specific resolution, I wouldn't really use that workaround, to be honest.  It's an unwieldy solution at best, and it's far easier for me to just use a small bitmap font (or an earlier build).  It would be interesting if fonts used a different resolution based on the filter but I don't think that's really possible.

[joelphilippage]

I already knew how to get the sprites too appear double, but I don't like it how the sprite's pixels turn half the size if there in say a 50% scaling area. It looks kind of messy.