Graphics "bug" report
Hey there,
I wasn't sure where to file this, so I thought here might be a good place.
First: I love Jinxter.
Second: Thanks for bringing this to modern machines.
To the "bugs" and questions:
The game starts with the new graphics (which is fine, even though I def. prefer the old Amiga ones)
Bug:
- if you reset the game "restart" (typed in) it shows the old gfx for "on the bus" (even though the game is in "modern" mode, it keeps the new gfx if you reset via settings.
- "graphics off" works, "graphics on" doesn't.
Q:
- will there ever be a pixel perfect scaling mode for the old gfx (ie: 2x, 3x, 4x, ...) instead of the blurred or - forbid - the scaling algorithm ?
- What about an easy/easier way to switch graphics from old/Amiga to new (and maybe even old/C64)
- will you replace all "old" gfx with new ones? Or even have an image for each of the locations?
-- nGFX
Comments
Hi,
thanks a lot for playing Jinxter!
Sorry for the restart problem. Indeed, this seems to have slipped through. It only affects the picture, not the game mode. As a workaround you can reset the game with the reset button on the settings page.
Concerning the image scaling: The problem with the images is that they are originally very, very small. Something like 256x150 or alike, but for some devices we need to scale it at factor 4 or higher. We did a lot of experiments with image scaling - Hugh wrote a blog post about it: https://strandgames.com/blog/magnetic-scrolls-pictures-enhanced
The best results we got from using pixel upscaling algorithm (we use xbr4), although this isn't doing magic, neither. With the very small normal-sized images, a pixel-perfect-scaling is most probably only possible with nearest-neighbor, but the results are more or less "pixel soup"!
Here is a sample of an image scaled up with nearest neighbor.
Didn't look like a good result.
For Jinxter we only replaced the very first picture on the bus, because we felt it wasn't a particularly beautiful start in the game, the other pictures are new locations.
Best,
Stefan
Hi!
Good catch on the "restart" picture bug. I thought i'd fixed this. Anyhow, I've made a new fix and plan to issue an update .
Regarding the "pixel perfect" idea, the original widths were 256 pixels. So the idea would have to be to scale by factor say K largest so that 256K <= width available. And variable size pad the border accordingly. You'd probably have a min scale of 4 or 5 this way. It would certainly look 8 bit!
We do have the C64 pics, but there seemed little point adding them to the game.
Ok look at this;
Here's what we get now with pixel scaling on;
and here's what we currently get with pixel scaling OFF;
The blur is caused by image scaling trying to smooth. But we can switch that off;
Better in some ways, worse in others. @nGFX this mode could be used when pixel scaling is off. ie also switch off image scale smoothing.
What do people think? and please don't suggest another option :-)
[...]
That's perfect, imho - if only for "historical" purposes.
Point being, I own the game(s) (thief, pawn and jinxter) on Amiga/C64 disks anyway, I played through each more than once, so it'd be nice to have a remastered game with a modern UI and be able to stroll down memory lane with the old gfx in unblured state - if one desires to do so.
@hugh the last image (no scaling, no smoothing) looks "good", but it certainly would help to limit that to 2x scaling (and 4x, 8x, ...) until it just fits and pad accordingly, so taking your screenshot example size it would fit a 2x scale.
Anyway, thanks for making these masterpieces playable again.
Hi,
I think we have the basis of an idea here. I agree, what it must do is clamp the scale multiplier to an integer.
Thanks for the suggestions.
please. Please. PLEASE!
Pixel smoothing has been disabled in v1.2.10.9, providing "pixel scaling" is also off.
Missed the reply, but perfect!