That is something that ideally should not happen and should be possible to avoid I think.

@ptoing:

Random scrolling jitters that seem to happen because the framerate fluctuates slightly. It doesn't really bug me but it's there if I look close.

Well it looks kinda fun to play but honestly what I feel is a severe graphical inconsistency would really just put me off.  Call it stubborness or even another mild aspect of my ocd but I just would rather not look at it. 

I can understand that. The question is if because of this you would not play the game, and if you would play it if it was pure within your ruleset.

Ok it's a matter of opinion.  For me it reeeeeally just kills the look of the game for me.   I'm not really fond of alpha transparent effects and all that either.

You can do clean scaling in Unity just fine. It would be no problem to render everything in 1x and then scale it after the fact. Maybe they just don't care and I don't see the problem I have to say (as long as the gameplay is there, all is well). I would of course prefer a cleaner look (just regarding scaling and higher res rotations, I am fine with gradients and stuff like FX), but again, If the gameplay is good, the game is good.

What do you mean by "perfect smoothness"?

I don't get completely perfect smoothness even on emulators but that could just be my computer I guess. Anyways, all I'm saying is it's harder to pull off than you might think.  At least in my experience.

If that's true then Unity must be pretty shoddy if it can't handle a simple thing like that when other game creation software and emulators seemingly don't have all that much trouble.   There's really no excuse for it at all.

Oh wow ok... argument over then...

[quote]'ruin' a platformer?   Um.  No.  Cos all those platformers made with true low resolutions were never 'ruined' and just waiting for higher resolutions to come along were they?[/quote]

Thing is, when you move a sprite or scroll a playfield on 8/16-bit consoles you get completely even screen updates because the hardware was designed that way. Not so on modern PC's where the screen update constantly fluctuates and sometimes gets interrupted by Windows deciding it wants to do some pagefile indexing or whatever, and so on.

Also, Unity was never designed with 2D pixel art games in mind so there you go. Compromises are needed.

Well, gradients never bother me that much in either pixel art or retro games. What bothers me more is mixed resolutions and NPA special effects that would be pretty much impossible to do manually. Gradients are easy to do manually, it just takes time. It does bother me a little bit when people rely on mixed resolutions to achieve smooth gradients (i.e. not following the 2X or 4X grid), but I can't see if that's the case with Hyper Light Drifter.

Looks like a beautiful game. Maybe a bit too much like Diablo 3, with mindless button mashing, but I'd have to try it out first.

That's too bad. It's a balancing act, for sure.

You can harmoniously combine PA with NPA, but it's a fine line.

What do you think of Hyper Light Drifter? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKgLJiJYvY8#t=70
All the gradients seem to work really well.

You're a heck of a guy, Carny.

'ruin' a platformer?   Um.  No.  Cos all those platformers made with true low resolutions were never 'ruined' and just waiting for higher resolutions to come along were they?

I bought the game a couple of days before, and unfortunately they took the NPA to another level in the actual game. Lots of crazy effects, I'm sorry to say.

It's still a fun game, I still enjoy the retro pixel art style, but... it still blows my mind that they're actually choosing to detract from the main appeal in their game, just for a little extra flash.

Maybe Unity can't do true 2x display, scaling all art up to 200% or 300% percent every frame.

If you do this, though, every object has to move 2 or 3 pixels at a time (whatever your scale factor is), otherwise objects move inbetween screen pixels and you have the same basic issue. Been there, done that. What I mean is, snapping to whole number pixel coordinates.
Imagine that - every time you try to inch your "bro" forward, he would advance 2 or 3 pixels, in order to stay aligned with the pixel grid. This lack of movement fidelity would likely ruin a platformer. All movements would have a jarring "snappy" look to them.

If all artwork is hard-pixelled to be 2x by the gfx guys and then rotated in-game of course you still have the same basic problem.

At least they avoid the ultimate taboo - smoothed interpolation.

Plus, they're not targetting pixel purity anyway - plenty of gradation and alpha effects in there.

Great work!!! Kept us engaged for a good play through to the end of the brototype!

Yeah, mixed rez's, like this

@Carnivac. Ah yes i saw it now. Weird how they scale bullets since they are the least difficult/time consuming things to draw. 

This is great, I love it!

@Carnivac: Could be the hires rotating is hard to avoid since they use Unity.

I game cannot be anything else except awesome if it has Mr. T in it. Loving the game!

Yeah I'm just seconding EdJr, this game is super fun and all the characters are hilarious. And you can high five your teamates for slow motion.

Also yes, Brade is the most fun

I've played this with a friend of mine on his XBox. Since I'm not as aware of good aesthetics as Carnivac, I must say: IT ROCKS. Fun as hell and super addictive.

Each character is some kind of parody of an actor/movie character (Indiana Jones, Robocop, Chuck Norris, etc.). They all have their peculiarities (Neo from Matrix reflects bullets, Agent J from MIB makes the enemies blind, etc.). What's interesting is that you can destroy the entire scene, and the more players, the more chaotic it gets.

Hint: Play with Brade.

I always wanted to name a game "Pretentious Impact Effects". Now even more. 

Yeah, that's something that I've been looking for in pixel art games too. Except that I'd love to see this game in 1X HD resolution, not 2x or 4X pixels. Hopefully, that's an option when the game is finished.

It looks very interesting.
In my opinion the style of sprite and small tiles, with images of character details make it look very attractive visually.
 

Scroll down on the website link and the middle screenshot in particular shows a lot of it going on.  Look at the shots and the angle of the tank's gun for example.  Those are things done in a deliberately low-res style but are rotating on a higher resolution completely breaking the otherwise fine 'retro-issssh' look.

I'm not sure i can see what you see Carnivac..
I'm fine with rotation of things but i dont see any mixed resolutions?

In any case this is a very good looking game!
 

Agreed, 100%.

Seems fun but argh at mixed 'resolutions' like things rotating at a higher resolution than what they are pixelled... that stuff bugs the hell out of me.