Great pixel art with a flaw

[Jezze]

First of all, I want to say that the game is really great, the art, the action, the humor. It reminds me of one of the best from the good old days: Metal Slug.

But call me nitpicky, because it makes me sad and kinda angry when I see a great pixel art game like this, with a non-pixel perfect camera:
- different pixel sizes
- uneven pixel ratio
- sprites not aligned to the pixel grid
- rotated pixels

Any chance you will look at those problems, especially the first two?

p.s. Am I the only one who sees this in countless modern pixel art games?

[Blastmode]

I completely understand where you are coming from. Early in development the game was completely pixel perfect. Although everything looked super crisp, something also felt off. Camera movement felt 'jittery' and subtle movements of objects were completely lost.

Also I wanted to do playful things like rotate and zoom the viewport. These things looked absolutely horrible when constrained to the grid. In the end I chose to opt for an in-between option, a higher base resolution while still pixelating the FX layers to the target resolution.

The end result is not pixel perfect. However, I do feel it is the best of both worlds. The gameplay itself also feels a lot smoother because of this. Ultimately I'm happy with the tradeoff, but that's because I'm the creator and went through all the iterations. For a lover of pixel art playing through the game for the first time, I can totally see your point.

Adding a 'pixel perfect' option in the settings might be something that's interesting to add in the future. We were also playing around with the idea of a CRT filter, so that kind of falls in the same territory anyway.

[Jezze]

Thanks for your detailed reply and I understand your points as well. I've actually come to terms with rotated sprites that aren't pixelated, even the distortion from massive explosions looks super cool, and also zooming the viewport is totally legit and makes the gameplay look more dynamic.

The latter can still be pixel perfect, though. The viewport can be zoomed so that each pixel is the same size and the ratio remains 1:1; not while zooming, of course, but after zooming is complete. And this is what bothers me the most. I see pixel rows/columns that are 4 pixels wide/high and others that are only 3. This tells me that the zoom factor can't be quite right.

Anyway, the game is a lot of fun. Thumbs up!

[duckrotation]

I feel like I'm the only one alive that loves rotating sprites, and non pixel perfect stuff. There's something about the shimmer and the crunchy-ness that makes things look good in my eyes.

[PlayL4D2!]

I also normally don't like pixel art that feels like it has been thrown into a hi-res game, probably because it reminds me of flash games. BUT I make an exception here because the speed of the game and all the action mask it off a bit. And also it's silly.

Since layers aren't aligned to the same pixel grid anyway, I would even go further and allow sub-pixel parallax, so that it doesn't feel snappy when layers move around. I'm not talking about ugly filtering on whole pixels, but only at the edges. I think it starts to be ok when big pixels are 4 pixels-thick, it still feels like pixel art but moves smoothly around.

Really good game. At first it looks like you're gonna play a clone of Metal Slug with less detailed graphics, but there's more to it.
And +1 for making it easy enough.

[duckrotation]

Originally posted by PlayL4D2!:

I also normally don't like pixel art that feels like it has been thrown into a hi-res game, probably because it reminds me of flash games. BUT I make an exception here because the speed of the game and all the action mask it off a bit. And also it's silly.

Since layers aren't aligned to the same pixel grid anyway, I would even go further and allow sub-pixel parallax, so that it doesn't feel snappy when layers move around. I'm not talking about ugly filtering on whole pixels, but only at the edges. I think it starts to be ok when big pixels are 4 pixels-thick, it still feels like pixel art but moves smoothly around.

Really good game. At first it looks like you're gonna play a clone of Metal Slug with less detailed graphics, but there's more to it.
And +1 for making it easy enough.

Aren't flash games vector art? Why do people always say "looks like a flash game" to things that look absolutely nothing like a flash game.

[Jacck]

E uma pena que um game tão bem humorado tenha se tornado tão repetitivo com o passar dos anos, tirando os dois primeiros jogos da franquia o restante se tornou massivo e repetitivo. Realmente uma pena.

[PlayL4D2!]

Originally posted by duckrotation:

Originally posted by PlayL4D2!:

I also normally don't like pixel art that feels like it has been thrown into a hi-res game, probably because it reminds me of flash games. BUT I make an exception here because the speed of the game and all the action mask it off a bit. And also it's silly.

Since layers aren't aligned to the same pixel grid anyway, I would even go further and allow sub-pixel parallax, so that it doesn't feel snappy when layers move around. I'm not talking about ugly filtering on whole pixels, but only at the edges. I think it starts to be ok when big pixels are 4 pixels-thick, it still feels like pixel art but moves smoothly around.

Really good game. At first it looks like you're gonna play a clone of Metal Slug with less detailed graphics, but there's more to it.
And +1 for making it easy enough.

Aren't flash games vector art? Why do people always say "looks like a flash game" to things that look absolutely nothing like a flash game.

I think Flash introduced the fake pixel games, with pixels not aligned to grids and rotations. Since most Flash games were crap, reminding of them is rarely a good thing.

But really I think there are pro's & con's of aligning all pixels to the same grid. I think that parallax layers shouldn't, because there's nothing worse than a parallax layer moving too obviously in large pixel steps, even worse when it's uneven.

[Bavanity]

Just about to buy this on the PS5 - I realise it's 2D pixel art but is the output resolution a crisp 4K?