2X, What is Your Opinion?

[RagnarokUnending]

I am curious what people think about pixel art being presented 2X its native scale. Its quite common, maybe even the norm, for pixel art games these days. Is 1X just so horrid that people can't stand it?

I ask because I am torn between 1X and 2X. 1X looks really crisp, can support a lot of detail, and is more forgiving. 2X on the other hand looks more like traditional pixel art, does better on super high res screens, and is less work since your sprites are smaller. I suppose then it comes down to what players like the most, so what is your preference?

[Ai]

IMO 1x is only suitable when res is quite low (<= 400x300) or the game naturally needs to convey a lot of small pieces of information (DCSS or other Roguelikes.).
Otherwise (assuming that full-screen is the format we are talking about), the amount of extra work involved in pixelling at high res is pretty impractical, unless you have a super-minimalistic style. Larger magnifications are advised

If you were asking for aesthetic tastes, I prefer 2 or even 3x, according to display resolution and viewing conditions. I believe you will find most pixel artists like 2x+ over 1x. But if this was the intent of your question, I feel obligated to point out that the taste of pixel artists is rather different from the taste of players, who mostly just want the game to look in some amorphous sense 'good'.

[Basketcase]

Depends on the art style (including native game resolution), depends on the screen (size, pixel density, distance from eye). I don't see how you can set any universal rules here when these variables can vary so widely.

I say, For a PC game, since people are going to have different monitors, let us choose 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x in the settings.

There's also the option of emulating a CRT, warts and all. I mean include blur, motion blur, scanlines, concave glass distortion, etc. (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php)

I still like seeing raw fat chunky pixels.

[Seiseki]

One reason a lot of indie games use pixel art is because it's relatively quick to draw because you don't have to spend so much time with small details and adding texture.
1:1 pixel art at 1080p would be amazingly time consuming to make.
Personally I think 4x is a decent scale where you can see the pixels, but they aren't too chunky.

[Pix3M]

Initially, I preferred 1x because it felt "higher quality", i.e. higher res.

Recently, I primarily work in 2x because it's faster to produce results. The lower-res is not an issue anymore because I am a combination of simply better at handling 2x pixels, or that I just opened up to them more easily.

Depends on what you want.

[Piotr]

What about 1x2 pixel size? In CGA, EGA and VGA (with EGA compability), there was 640x200 resolution with 1x2.4 pixel size. An 8x8 font can be easily expanded to "8x16" by vertically doubling font. It will look good as long as vertical lines of 8x8 were 2 pixels wide.

[Ai]

What about 1x2 pixel size? In CGA, EGA and VGA (with EGA compability), there was 640x200 resolution with 1x2.4 pixel size. An 8x8 font can be easily expanded to "8x16" by vertically doubling font. It will look good as long as vertical lines of 8x8 were 2 pixels wide.

There were also others (amstrad CPC had 160x200 mode with wide pixels (2x1) and 640x200 mode with tall pixels (1x2); Commodore 64 had a similar mode; VGA could be reprogrammed to produce hundreds of different screen modes, some of which had wide pixels(2x1) or tall pixels (1x2)).

In general though, I think people avoid these pixel sizes, as they have certain problems that square pixels do not have to deal with -- for example,  rotation, stretching, and other geometric/vector math are harder to do correctly. The only examples of recent games that use non-square pixels I know of are those that are actually designed to run on these old computers (Cosmic Prison Commando, for example, is designed for Amstrad CPC).

While I and others on Pixelation enjoy the wide-pixel (2x1) aesthetic -- it has a certain cuteness -- the practical complications mean it's unlikely to get used. The tall-pixel (1x2) aesthetic you are talking about has the same complications and is also less popular. Possibly for the same reason that widescreen displays are popular and tall displays are not -- they better match the shape of our field of vision.

Personally I find 1x2 pixel art hard to look at as well as hard to create. I would not recommend either 2x1 or 1x2 pixels on a purely practical basis, though 2x1 may have some things to recommend it on an aesthetic basis.

Though I agree that fonts are one possible exception; it depends on the font design. IMO thin / 'skeletal' fonts tend to hold up better when their aspect ratio is changed, while the weighting used in heavier fonts tends to become uglier.