How do I use the scaling properly?

We're developing mobile card game. The default window size is 1080x1960, but i use "scale outer" mode and hope game will look good on larger resolutions.

One of the potential problems i see is sprite's quality loss when scaling for the larger resolutions. To avoid it we draw all sprites in x2 size (like the original art is drawn in 696x696 and then scaled to .5) to give our sprites some kind of "reserve" in quality.

On the other hand, "approximate download" and "memory use" grow rapidly when a new portion of art comes. And i feel there's a hell of a dilemma: better quality or better performance.

So, does it makes sense or it's just my fantasy and artist's trouble?

Why not add it into the options?

Make the player choose between Fancy and Fast, Fancy by default?

Just hope some other ppl show up to help you... xD

We're developing mobile card game.

...

we draw all sprites in x2 size (like the original art is drawn in 696x696 and then scaled to .5) to give our sprites some kind of "reserve" in quality.

On the other hand, "approximate download" and "memory use" grow rapidly when a new portion of art comes.

A 696x696 sprite will be treated as a 1024x1024 sprite, since a lot of graphics cards (particularly on mobile) need to work with power of 2 images (i.e. 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048) and will pad out the image to the next size up.

See this blog post here

If you reduce the sprite to 512x512, it will only take a quarter of the memory of your current images and will probably give you a better balance between quality and performance.

Memory Usage:

256x256 = 256kb

512x512 = 1MB

1024x1024 = 4MB

2048x2048 = 16MB

Assuming you're filling your screen with 15 (5x3) cards, you could reduce your memory usage from 60MB down to 15MB, which is a big saving on mobile.

Also, just wanted to say that it's nice looking art you have.

KittenKatja, thanks for your advice! However, i still have to upload big assets and that's still will affect the memory usage\download size.

OddConfection, awesome part of basics i missed, thanks! So, in fact, every sprite will be ceiled up to nearest size in "power of 2", right? Which means i can make my assets larger up to 1024x1024 without memory impact (if 696x696 is "1024x1024" and so 1023x1023 is "1024x1024" too)?

However, besides the memory usage and etc., can using bigger images help in preventing their quality loss in non-integer scaling up?

[quote:3ak2b1hb]Also, just wanted to say that it's nice looking art you have.

Forwarded this to my artist. He says we're open for business.