Very Strange Graphical Anomaly. Bug or User Error?

Hey all, thanks for your time.

So here's the issue: I'm making a low-resolution pixel-art game. For the entire time I've been working on it, it has been black and white pixels only. The camera moves with the player character, and no matter if things were standing still or moving around, everything looked great. Recently, I've changed some of the sprites to greyscale, and now any time the camera moves, any sprites with shades of grey flicker and distort, causing a very unpleasant visual effect.

I can't even begin to imagine what would cause this, and am quite desperate for a solution, even if it's the knowledge that it's a bug- though I hope and assume it's an error on my end.

What I've Tried:

1: Letterbox integer scale is turned on.

2. The camera following the player, which does have lerp in the function, is rounded.

3. The sprites themselves have a 1 px transparent border around them.

4. The X and Y positions of the sprites/tilemap are rounded integers.

5. Pixel rounding is turned on.

Here's the .c3p, try using the arrow keys (or gamepad) to walk around and compare the appearance of the differently-colored brick walls and objects. Thanks again for your time:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jynbsi1hr8h7swx/WitchTEST%20%281%29.c3p?dl=0

Asmodean Thank you very much for your response, the article you linked is also very enlightening.

That does seem to help a bit, but at the cost of a rather horrendous blurring effect on the pixel-art. Certainly there is a way to do this without compromising the image quality so heavily?

Asmodean Interesting. Not only does it bother me, I consider it completely unpublishable. I wonder how modern pixel-art games like Shovel Knight or Hotline Miami solved this?

You would use textures that don't have horizontal, or vertical lines.

Or at least lines large enough not to merge with screen pixels.

newt Hello, thank you for the reply! Obviously I'm still a noob, so please excuse me if I ask a few more questions.

How is it possible to make pixel graphics without horizontal or vertical lines? I thought that was all they were.

Or at least lines large enough not to merge with screen pixels

So could I theoretically double the resolution and size of the sprites, while keeping the same aesthetic? I was trying to avoid this as creating sprites that are true to size is seemingly much simpler.

How is it possible to make pixel graphics without horizontal or vertical lines? I thought that was all they were.

> Or at least lines large enough not to merge with screen pixels

So could I theoretically double the resolution and size of the sprites, while keeping the same aesthetic? I was trying to avoid this as creating sprites that are true to size is seemingly much simpler.

Well the issue isn't that they are lines, the issue is that they are moving. You would have to get rid of diagonal scrolling, and make sure that you're not only rounding, but snapping to integers where it wont sync.

Changing the scale is not that big a deal, but changing the texture is a better fix imo.

Delenne That is an extremely helpful answer, thank you so, so much for taking the time to look through everything. After reading your response several times, I feel a huge sense of relief now that I at least understand what the problem is. I'll test varying grayscale values, perhaps even monochromatic values, and see how that works out.

Again, much appreciated for your time and excellent explanation.