So, I was messing around with my pixeling program, which has a little "preview" box that shows the actual size of what you're making. I couldn't help but notice that it seems a bit small there...

So, say I used a sprite to make an actual 2D game. Whats the common resolution of such a game? Since I've noted the difference between, say, Guilty Gear and King of Fighters as far as resolution goes, the size (that is, pixel height/width) of your sprites is probably gonna depend on that. But are there games that are actually 1024x768? I'd kind of like to make my sprites look as good as possible (in this case, for a acton/rpg deal), but the bigger they get, the more complex they get... so I'd like an idea of what kind of options I have.

I'm gonna go look around in the PJ galleries, since before I saw some rpg-ish characters... might be a good reference point.

Sigh... I kind of considered posting in "resources and support", but it didn't exactly have "general pixel art questions" in the descriptor. Yeah, I look like a stupid nub. Laugh it up...

Now, this information you give me is indeed something... but it doesn't exactly tell me what "common" settings are in your usual games. And yes I realize that if I go to "200%" scale in the program, its double the size of what it actually looks like.

Pixel art is, supposedly, made of pixels. But so is everything on a computer. Sometimes the term "pixel" is a bit more loose, because in a game, in a lower resolution, we say things look "pixelated." Yeah, those little blocks are actually made up of several actual pixels. Thats a given. But when people speak of those things, they aren't talking about the actual pixels such as with the DPI settings you mentoned there. They're talking about the little blocky looking parts. Thats what I'm talking about. Right now, my windows is set to 1024x768, but I could set it to 800x600. Sure, the DPI is still 96 as you say, but everything looks bigger and more pixelated.

So, my question is, if you made a 2D game for a computer, whats some common settings? I looked around on the galleries a bit and saw some of the game-ish sprites that people have made. When the pixels are as small as possible to match the resolution, they're really tiny in comparison to the rest of the screen, and it seems to me that an actual game, were it fit to the computer screen, wouldn't have the characters looking that small. So, I have to conclude that they'd in fact be larger, which means a lower resolution like 800x600 or something.

Hopefully I fully explained myself this time.

Edit: perhaps I have some terminology wrong. "DPI" means "dots per inch," of course. So, are dots and pixels two distinctly different things, or does it depend on the context?


Edited by Darlos - 28 March 2007 at 5:39am

I don't think DPI is really relevant here, because that mostly seems to be used with printing.

For the games I make, I mostly use 320x240 or sometimes 640x480. Of course you could also use the resolution of existing systems, like 256x224 for the NES and SNES or 240x160 for the GBA. You can usually find this by Googling "system name specs".

Thanks snader and Metaru

Yes some different resolution would be nice...

I think this game will be quite hectic so you won't be able to have other things  going at the same time ;)

but... 320x 240 original size of the interface, is it a good or bad choise?

It depends on what type of game you're doing. With pixel art you want lower resolution such as 640x480 (some graphics cards won't do lower).

Edited by Pixel_Outlaw - 01 April 2007 at 6:22pm

if you stretch 640x480 to fullscreen, it most likely will get blurry, yes, or you'll have too cut off a couple of tiles, which i wouldnt advise. you'd get it looking like THIS

yes like that. because usually when you let windows or whatever scale an image, it gets blurry. but when you make everything twice as big, by hand. all the pixels stay sharp and clean