Re: [Super-tux-devel] 800x600 resolution

[Ingo R. <gr...@gm...>]

Tobias Gl=E4=DFer <tob...@gm...> writes:

> no doubt 640x480 is just too less and I even think 800x600 is a bad
> joke, since I'm using a comfortable 1280x1024 desktop.
> If we switch to a fixed size again, 1024x768 is a wise choice IMHO.

I am personally very happy with 800x600, its pretty much enough for
everything and low enough to not waste too much space and resources.
Especially when it comes to pixeled graphics there is little chance to
fill the screen with a size of 1024x768. Just having a larger
resolution is worth nothing if there is nobody to fill in all the
details. Just a little math 800x600 has 1.56 times as many pixels as
640x480, 1024x768 already has 2.56 times as many pixels as we
currently have, so software rendering is really a no-go for 1024x768.

800x600 has another very important advantage: my TV-Out and my TV can
handle it, which isn't the case for larger resolutions and well,
SuperTux like games are best enjoyed infront of a TV instead of a
monitor. If one goes for OpenGL only one could of course provide a way
to scale the viewport back to 800x600, even if the gfx itself have a
higherres.

> About the SVG thingy. There are very few 2d games using such a
> feature currently.

Pretty much all Flash games out there on the Internet use Vector
graphics, while it isn't SVG, its still pretty much the same. If you
want to get even more back in time, look at AnotherWorld, used fully
vector based gfx back then in 1992. Many of the old Sierra adventure
games also used vector graphics to save some diskspace.

> Therefore we could be pioneers in this field.

Not really, Flash is already pretty dominant in that place :)

> Some advantages:
>  - resizing images with no loss

Well, the loss already is in the graphic itself. Doesn't really matter
if you can scale losslessly when the source itself already is sucky,
which is the case for most vector gfx after all, they just have this
'vectorish' look which you can't really escape.

>  - easier creation of animations ?

If you do it in vectors or in pixels doesn't really matter.

>  - reusing of imageparts - merging of images

Called copy&paste, works pretty well in pixel images.

>  - being pioneers

See Flash.

>  - the tools/libs for using SVG inside games and esspecially with
>  SDL are not very mature (but perhaps we can help in their
>  development, just like planeshift for example helps crystal space
>  with stuff they need)

Just for the record, the SVG tools we currently have are easily 5-10
years behind the stuff that you have on the windows side. And I
personally consider sodipodi completly unusable, while inkscape has a
much better interface, it still lacks a whole lot of features.

>  - graphics designers do have less experience and skills with vector
>  graphics?

No, vector graphics helps you with getting a smooth curve, it doesn't
help you to get the curve into the right spot.

>  - our experiment could dramatically fail

For sure they would.

> But it would be awesome after all to have a option in our option
>dialog where you can select nearly any screen resolution.

Trivial todo with Opengl already.

> Maybe we could even port the current PNGs without much efforts
> to SVG, don't believe me? Then look at this project:

You can't convert shaded pixel gfx into vector graphics without
loosing *a lot* of quality, it only works well for simple black&white
outlines and such.

> A game I found using SVG is KSokoban. That's not THE killer game ;),
> but it's awesome that you can resize it to every size without loss
> and its tiles don't look bad (quite good) IMHO.

The version I tested here used still good old pixel graphics. Yes, one
could scale it, but the graphics would just pixelade as expected.

> I don't know what you think, but SVG is an exciting technology.

Not really. Vector graphic is pretty old technology and has been
around for ages. SVG is just a new name and a bloated XML format
wrapped around it. Vector graphics are nice if you want to print to
paper, but I havn't found them really usefull for on screen display.

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