Print Page | Close Window

Best pixel hight for characters

Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9105
Printed Date: 18 December 2025 at 1:06pm


Topic: Best pixel hight for characters
Posted By: architectus
Subject: Best pixel hight for characters
Date 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.


Replies:
Posted By: Blueberry_pie
Date 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.

Posted By: architectus
Date 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.


Print Page | Close Window