Re: [GD-General] Scaling GUI graphics

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

We just built a skinnable GUI for a game we're doing. All the graphics
in the game are built from individual components at load time, with
the layout described in an XML file. We haven't supported any form of
scaling, as it's my experience that scaling always looks like hell.
But we do support tiling, so what we do is build a background texture
that's seamlessly tileable, and lay that down first. Then we place
interface elements on top of that.

It let me use mixed file formats (highly compressed jpgs for the
background, GIFs for basic interface elements, and PNGs where I needed
transparency), and in addition to increased flexibility, we took about
1.5 meg of interface graphics and compressed it to less than 300K.

    Kent


Tuesday, June 25, 2002, 6:19:55 AM, you wrote:

TF> My favourite solution is to scale, but only by powers of two. So you design
TF> GUI graphics for 640x480. For 800x600 and 1024x768, you don't scale, you
TF> just move them further apart (i.e. the bits stick to the cornr, edge or
TF> centre as required). For 1280x1024 and above, you double the size so that at
TF> least stuff is readable.

TF> To do the scale x2 you can either just do the bilinear filter thing (which
TF> doesn't look too bad on power-of-two scales), or just get the artists to do
TF> second versions. Or mix'n'match (e.g. hand-done bigger font, but scaled
TF> backgrounds).

TF> Tom Forsyth - purely hypothetical Muckyfoot bloke.

TF> This email is the product of your deranged imagination,
TF> and does not in any way imply existence of the author.

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Brian Hook [mailto:bri...@py...]
>> Sent: 25 June 2002 04:23
>> To: gam...@li...
>> Subject: [GD-General] Scaling GUI graphics
>> 
>> 
>> Okay, this is a common problem that I'm sure others have 
>> dealt with on 
>> numerous occasions, but I have yet to deal with it so I'm 
>> curious what the 
>> conventional wisdom is.
>> 
>> Basically it's the age old problem of having an interface 
>> that looks good 
>> at all resolutions.  AFAICT, the standards are:
>> 
>> - do low res graphics for everything, then zoom appropriately 
>> (leads to 
>> serious blurring)
>> 
>> - do multiple resolution graphics (lots of content)
>> 
>> - render GUI graphics into textures/images instead of using 
>> prefab images 
>> (i.e. actually write line/circle/filled region software renderers)
>> 
>> - don't scale, just make everything smaller (8x8 font at 
>> 1600x1200...ewwww)
>> 
>> Anyone find a solution that doesn't have a glaring flaw, unlike the 
>> above?  I suppose the closest I can think of is to do 
>> everything in high 
>> resolution, e.g. for a 1600x1200 interface, and then resample 
>> down for 
>> lower resolution displays.
>> 
>> Brian
>> 
>> 
>> 
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-- 
Kent Quirk, CTO, CogniToy
ken...@co...
http://www.cognitoy.com