Image /4 - Rule?
Hello,
I read some on the forum about people having issue with their graphics etc.
Someone asked if their art was in the scale where you could divide it by 4?
How do they mean? Should all art be 4,16,32,64.... pixels width/hight?
Lets say my hero character is 64 hight and 50 witdth.. is that wrong for an actor following the rules? Should he be 64x32?
What is this rule and how do I apply it the best?
regards
Comments
Image dimensions should be divisible by 4.
52 width would work.
4,8,12,16,20,24,28,32,36,40,44,48,52 etc...
Thank you!
If you follow this sequence upwards (1016, 1020, 1024, 1028, 1032 . . . . ) we risk people thinking that - for example - 1028 px is a perfectly good size to work to, when it's in fact very inefficient, and where possible best avoided.
I suppose the issue is that the advice to make images divisible by 4 (a quality issue) and the advice to make images sit within the powers-of-two rule (a memory usage issue) often get conflated.
So when designing for the best quality, what is your advice?
Lets say I got a 60x60 actor. Should I do pictures 120x120 and add them or whats the deal? Should I use /2 or /4 rule? Its not about big scales up to 1000+ its more like 400x400 max.
If the issue is quality then simply make sure your images are divisible by 4.
But bare in mind this is just a reccomendation, there are numerous scenarios where being divisible by 4 will make little difference, the point of an image being divisible by 4 is to ensure that the pixels within the image sits on a whole pixel values on the target device (and avoid being smeared between two adjacent pixels) . . . but if your actor/image is a spinning asteroid or platformer character who is running around, or a moving cloud or bouncing ball (etc etc) then it's very unlikely they will ever sit exactly on a whole pixel value as they will be constantly moving.
If you can tell that an asteroid spinning and flying across a scene is 53x53px rather than 52x52px on a 250(+)ppi device, that is doing its own internal realtime interpolation, then you are probably not human!
In fact I'd say - considering the nature of game design - that there are many more situations where divisible by 4 is irrelevant than there are situations where it's important - the few situations I'd recommend you stick to divisible by 4 would be to do with static on screen graphics.