Round to square pixles conversion?

gamester · Post by **gamester** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:03 am

I'm using the characters I create with AS Pro to use with a program called Game Maker 8 Pro.

It renders it's sprites with square pixels. So it looks like it's been degraded somewhat. I never knew there was a difference in the shape of a pixel till now.

So question is, can I produce .png files with square pixels instead of round?

Or in anyone has ANY ideas on this. I cannot do this game without AS 7. Could kill my whole project.

Any help desperately appreciated

neeters_guy · Post by **neeters_guy** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:39 am

Maybe your graphics need to be down sampled before importing into GameMaker. I haven't used GameMaker in years, so I'm just guessing.

gamester · Post by **gamester** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:27 am

neeters_guy wrote:Maybe your graphics need to be down sampled before importing into GameMaker. I haven't used GameMaker in years, so I'm just guessing.

Could you give me an example of what you mean? I exported to png. Then Game maker loads the png and converts it to whatever it converts sprites to. Plus Im a rookie to boot. But this is the most important thing. If i cant get this working, the shows over. And getting poser pro and a couple more programs hinges on this too.

So any help appreciated. Thanks

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:31 am

There is no such thing as a round pixel.

All pixels are rectangular, with the most being square (on computers), and some non-square, like in PAL video or elsewhere in the TV world . AS renders square pixels by default, which is the standard in computer video formats.

Are you possibly referring to "anti-alias" vs. "aliased"?

gamester · Post by **gamester** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:48 am

slowtiger wrote:There is no such thing as a round pixel.

All pixels are rectangular, with the most being square (on computers), and some non-square, like in PAL video or elsewhere in the TV world . AS renders square pixels by default, which is the standard in computer video formats.

Are you possibly referring to "anti-alias" vs. "aliased"?

Unfortunatly Im not up on such things. Im going by what I was told in another forum. But whatever the reason, Everything hinges on getting this figured out. Because if it cant, it's been a compleat waste.

Thanks for your insite.

neeters_guy · Post by **neeters_guy** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 1:07 pm

I'm still not sure what the problem is, but I tried an experiment. Here's a screen grab (enlarged 200%) of two sprites imported into GM7:

The middle image is a stilll png exported as is from AS. The alpha is antialiased in the original png, not jaggy as it appears here.

The other two images are sprite strips made by assembling the pngs with SpriteBuilder 3.0. The alpha was destroyed in the process. When I imported it using the sprite editor, the background color white was set as transparent.

I don't know if this even remotely resembles the problem you're having, but it appears that GM is unable to read the alpha in pngs correctly. (In GM7, anyway.)

gamester · Post by **gamester** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 12:01 am

neeters_guy wrote:I'm still not sure what the problem is, but I tried an experiment. Here's a screen grab (enlarged 200%) of two sprites imported into GM7:

The middle image is a stilll png exported as is from AS. The alpha is antialiased in the original png, not jaggy as it appears here.

The other two images are sprite strips made by assembling the pngs with SpriteBuilder 3.0. The alpha was destroyed in the process. When I imported it using the sprite editor, the background color white was set as transparent.

I don't know if this even remotely resembles the problem you're having, but it appears that GM is unable to read the alpha in pngs correctly. (In GM7, anyway.)

Thats what I thought was happening at first. I started looking closer. What is Actualy happening is the exported files seem to be already degraded looking.

I think this is an AS 7 thing now. I exported jpeg, bmp, avi and of course png. And the all dont look as good as the original .anme shots. Like they drop in quality by 20 to 30% or so.

Must be a way to fix that. I dont see anything about it anywhere tho.

BTW, Is that one of the Josy and the Pussy Cats? LOL!

gamester · Post by **gamester** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 4:09 am

I think I fixed it. Im using a small character. 96 X128 pixels. I thickened up the lines and that seemed to fix it.

Mozbo · Post by **Mozbo** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 5:08 am

Question:
Once you import into GM7, can you resize?
If so, can you import at a larger size, and then resize it smaller?

That's a photoshop trick to keep fine lines when painting to post online without losing data...

cheyne · Post by **cheyne** » Wed Dec 08, 2010 12:02 pm

Have you checked out a a package for Flash called Flixel? It's made purposely for game styles that hark but to the 8-bit era. Of course you'd need a copy of Flash (pretty sure version doesn't matter much, as long as it's 8+).

I can appreciate you wanting to animate in AS though, save a lot of time - I have made many failed attempts at games in the past and animation pixel for pixel is seriously hard work, and the reason I always gave up (one man gaming studios is a lonely business). I used a freeware program called... urmm... *Google* Graphics Gale. It's really cool, geared totally towards pixel animation. Pretty straight forward learning curve too.

Can you post some details on your game? Is it in a playable stage at the moment? I'm sure you could wrangle together a few BETA testers here

EDIT: From memory you can have "HD" games with GM7 (they make 3D games I'm sure), I guess not if you are asking here! (or if it's your preferred style).

Mozbo · Post by **Mozbo** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 2:34 am

I came across this tonight, as I was fighting to upload a walk cycle on Vimeo:

If you have the option to control the pixel aspect ratio (not display aspect ratio) make sure it's set to "1:1" or "1.00", also sometimes called "square pixels."

Don't know if it has anything to do with your situation, but thought it might help, and figured it can't hurt...