RE: [GD-General] Scaling GUI graphics

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

The other cute trick I've heard of is to bite the bullet and put Flash in
the game. Then the artists can do front ends and GUIs all they like, and the
graphics coders don't have to be involved at all, so we can get on with the
actual 3D stuff. Which appeals to me, seeing as the last fancy GUI we did
chewed 6 months of a programmer's time. That was bad.

Tom Forsyth - purely hypothetical Muckyfoot bloke.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kent Quirk [mailto:ken...@co...]
> Sent: 25 June 2002 14:59
> To: Tom Forsyth
> Cc: Brian Hook; gam...@li...
> Subject: Re: [GD-General] Scaling GUI graphics
> 
> 
> 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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> 
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> 
> -- 
> Kent Quirk, CTO, CogniToy
> ken...@co...
> http://www.cognitoy.com
>