Vector Graphics help?

Hi guys,

I have been doing Vector Graphics with Inkscape and happy with what it looks like until I export to Bitmap when it becomes pixelated. I love the graphics on games like Cosmochoria or Airscape as they are so smooth. Any advice to have vector graphics, I would also like to keep what I currently have but make it purely vector?

Few vector graphics packages export truly good looking raster artwork - I usually export at a much larger image size then downscale it in an image editor. But even image editors aren't made equal - not all of them use a decent downasampling algorithm. Even Photoshop tends to make a slightly mushy result as it's geared towards photos and not vectors and thus oversharpens the image. You can probably find a free utility that uses Lanczos or Supersampling to produce buttery smooth results.

But for a simple approach you could just export a large artwork and then resize in the C2 image editor - it will be already better.

Hi !

Vector graphics just won't work for runtime applications like games ; the hardware works with textures and vertex/pixel/geometry processing units, that's about it, basically GPUs don't "understand" the shapes used to describe objects built in vector format, i.e. contours/splines/formulas.

Unless you want to ignore all hardware acceleration and create a custom vector-based engine, in which case performance is likely to become a problem, rasterisation is inevitable.

Nevertheless, there's no reason your resources should become excessively pixelated ; have you tried simply exporting at a higher resolution ? It costs a bit of memory and disk space, but the performance is still good.

Thanks I will try that out. Are there any limitations with Construct 2 with memory as I plan on have a lot of animation?

Not really, but you don't want to go too "over the top", as it might cripple performance on lower specs machine, especially if you're targeting mobile devices or platforms that don't have great HTML5 support. Also be aware that most app shops where you can publish your game have fairly low size limits (e.g. 50mb) which you could easily exceed if you're exporting lots of high-res frames.

If you want high-res sprites with lots of animations while minimising asset sizes, have a look at Spriter ; it lets you animate sprite elements using a keyframing system

I'm wanting this to be on PC. Don't think the controls would go too well on mobile.

Can't wait to get home and try this out. Also have an idea to make it randomly generated platformer. Fingers crossed.

I doubled the resolution and now it looks so much better.

Cheers

My graphics memory for Cosmochoria is sitting at about 110MB, thats before it's 'optimized' when i export, so i think it goes down once its built out to NodeWebkit. That 110MB is for a tonne of enemies, bosses, guns, bullets, fireballs, shop upgrade icons, costumes, etc. Just as a reference point, i have no idea if 110 mb is good or bad, so let me know where you're at and we can compare haha