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Best sprite size for 320x240 screen resolution?


ColecoGamer

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The project I am working on uses a screen resolution of 320x240. I don’t want my sprites to look disproportionate to the level I created  (i.e. too large or too small), so I am inquiring about the most commonly used sprite size for the screen resolution I chose (i.e. 32x32, 64x64, etc?,).

 

Edit: (I’m working with a human player sprite and various enemy creatures (i.e. bats, spiders, etc)

 

Thank you in advance for reading my post! 

Edited by ColecoGamer
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That's a tough one to answer without knowing more details.

 

I'd say it totally depends what game you are making.

 

There isn't really a right answer here, all sizes have their benefits and weaknesses. You might find that you just have to pick a size and try it. If it doesn't play well, or looks wierd then try another size.

Edited by Sporadic
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5 hours ago, Sporadic said:

That's a tough one to answer without knowing more details.

 

I'd say it totally depends what game you are making.

 

There isn't really a right answer here, all sizes have their benefits and weaknesses. You might find that you just have to pick a size and try it. If it doesn't play well, or looks wierd then try another size.

Thank you for responding, Sporadic! I wasn’t sure if there was a specific sprite size (a rule of thumb, if you will) that would look and/or work better in a 320x240 screen, or if it was just a matter of experimentation. 
 

It looks like it boils down to finding the right sprite size that works best for my project.

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What i've found usefull is to 'mock up' the screen in paint and try various 'sprite' sizes by overlaying them.

 

It's not ideal because paint doesn't have layers but it does work, I have tried doing this in inkscape but the results were unsatisfactory.

 

Also a side benefit is you can also slice up the image into tiles to be used in your game if required.

 

One final thing i will say is don't get bogged down creating fancy graphics at the start - decide on your sizes, make place holders ( i just use blocks of colour now) and get your game code sorted. You can make the graphics pretty later when you have something worthwhile. I know this, because it's what i did and it sucks the will to code anything out of you, but that could just be me :)

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5 hours ago, saboteur said:

One final thing i will say is don't get bogged down creating fancy graphics at the start - decide on your sizes, make place holders ( i just use blocks of colour now) and get your game code sorted. You can make the graphics pretty later when you have something worthwhile. I know this, because it's what i did and it sucks the will to code anything out of you, but that could just be me :)

That has happened to me too,I learnt my lesson not to focus on pixel art and just use basic placeholders.

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8 hours ago, saboteur said:

What i've found usefull is to 'mock up' the screen in paint and try various 'sprite' sizes by overlaying them.

 

It's not ideal because paint doesn't have layers but it does work, I have tried doing this in inkscape but the results were unsatisfactory.

 

Also a side benefit is you can also slice up the image into tiles to be used in your game if required.

 

One final thing i will say is don't get bogged down creating fancy graphics at the start - decide on your sizes, make place holders ( i just use blocks of colour now) and get your game code sorted. You can make the graphics pretty later when you have something worthwhile. I know this, because it's what i did and it sucks the will to code anything out of you, but that could just be me :)

Thank you for this insightful post! Making the project functional (and having it work the way I want it to) should always take precedence over the art and sound assets. This makes perfect sense to me. Spending countless hours on anything else would be time lost, especially if I don’t have a foundation to work from.

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13 hours ago, swapd0 said:

I think that you can't display 240 lines in a NTSC tv, I can see up to 224 lines in my tv.

The absolute maximum for NTSC is 240 to 243 lines (depending on which standard you refer to). But no TV will show so many, so even if it works, expect the picture to be cropped and don't put important graphics too close to the top or bottom.

Edited by Zerosquare
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When you think of the Atari 8-bit, it had a maximum resolution of 320x200.

But that wasn't used for games, because in this mode, it couldn't display enough colors. So a mode of 160x200 was used instead. (320x200 was a resolution, that was often used in Amiga games.)

The Atari 8-bit had 4 Players (in "Player-Missile Graphics" (Sprites)). Vertically, they filled the whole screen (if you wanted) (more than 200 lines). Horizontally, they were 8 bits (8 pixels) wide.

But they could also be magnified by 2 or by 4. The horizontal resolution then still was 8 bits, but the Player was up to 32 pixels wide.

And there were four Players, so you could combine them up to 32 bits resolution (up to 128 pixels wide), if you wanted. (Demo program in the video starts at 0:23.)

 

 

So, if you used one Player and magnified it by 2 (average), you'd have a 16 pixel width.

As typically a screen resolution of 160x200 was used, 16 pixels was 1/10 of the screen.

 

So, I'd say, for a screen resolution of 320x200 I'd basically use something like 32x32 for an average sprite.

Edited by Pokeypy
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4 minutes ago, Pokeypy said:

When you think of the Atari 8-bit, it had a maximum resolution of 320x200.

But that wasn't used for games, because in this mode, it couldn't display enough colors. So a mode of 160x200 was used instead. (320x200 was a resolution, that was often used in Amiga games.)

