Is the "pixel crawl" effect from non-integer scaling for the trailer or is an intended effect?

[Enhanced_Interrogator]

Like, does the game have a native resolution? I noticed that individual pixels get larger and smaller as characters move around, they're aren't a consistent size. Like what happens when you run nearest-neighbor scaling to a display that isn't an integer multiple of the the game's base resolution.

It's an effect I try to avoid when I'm running emulators and such, so I noticed it right away. I guess it could be part of the artistic direction, and also basically unavoidable if there isn't a fixed perspective (like zooming in and out on scenes).

[Super Bambaspis]

This is part of the game unfortunately, and can't be avoided. There is a lot of zooming, both in cut scenes and during game-play. It seems like most people don't care or notice though :)

It would be very nice to be able to prevent the zooming with an option, but it's just such a large part of the game that I doubt the option would ever be included.

[Ragnaman]

I'd like to know exactly this,
I can live with the pixel crawl effect on zooming and whatnot, but various UI elements look awful in specific resolutions and ratios. Would be nice to know which is the native resolution that just makes at least the UI look good.

[Kickfister]

Sorry to resurrect this but it's the first result on google. It seems 1600x900 is the pixel perfect resolution in actual gameplay. Of course, the game zooms in and out very liberally, so you'll still see those gross artifacts crop up regularly, but at least while you're moving around and hitting things, 1600x900 will fix it there. I should also say that I just started the game and I don't know if they use different zoom levels in different stages. Also, in case someone with a 4k screen also has the idea, for some reason 3200x1800 doesn't solve the problem. I couldn't say why.

Frankly, I'm shocked that a game with such excellent art direction made such a simple but impactful technical flub. I refuse to accept that pixel crawl is an artistic choice, it's just ugly, and not in a "ugly but nostalgic" way as this was *always* something avoidable. If they wanted to zoom in and out constantly, they needed to filter the sprites. I really hope it's something they're willing to address at some point, as it really hurts the otherwise incredible art direction.

[Super Bambaspis]

Thanks for the info, Oopy!

Looks like windowed 1600x900 it is. What a weird resolution to use for displaying 1:1 at the default zoom, it pretty much guaranteed everyone playing has degraded visuals over what must have been intended.

And yeah, 3200x1800 not showing correctly is weird. You're not scaling up to fill the screen are you? I imagine not, because you do seem like you know what you're doing.

[Kickfister]

It works fine in either windowed or fullscreen. Unity upscales with a simple bilinear filter at subnative resolutions, which will completely resolve any pixel crawling that isn't baked into the framebuffer (the exclusive fullscreen mode in this game is broke and is still just borderless window, unity is really dumb about exclusive fullscreen support). So you just have to decide if you want a small crisp window or a blurred fullscreen window haha. Of course, there are additional scaling options with third party tools.

If I had to guess, there's probably some oddity about how the camera position is determined that causes 3200x1800 to not scale evenly. All I can really come up with.

EDIT: Oh, I should also add that 1600x900 might introduce a new issue though, but it's hard to tell with just how much artifacting there is at other resolutions. It seems like sprite placement is inconsistent. You don't get crawling on every damn pixel on the screen, but sprites themselves seem to jitter a bit when the camera moves. It's way less distracting than the other issue imo.

[Super Bambaspis]

Originally posted by OopyDoopy:

...
If I had to guess, there's probably some oddity about how the camera position is determined that causes 3200x1800 to not scale evenly. All I can really come up with.
...

Sounds like a good theory to me!

If you do wanna play on your 4k screen windowed, in 1600x900 and not a tiny window, I use a program (that's on steam) called "lossless scaling". You can integer scale up to 2x and keep things crisp while playing at that internal resolution you're happy with.

Edit: I haven't tired Lossless Scaling with this game yet, so no promises, but it's worked on everything else I've used it on.

[Kickfister]

Originally posted by Bilbo Laggins:

If you do wanna play on your 4k screen windowed, in 1600x900 and not a tiny window, I use a program (that's on steam) called "lossless scaling". You can integer scale up to 2x and keep things crisp while playing at that internal resolution you're happy with.

I used a free program that's horribly named Magpie and that works great. It's from a foreign dev and the github page is not in english, but there is an english translation in the app. The app offers a bunch of upscaling modes (including AMD's FSR), though most of them aren't very performant.

https://github.com/Blinue/Magpie

[Zeb]

I've been hurting my eyes and found your post to be the only one addressing this. How do most of the players not get a head-ache right away?

[Enhanced_Interrogator]

Originally posted by Zeb:

How do most of the players not get a head-ache right away?

I dunno, but I think it's a reason we need to keep around the currently surviving CRTs in the world as long a possible. The kids coming up need to see what pixel art is supposed to look like.

Thank goodness Mike Chi's Retrotink products exist, they're going a long way to demonstrate the right way to experience pixel art for future generations. That and the scanline shaders available in Retroarch and Reshade