Fullscreen scaling
Scirra Description] - "When scaling fullscreen, whether to scale before (high quality) or after (low quality) rendering"
Options - High Quality / Low Quality
Layman Translation
Not really about fullscreen scaling or "quality" (for the layman)
Its more like,
do you want to exactly determine the resolution of the game (use low quality) or
do you want to display you art assets at their full potential resolution dependent on the display device resolution.(high quality)
Low Quality
Uses your Window size setting as the resolution for the game, the game will be drawn at this resolution even if you are using higher resolution sprites (making them blocky at low resolutions). Also all movement will be at this resolution.
High quality
doesn't use your window size for draw resolution , window size is used to determine only aspect ratio, scale and movement resolution ) will display all graphics assets as they actually appear in the layout at the highest possible resolution.
Uses
Low quality for "retro" pixel art games.
High quality for "neo" pixel art games but make sure all your art assets are drawn and scaled at the same resolution ).
High quality if you want a high res game with real nice high Res art assets
Low quality for 1080 games with 1080 assets on 1080 screens
Pixel rounding
Scirra description - "If on, objects are drawn at integer positions, if off objects can be drawn between pixels"
Layman Translation
This setting is all about movement.
Character, background movement and camera pan and zoom.
Do you want movement based on the resolution of your window size if so then ON
or do you want smooth movement regardless of window size resolution if so then OFF.
this becomes less noticeable/usefull at higher resolutions
and there is a small but very important omission in the description
The engine will only draw between pixels if you have "Full screen scaling" set to High quality scaling otherwise there is no point in setting this off .
It can also lead to weird artifacts and distorted sprites where resolution is close to screen dpi
Uses
ON For "retro" pixel art games authentic look
OFF when using " high quality" scaling then for very smooth movement
ON 1080 games viewed on 1080 screens
OFF for "neo" pixel art games where you want smooth (non retro) movement
Sampling
Scirra description - The resize quality for images resized larger or smaller
Layman Translation
this is basically anti-aliasing ,
it smooths out between pixels if your window resolution is greater than your sprites resolution
Linear = anti-aliasing ON
Point = anti-aliasing OFF
for pixel art it is primarily an artistic choice
using linear can give a nice smoothing effect to pixel art killing sharp edges (it can also make pixel art colours a little washed out looking)
retro purists would probably say leave it off/POINT
For higher resolutions it would mainly be used say…
if you had a 720 game with 720 art assets and you want to avoid jaggies on 1080+ screens
the same for a 1080 game displaying on 4k devices.
This setting is something im still looking into so please feel free to correct me.
Use High DPI display Yes/No
Scirra description - Use High resolution display where available. If disabled renders in low resolution and upscales
Layman Translation
Nothing really to do with High DPI displays directly.
Yes = overrides / ignores the browser zoom setting and / or any windows scaling setting displaying your game at 100% zoom so it will always launch in the browser looking like it is supposed to do.
No - if the user is using windows scaling or has browser zoom setting to anything other than 100% will make your game look like shite and potentially introduces scaling and linear interpolation that may cause performance degradation. This setting possibly doesn't work as intended but for now....
A pretty useless setting - always keep to YES
Note: "retro" vs "neo" pixel art
"retro" is where you set your resolution low and draw all sprites at a pixel density matching exactly the screen resolution.
character movement, camera movement and zoom/scale is all on a pixel to pixel basis.
basically looks like an old arcade/console game
"neo" is where you set your resolution low, draw or scale all your pixel art assets to same relative scale
but where character movement, camera movement and zoom/scaling is smooth
and usually additive/lighting effects are high res
eg something like enter the gungeon