SUGGESTION: SVG support?

[deltamatrix]

Hi,

Has anyone considered incorporating support for SVGs or vector-based graphics for use as backgrounds, regions, walkables and sprites etc?

Imagine having an out-the-box ability to download an AGS game and being able to dynamically scale its graphics from the retro 320x200 to smartphone resolution and right up to 1080p quality. Given the common nature of graphics used by most AGS developers (which don't hold much graphical detail or photorealism), the usage of vector graphics rendered by applications such as InkScape would be very useful in the AGS world.

Just a thought.

Delta

[cat]

Interesting thought. This would be most useful for character animation and could bypass the problem of jagged sprites when scaling.

I'm not sure about backgrounds though. All the walkable areas would have to be vectors too and you can't work with pixel positions then. One workaround could be to add a new type "point" like hotspot or object that you could refer to in script. But this is a bit far fetched I guess.

[monkey0506]

That seems a pretty reasonable suggestion to me. A brief review of the Allegro wiki indicates that it supports SVG via its SHAPE type. Not sure which version of Allegro that is, but if nothing else it could be something for AGS 4 (if anyone ever starts actually working on that new codebase ).

Edit: I didn't see cat's post before (strangely enough, I guess we posted so closely together that the forums didn't notify me someone else had posted ).

Anyway, cat makes a point (lol, pun so intended) about the way we currently script events (based on pixel-precision). That could be addressed though I think, although it would change quite a lot of things. Basically my line of thought is that, at design-time, a specific resolution will probably be in mind by the designer. The engine could be designed to automatically recalculate all coordinates based on the run-time scale. So we could still reference locations by pixel (the image would ultimately be rasterized by Allegro after all), and the engine would take care of the rest (hence the reason we're using an engine and not writing our own!).