Correct resolution for importing image assets (2D)

HappyDog

Hi there,

I've just started with Adventure Creator (a week ago) and Unity (a few days before that) and am blown away with what I can achieve with these two excellent tools!  I had been working on an adventure game using my own Flash adventure game framework, but have now ditched it and am moving over to Adventure Creator.

Development was a fair way along, and as such I have all the background and sprite assets already made - I have found good tutorials and have imported them all successfully into Unity/AC and my player is walking around my first scene.

Before I go any further however, I want to make sure that my image assets are being imported/handled in the most appropriate way, particularly with regards to import resolution and scaling of the game objects within the scene.

My source files for each scene (not including the static borders) are pretty huge: 7074x3497, which is obviously way larger than they will ever be shown in the game.  Given that I am creating a Lucasarts-style 2D adventure, and that the screens will not scroll, can anyone give me any advice regarding the following questions:

1. Is it better to scale the assets down in Photoshop before exporting them for Unity, or to import them at full resolution and allow Unity to perform whatever scaling is necessary?
2. If the former, what should be the target size for the images?
3. In either case, what is the most appropriate way to set up the various scaling properties in Unity.  So far I have found 3 ways to affect the size/scaling (there may be more!), but I'm not sure which of them is the appropriate method:
1. Play with the 'pixels per unit' setting for the image
2. Resize the game object for the background image
   
3. Play with the camera settings

Note that I currently tried exporting at 2048x1012, with 'pixels per unit' set to 100 and have got things working in the scene window, but all the icons for special objects (e.g. cameras, player starts, etc.) are absolutely tiny, so this doesn't feel like the 'right' way to do it.

I am not concerned at the moment with different platform/resolution support, but I do want to give the best possible results to people on higher screen resolutions.  If I need to provide down-scaled versions of the assets for non-desktop platforms I assume that is easy to deal with later.  Also, I am not concerned about aspect ratios as the game window has a decorative border which can be cropped/extended to accommodate alternatives.

Apologies if this is actually a Unity question - if this is not the appropriate place to ask it then please direct me to a more suitable forum.

Kind regards, and thank you for such a wonderful tool!

- Mark

ChrisIceBox

This is indeed more of a Unity question, though I should think there are some on this forum with some good tips.  My own experience is that the "Pixels per unit" setting is the best way to go about it, not least because you can make changes to it without having to go back to the original image.

Try to get a scale that is comparable with the 2D Demo's background assets, which you can find in /Assets/AdventureCreator/2DDemo/Graphics/Sprites/Park.  The 2D Demo itself has been built to the "recommended" scale, meaning best-suited to things like pathfinding and gizmo icons.

HappyDog

Hi Chris - thanks for the quick reply.

I would be interested to hear what other people suggest, from their experience.  I might try taking this to the Unity forums, though I'm not quite sure what I'm asking in that context (would they understand what I'm talking about if I just posted the above message, verbatim?).

The park backgrounds are at 1024x550 with 'pixels per unit' set to 100.  On that basis, I could either rescale my artwork to 1024px width, or I could leave it as it is (at 7074px) and set the pixels per unit to ~690, to scale it to about the same size.  Is one of those methods likely to give better results than the other?

My concern is that this may lead to artefacts in the graphics due to the scaling.  I would much rather be in a position where I could say 1px of my image is 1px in the resulting game, but I'm not sure how to go about this (or if it is even possible).

How do people who do pixel-perfect games handle this, to avoid scaling artefacts?

- Mark

ChrisIceBox

IIRC, this game had a similar concern for pixel perfection.  You may want to reach out to that game's developer for more specific advice.

HappyDog

I saw that thread, though it doesn't really document the solution reached.  As suggested, I will try contacting the author directly.  I'll update this thread if I find out anything that might be useful to people who come after me.

In the meantime, if anyone else has any suggestions, I would love to hear from you!