Dealing with perspective'd backgrounds without scaling?

[Hollister Man]

Okay, I was thinking back on the good ol' Sierra games (never got a chance to play the classic Lucas games) and realized how subtly they avoided scaling their characters.
I love that CJ has included scaling into the engine.  However, on the beautiful, sierra style pixellations, they quickly lose their features.

I'll have to find my copies of KQ 5 and 6, to investigate further.  I wondered if anyone else had looked into the different ways they accomplished a clean, in-perspective look without scaling.

I was aware that in KQ5, Graham had two different scales he could be seen at.  This was most noticable when walking in the desert.  He would walk behind a dune at one scale level, and emerge at another. 

I also noticed that they sometimes used animations to simulate Alex's walk animation scaling into the distance.  I don't think I noticed more than one scale level for Alex.

Another trick I remember, but have not tried to use:  In KQ5, they used insets for small areas, effectively scaling the room down to Graham's proper size.  In particular, the shops in town do this quite nicely.  By placing the 'shop window' over the original room, they made it feel like part of the same area, and didn't resort to lots of dead space or foreground objects.

Just thought I'd see what you all thought, before I lose interest again. 

[lemmy101]

We have scaling, but just try and design rooms and the story in such a way that as much of the interaction between characters happens at 100% as possible...