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

[Tobias <tob...@gm...>]

Am So, den 09.05.2004 um 2:04 Uhr +0200 schrieb Ingo Ruhnke:
> Tobias Gläßer <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.

We speak about SuperTux 0.2x+, it's possible that we drop software
rendering. Future X-Servers (like the fd.org one) are based on OpenGL
and so we can expect our users to have this requirements, too.
You are right, there isn't much gained if nobody fills in the resulting
increase in pixels.

> 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.

How often do you play SuperTux on your TV? :) No big issue, esspecially
with OpenGL downscaling is a non-issue.

> > 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.

Well, I did expect that there are games using vector graphics. In 20
years of game development with thousands of games developed, it would
be stupid to think noone of them used vector graphics.

But on the free software side of things we would be pioneers?
Is there any mature free software game project out there discovering
vector graphics power?

> > Therefore we could be pioneers in this field.
> 
> Not really, Flash is already pretty dominant in that place :)

Let's rock the flash baby games away. ;)

> > 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.

Well having realistic looking gfx isn't easy with SVG, but it might
be the right think for a comic look? I could image that many
comics are made using vector graphics today.

> >  - easier creation of animations ?
> 
> If you do it in vectors or in pixels doesn't really matter.

I claim that animating with a tool like Macromedia flash etc. is much
easier than pixel-by-pixel hand editing. Unfortunately there isn't
a free software SVG animating tool out there, is it?

> >  - reusing of imageparts - merging of images
> 
> Called copy&paste, works pretty well in pixel images.

You can't copy&paste parts of the image that aren't in the foreground
for example with pixel images.
But I agree, it's not a problem with either of the methods.

> >  - being pioneers
> 
> See Flash.

Flash is successful.

> >  - 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.

Actually I talked about the coder's side of things. :)
But actually cairo seems to be a promising candidate.

> >  - 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.

I respect your realism. But if all people back in the day thought like
you do in this case many "innovations" (the most innovations aren't
totally new) wouldn't exist.

> 
> > 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.

With OpenGL your hardware does its best to resize pixel-image, which
leads to similar results as you would get with Gimp. I mean that's
good but it's not optimal.

> > 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.

That's true. With SVG we had to go for another graphics style.

> > 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.

That's not the case for my version. Indeed in KDE3.2 the most icons and
gfx are rendered directly from SVG data. (KSVG)

> > 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.

The age has pretty much nothing to some about its excitement IMHO.

Greetz...

Tobias Gläßer