The Atari 8-bit had 4 Players (in "Player-Missile Graphics" (Sprites)). Vertically, they filled the whole screen (more than 200 lines). Horizontally, the were 8 bits (8 pixels) wide.

But they could be magnified by 2 or by 4. The horizontal resolution then still was 8 bits, but the Player was up to 32 pixels wide.

And there were four Players, so you could combine them up to 32 bits resolution (up to 128 pixels wide), if you wanted.

 

 

So, if you used one Player and magnified it by 2 (average), you'd have a 16 pixel width.

As typically 160x200 was used, 16 pixels was 1/10 of the screen.

 

So, I'd say, for a resolution of 320x200 I'd basically use something like 32x32.

I really appreciate the in-depth explanation, Pokeypy! I will reference this knowledge when the time comes to create the sprites. ??

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ColecoGamer is a pixel artist though so he has the ability to resize objects for his games,direct ports from arcade will not work.Which is why I asked about higher resolutions.C64 also uses double wide sprites and converting arcade to 7800 or c64 is impossible.

Edited by JumbleJag
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Well, 32x32 may be a bit too big (when I think about it again), depending on what you want to show. I mean, that would already be a 2x enlarged Player on the Atari.

 

For example, on the ZX Spectrum (256x192 screen resolution) "Miner Willy" of "Manic Miner" has a size of 8x16, or 10x16. But in my opinion, these Spectrum graphics are relatively "small".

 

So maybe try "normal" size: 16x16.

It really depends, on what you want to show. "Pogo Joe", for example, is a relatively large sprite.

Although I think, it's correct, what I wrote about the general Atari graphics above, I should admit, that I'm lacking practical experience on sprite size, as I haven't written my own game yet.

Edited by Pokeypy
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5 minutes ago, Pokeypy said:

Well, 32x32 may be a bit too big (when I think about it again), depending on what you want to show. I mean, that would already be a 2x enlarged Player on the Atari.

 

For example, on the ZX Spectrum (256x192 screen resolution) "Miner Willy" of "Manic Miner" has a size of 8x16, or 10x16. But in my opinion, these Spectrum graphics are relatively "small".

 

So maybe try "normal" size: 16x16.

16x32 would work ok too,depends on the game design,have a look at this Pokeypy,32x32 player objects and 32x64 enemies,that's not going to work on a 320x223 screen.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6g2NtZ0go

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1 hour ago, ColecoGamer said:

I really appreciate the in-depth explanation, Pokeypy! I will reference this knowledge when the time comes to create the sprites. ??

Thanks! I'm become a bit insecure now, though. 160x200 was for the playfield, but the Player Missile system was independent from the playfield, so maybe I mixed something up there. Others here may know these things better.

However: I just made screenshots of FS-UAE with "Giana Sisters": At 320x200, the sprites for Giana are 14x21 and 19x21 (with the different hairstyle).

gimp provides that (very useful) pixel grid, so it can be measured.

As you can see, the mushroom as another game object is quite a bit larger though (32x24). So my 32x32 wasn't that far-fetched (for larger objects) either.

giana01.jpg

giana02.jpg

Edited by Pokeypy
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There is no such thing as an amiga blit at 14x21 and 19x21,all blits are word aligned in horizontal.It's impossible to have the dimensions you stated on amiga.You can pad the blits and even have meta blits but there is no such thing as a blitter object with those width values.You can't have sprites with those horizontal dimensions either.I'm only telling you this because you don't know how amiga blitter and sprites actually work on the hardware level.I didn't do this to make you insecure,but I do want you to know how hardware works.

Edited by JumbleJag
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I hate to say this, but there is no right answer. However, I can provide a couple of pointers.

1. You don't want a player sprite that takes up a huge part of the screen.

2. The player sprite should have a striking silhouette.

3. Don't go overkill with details. Focus on visual clarity.

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8 hours ago, JumbleJag said:

There is no such thing as an amiga blit at 14x21 and 19x21,all blits are word aligned in horizontal.It's impossible to have the dimensions you stated on amiga.You can pad the blits and even have meta blits but there is no such thing as a blitter object with those width values.You can't have sprites with those horizontal dimensions either.I'm only telling you this because you don't know how amiga blitter and sprites actually work on the hardware level.

So what results do you get, when counting the pixels in the images above?

There may be a rectangle border around the sprites (giving it different dimensions all in all), but for the pure sprite images, I get the dimensions mentioned.

 

Proof: Images as posted - it's rather obvious and can hardly be denied.

Edited by Pokeypy
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I’m currently working on a rogue-lite RPG for an upcoming indie studio. I have left over work from this project that was never used, and I would like to use this content for my own project. The only issue here is the size of these sprites (the company I work for requested sprites as large as 64x64). 
 

If I can scale down this content to the proper resolution to fit my Jaguar project, it would save me a lot of time when I finally begin work on the assets.

 

Here’s one example:


6BC7C958-4D98-4E3E-8447-2789AA4F1118.thumb.jpeg.7ee81e5fbd600e9b1140fe89f7b5abaf.jpeg

 

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