Pixel Joint Forum: Best pixel hight for characters

Message

   I'm making a top down shooter, sort of a mix between Robotron and Smash TV with a dash of Geometry Wars. 

Is 80 Pixels to high for the MC? I think that is the high for the Smash TV guys, not sure. 

It is going to be on Xbox Live. I have a few more questions if anyone is willing to help out. 

I want it to be in widescreen as default, so when someone plays on 4:3 ratio, they have have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. I also want it to be HD compaitble. So if I do a character that will be 80 pixels high and 300dpi, the problem is how much screen space he takes up in each screen. 

In SD 720x480, the 80 pixel character takes up the amount of screen space I expect, about the same as Smash TV. But when the same sized character is in HD 1920x1080, though he is the same size, he takes up less space on the screen. He has a huge canvas to run around on. 

Do I then design the character much larger, so he takes up the same amount of space as the 80 pixel character does on a 720x480 canvas? 

If I do that, he goes from 80 pixels to 180 pixels. 

Should I just design it all to fit on a 1920x1080 canvas? 

Thanks a bunch. 

Author	Message
architectus Seaman Joined: 11 September 2009 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 17	Topic: Best pixel hight for characters Posted: 11 September 2009 at 2:51am
	I'm making a top down shooter, sort of a mix between Robotron and Smash TV with a dash of Geometry Wars. Is 80 Pixels to high for the MC? I think that is the high for the Smash TV guys, not sure. It is going to be on Xbox Live. I have a few more questions if anyone is willing to help out. I want it to be in widescreen as default, so when someone plays on 4:3 ratio, they have have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. I also want it to be HD compaitble. So if I do a character that will be 80 pixels high and 300dpi, the problem is how much screen space he takes up in each screen. In SD 720x480, the 80 pixel character takes up the amount of screen space I expect, about the same as Smash TV. But when the same sized character is in HD 1920x1080, though he is the same size, he takes up less space on the screen. He has a huge canvas to run around on. Do I then design the character much larger, so he takes up the same amount of space as the 80 pixel character does on a 720x480 canvas? If I do that, he goes from 80 pixels to 180 pixels. Should I just design it all to fit on a 1920x1080 canvas? Thanks a bunch.
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Blueberry_pie Rear Admiral Joined: 24 July 2015 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2176	Posted: 11 September 2009 at 3:21am
	The Xbox 360 supports a large variety of resolutions between 640x480 and 1920x1080. Redrawing your main character (not to mention the rest of the game's graphics) for every single resolution doesn't seem like a feasible option. It would probably be best to make the high-resolution graphics only and have the game engine scale down the graphics when running at a lower resolution.
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architectus Seaman Joined: 11 September 2009 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 17	Posted: 11 September 2009 at 10:17am
	Blue, that's what I was thinking. The perfect hight of the character is 212 then. When whole 1920x1080 screen is reduced for 720x480, a 212 high character becomes 80 high. Just in case anyone was wondering. Thanks BTW.
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