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[SoftBlade]

So I'm wondering, as I read through them pixel art tutorials, what would be a kind of "optimal" size for tiles and sprites?

I've tried smaller (32x32) tiles and I struggle. Will 64x64 make it easier or harder, or do I just have to stop wasting time asking stupid questions and get to practicing on 64x64 tiles?

[Nessiah]

I... I think it's more of whatever floats your boat. We usually do 16x16 before hahaha...I think you should reference some tiles? 

[Hempuli‽]

32x32, 24x24 and 16x16 are the most used ones. I think that 24x24 is the best choice, if you're not planning to do high-res or retro graphics.

[SoftBlade]

Well, spent a few hours playing around and 64x64 seems too big for me to handle (I tend to want to squeeze in more and more detail ruining it).

Anyway, I'll play around with 16 and 24 a bit. It would probably be better. Thanks for the tips guys :D

[Reggie]

32x32, 24x24 and 16x16 are the most used ones. I think that 24x24 is the best choice, if you're not planning to do high-res or retro graphics.

But... but... 24's not a binary number!  

e: more sarcasm

[SoftBlade]

But... but... 24's not a binary number! 

Is it really that big a deal? I mean, most computers these days should be able to handle anything, even if lots of the tiles are different non-binary resolutions, or am I missing something very import here besides computer strength? 

[JMickle]

16x16 and 32x32 are more compatible, but its not really important. i do use 16x16 most of the time. You can do more detailed backgrounds with less work if you do.

[nikki]

"But... but... 24's not a binary number!  Durr...?"


well consider you have many tiles 24x24 , when you put them in an bigger tilestrip image, you'll always end up using much more of your graphic ram, then when you would be using 32 px

try dividing 1024 by 24 ...

but nowadays, you've got loads of ram anyway !  , (dunno about your customers though )

[SoftBlade]

e: more sarcasm

I'm a sarcastic person by nature, yet I missed your sarcasm. Shame on me

Anyway, since a programmer is supposed to strive for good memory management it would be evil of me to use 24x24 tiles I'll just keep playing around till I find what works best. Narrowed it down to 16x16 and 32x32 tiles. And, @JMickle, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks.

[Biggerfish]

Do the size restrictions even matter anymore?

If you're using Game Maker there is (as far as I know, from experience) no difference between using 16x16 tiles vs 20x20, or 48x48 and 50x50.

Binary sizes of tiles and sprites are still common but is it for convenience or just tradition?

[PANPOMMA]

I think it simply depends on the game. But if on patch of grass is 64x64, how big are the characters that inhabit the game?
You may be better off going for low-poly 3d models or somefink!

Could you post a sample for us, maybe you can make larger tiles and sprites work.


@Marmaduke Slam, from the little bit of playing around I've been doing I think an average PC can take any sized sprites without slow down or whatever used to happen when the world was black and white .

ALSO also, I'm designing a game that works with 15x15, just because it seems to be working and leaves me with "a line of pixels" in the middle, if you get me. 16x16 is just traditional I imagine.

[deadeye]

But... but... 24's not a binary number! 

Is it really that big a deal? I mean, most computers these days should be able to handle anything...

Some graphics cards scale up any non-power-of-two textures to the nearest power, so your 24x24 tiles will be taking up an area of 32x32 in VRAM anyway, so you're not saving yourself any space by making smaller tiles.  Not a problem if you're not using hardware acceleration though, I guess.

Some rendering engine/card combinations may even have trouble rendering non-standard texture sizes at floating point pixel coordinates so you could get a seam between your tiles.  Depending on your engine this may be fixable if you force scrolling or tile placement to a whole number.

[Lemming]

Some graphics cards scale up any non-power-of-two textures to the nearest power, so your 24x24 tiles will be taking up an area of 32x32 in VRAM anyway, so you're not saving yourself any space by making smaller tiles.  Not a problem if you're not using hardware acceleration though, I guess.

In even worse cases, they don't. Non-power-of-two textures are serverely slow on some (mostly elder, but some are in use) systems.

[dbb]

As a graphics guy, I like big sprites and big tiles. The main factor stopping me doing everything really huge is the amount of work involved; a 64x64-pixel sprite has four times as many pixels as a 32x32 sprite, plus if it's animated you'll probably need more frames to make the motion look smooth than you'd need for a smaller sprite; so the amount of work required tends to increase exponentially with size.

For my current project all the character sprites are about 48px high, which is enough to give each one a bit of personality, but they're not animated. If the job required animation I'd have been tempted to go with something smaller.

[Kekskiller]

Memory isn't an issue anymore. Technically, cards tend to change your non-power-of-two sprite only when rendering in 3D mode (thus rotations, shaders, etc). But using normal 2D rendering even with alpha will work absolutely fine.

Work-wise it's just annoying. I once created a 5x5 font, took me a half our. The 10x10 version of it took me one and a half hour and the 20x20 version nearly a day. Huge tiles are hard work even if you're experienced in creating them.

Discussion terminated.

[SoftBlade]

Discussion terminated.

Noted

I've already decided to scale down to max 32x32 (using 32x64 for some "taller" sprites). Besides that, after a week of planning on my project it has become pretty clear to me that its waaay to ambitious. I'm putting the project aside and I'm gonna make smaller games first using 16x16 tiles. Doing that I'm pretty sure I'll obtain the skills I need to eventually work with larger tiles (and actually make it look good) instead of trying to make a "perfect" game now. Just another episode of overambitiousnessness 

Thanks for all the input and advice, I learned more than I expected

[Theotherguy]

I never use tiles smaller than 128x128.