AuthorTopic: Having trouble choosing the size of my sprites for a game.  (Read 2840 times)

Offline outfox

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Hi, I'm super new to game development. As I just ordered a large wacom intuos pro, I'm building a unsophisticated tiling system trying to prepare for making a small game upon arrival of my new device.

I've made an object type called Tile. I want to make these as high-res as possible. The actual display size is around 1024x786 or possibly full screen 1080p(1920x1080). Anyways can anyone explain, if I use these resolutions and I was looking to make quite detailed Sprites, what the size of them would be? Is there a formula to go about or should I weigh in any other aspects? thanks.

Offline Ai

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Re: Having trouble choosing the size of my sprites for a game.

Reply #1 on: January 20, 2016, 06:11:03 am
This is really a design question more than a pixel art question:

* The tile size must relate sensibly to the player size
* The player size must be large enough to be reasonably visible, but
* This must be balanced against the need to show enough of the playing field that the player is not killed by something they can't see
* Any interactable elements of tiles need to be large enough that they can be clearly seen (and aimed at if this is relevant)
* Doubling the dimensions of your tiles/sprites/etc (eg. 16x16 -> 32x32) quadruples the workload.
* Is the display going to be at 1x magnification, or larger. ie. are your ingame 'pixels' going to correspond to 1x1 pixels, 2x2 pixels, 3x3 pixels..?

Overall that boils down to needing to do a lot of quick mockups, using something like Tiled or Grafx2, to resolve the above factors in a way you consider satisfactory. Screenshots of games that 'feel' similar to what you want may help as reference points here.

Your 'quite detailed sprites' criteria suggests that 32x32 may be the minimum acceptable size. However, it would be much easier to be specific if you gave a sample of what you consider 'quite detailed sprite'.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline outfox

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Re: Having trouble choosing the size of my sprites for a game.

Reply #2 on: January 20, 2016, 07:46:22 am
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/herossong/heros-song?ref=nav_search

the kickstarter video shows the resolution I want my game to have. or similar.

I started developing the tiling system... and I chose 64x64 its subject to change... but I'm just using that to see how things go. I also noticed that some sprites can be smaller or bigger than 64x64 or even weird shapes like a L shape. or something like that.

Offline Ai

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Re: Having trouble choosing the size of my sprites for a game.

Reply #3 on: January 20, 2016, 02:14:01 pm
The reference points are for you, not us.
But I did look at the video, and it looks like the main gameplay is at 1x (or possibly 2x... not really that obvious.. videos aren't that good a reference because you typically can't see the individual pixels clearly)

Your tiling system doesn't really matter TBH. I mean, you need one..but unless you've hardcoded the sizes of everything, it isn't relevant to art direction or creation.

In most PC-based systems, sprites (or tiles, for that matter) can be any dimensions at all. Technical limitations for 2d PC games are near nonexistent.

If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Gil

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Re: Having trouble choosing the size of my sprites for a game.

Reply #4 on: January 20, 2016, 10:54:45 pm
The Kickstarter you linked doesn't use pixel art at all. Sprites can generally be any size or shape you want them to be, as can tiles. Sure, in the old days, tiles needed to be a specific square size, like 32x32, but these days, you can use whatever. I've seen games where the tiles are rectangular, but can be overlapped.

Anyway, the most important info is what Ai told you about mockups. You never ever choose these things ahead of time, that's silly. What you do is you make a mockup, then you make another and another. After 5 mockups or so, you see what works, what doesn't. Make a mockup with small tiles, make one with large tiles. Try it all out.

I will say one thing, 64x64 tiles sounds crazy to me. That's a LOT of real estate. But hey, prove me wrong, make a mockup and share it, we can discuss what you seem to be doing wrong/right.