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Hay guys, haven't posted in awhile but I've got an art question of sorts (I'm more of a programmer), so anyways I've been working on a new pixel art rpg intended for an eventual release on ios and android.

I want to use 32x32 pixel art, but honestly everything I've drawn at that size and thrown into my game looks blurry/fuzzy. I'm not really an artist and don't know the best virtual resolutions,zooms,or scaling to use but I want the game to have a pixel art feel to it but still have high enough resolution(look good on iphones/phones) that it doesn't look plain ugly like it now does-what's the best way(s) to go about achieving this.

Ps. I'm using 640,1136 virtual resolution which is the native resolution of iPod Touch and iPhone 5th generation. Thanks in advance!

Use SetImageMagFilter(iImageIndex, 0) and SetImageMinFilter(iImageIndex, 0) on the loaded texture(s) to keep the edges of sprites crisp regardless of scale. By default AppGameKit applies a linear antialiasing which causes the blurred edges.

Yeah, if you do that - then scale the sprite by power of 2 sizes, like SetSpriteSize(spr,128,128) will make the sprite 4 times bigger, but without blurring. It might be an idea to allow for borders, or somehow extend the game screen for wider devices. Like, the iPad2 has a resolution of 768x1024, iPad3 is double that, so if you use the same screen aspect, you'll have over 200 pixels leftover vertically - of course you'll still see them, but what would concern me is that the nice pixelated scaling will go to hell because it'll have an irregular screen size.

Just thinking that you might get better results if you take control of the borders yourself, like try and get the actual game area to be dynamic - maybe use the left and right sides for health/time meters on iPad's if you can, and use the top and bottom borders on iPhone5 etc.

So really, the game area might be 640x1024 - which is good because your pixel art will scale correctly. Then on 640x1136 screens, you'd use the 112 vertical pixels for the score (or whatever), then on 768x1024 displays, you use the 128 horizontal pixels for the score etc. It's definitely worth considering this stuff now, rather than later - Apple users are a nightmare for complaining about compatibility, and it really doesn't take much to set them off. It might sound like a pain to make your own borders, but I don't know, it might be straightforward to have a vertical and horizontal status display, in which case you have the ideal setup for properly supporting all the different resolutions.

We are making a dungeon game that uses mostly 32x32 sprites, it's a good look

Thanks, guys these were just the kind of answers I was looking for from some people/artists who knew what they were talking about. I'm sure I probably worded my question bad because I don't know the technical speak for spriting. Thanks alot, I thought it may have been something to do with anti-aliasing. I look forward to seeing your dungeon game in the future Van B!

It's better to draw it much bigger and then use an art package to scale it down to 32x32. The anti-aliasing then creates the illusion that it's higher res than it is.

Marl he wanted a pixelated look and not to look higher res then it is

Oh in that case, use a mask sprite over the whole lot - using a texture made up of alternating pixels.


Makes everything look pixelated