> But now imagine something different: that your sprite is 64x64 but shrank down in c2 layout editor to 16x16 and the game is still 430x270. In high quality scaling and in full screen and in full hd it again becomes 64x64. But now it is not upscaled 16x16 sprite - it is that original 64x64! Now check this: if the pc is not strong enough to output assets in full hd, you switch renderer to low quality scalling, and now this 16x16 is rendered as 16x16 but upscaled to fit the screen.
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> So what you need to do, is to set your games resolution to half hd i wrote above, make all sprites in the editor half the size, but load original hd assets, and those will render now differently depending on the type of scaling.
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okay got it! sounds good, I will definitely check this out. Awesome.. thanks! So when you mentioned before keep decreasing the asset resolution.. you mean find a point where it looks good without looking too blurry for that low-quality setting?
btw, I can't imagine anyone playing my game windowed, it will always be fullscreen, I'm not giving them the option if I can help it.
Is high quality scaling a run-time modifiable parameter? i.e. could I have a user change this setting while the game is running?
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> And now going back to your question about optimising the graphics: you do this in photoshop. For example that nebula could be done differently: instead of having interlaced 16-bit or higher png, you can set its saturation and levels in ps, and also replace transparency with black colour, then export as 8-bit png, and in c2 editor set it's blending mode, making black background becoming transparent.
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I've done this (blend mode to additive) on black backgrounded images before, but I had no idea it saved memory... it sounds familiar, but I guess I never really looked into it! How much of a difference does it make? I have a TON of images that have LOTS of transparency. Should I convert them all???
In system events you will find renderer option, which you can switch at runtime. The goal is to have both: good looking high and low quality scaling image, remembering thought that high quality scaling will look better; it's like finding compromise, based on priorities: you can keep high resolution for objects in foreground, and lower quality graphics used for background. You could also build backgrounds and bigger objects, from number of smaller objects. This way you can reuse them creating more variety.
Also remember that laptops hd screens are not that common yet, and usually their resolution is around 1280x720, and the screens are most often 15", so 860x540 in low quality scaling will look decent, but even on 17" it will look fine.
Some people play windowed, because they have other applications running that they need to keep an eye on.
In photoshop just press ctrl+alt+shift+s which will bring up export window, where you can work on optimization. In the bottom-left corner is size of the file, so you can make easy compartment. In that same export window you can work on colours of images, for 8-bit export.