Hey there ! I’m just getting started making a 2d pixel art game and I’m hoping I can get some advice.
First I’m wondering what the current recommendation is for a tutorial to get started.
The second is a bit weedier , dealing with resolutions other than what I’ve developed in and clean scaling to maintain the dimensions and pixel sharpness of sprites/tiles I’ve designed. I’ll probably start at 320x180 so I have a 16:9 ratio that cleanly scales to most modern monitor sizes without blurriness or distortion.
Would following the pixel art guidance In this doc be the best way to go about this in a consistent manner ?
The “making your first game in godot” tutorial in the Godot “getting started” docs is relatively good.
360x180 is pretty small; old game consoles in NTSC regions usually ran at 320x240 (or 320x224) or something close to that, because of the interlacing; they ran 60 fields per second, but only 30 full frames per second. A “field” in that sense is half the rows of pixels, either all the odd ones or all the even ones.
You’d get awful artifacting if you tried to draw every pixel at less than 60Hz (the full display was more or less 640x480, but each field was 640x240). The fix was that most home computers and game consoles ran in a pixel doubled mode; 320x240 or 320x224 to account for overscan. They also doubled horizontally so the pixels weren’t too far out of square.
PCs were a bit of a special case, in that common video modes were 320x200 on a 4:3 display, which has decidedly non-square pixels. This is why the Doom Guy looks so chunky; the art was designed for screens with tall pixels.
I think there were some early systems (Atari 2600? Intellivision?) that ran at even lower resolutions, but I don’t recall precisely.
There were fun things about the analog days, but I don’t miss them.
Anyways, unless you want a somewhat constrained game, I’d suggest starting at maybe 426x240 or thereabouts; that’ll give you roughly 16:9 without constraining your vertical resolution too badly.
The multi-res doc is a good place to start; if it turns out later that your needs are specialized, it won’t be too hard to change things and ask questions.
Good points, hexgrid. 426x240 sounds like a solid option for more vertical room while keeping 16:9. Just to check, would setting that as the base resolution with stretch mode set to “2D” and aspect to “keep” be the best way to preserve pixel sharpness?
Thanks for the detailed answer ! I think I picked 180p because it’s 16:9 and scales cleanly to the most common resolutions used on monitors now. 360p I shied away from because a lot of the 360p games I’ve seen like blasphemous and owlboy while beautifully done, kinda break the retro immersion thing for me with the art style / detail level. 180p I believe is what Celeste was made in and that’s about the level of detail maybe a little more I can manage as a solo developer and doing all the art on my own workload wise.
240p sounds nice but I don’t think it cleanly scales to the common 16:9 resolutions right ? Id end up with black bars for a lot of the common screen resolutions?
I suppose when it comes to 360p vs 180p and how zoomed in or out it looks id have to mock both of them up with tiles and sprites and see which looks the best for the game I end up making.
I should probably decide if I’m making
a top down game like a Pokemon clone for my first serious game ( after learning the ropes with simple games)
2)A top down over world travel game , with first person mini games
Well, at 1920x1080 you’d be looking at a scaling of 4.5, which is 1917x1080, so (depending on the scaling) you’d have a 1.5 pixel wide bar at each side. At 1280x720 you’ve got a scaling of 3, which gives you 1278x720 for a one-pixel wide black bar on either side. Depending on your game, it might not be noticeable.
If you want to avoid that, maybe 384x216? Ultimately it’s whatever works for you, though; if you want to do 320x180, don’t let me stop you.
I think the only way I’ll know if I like it or can accept the compromise or lack thereof of a pixel border of one of the res you suggest vs the small size of 180p vs the jump in size and work load of spriting with 360p is to just try it lol.
I’ll have to make a mockup of each and see what works best for the type of game I end up making as it is. Im leaning more towards top down or 3/4 like the Gameboy Zelda’s or Pokemon lately though so maybe 180p wouldn’t look terrible for that ?
That’s a screenshot from about a week ago; there’s still some work to be done, but I’m pretty close to shipping it.
Mainly at this point I’m waiting for friday when I can get a bank account set up for the business so I can get a Steam hookup and start releasing. I’m hoping to have the game in early access within the month.
Oh that’s really cool! I know who to talk to if I end up making a shoot em up then. How long start to finish did it end up taking you ? For how long of gameplay ? I think the arts really cool did you do it all in aesprite by just learning pixel art as you went or you have an art background ?
I mainly think the top down RPG thing appeals to me because I grew up with those games so I can look at a a lot of sprites for inspiration since Im not coming from any art background or experience.
Is it rude to ask projected price on steam etc ? Id like to check it out when it’s released.
I started mid-November 2024, so it’s been ~7 months? It’s “roguelike” in the sense that levels are random and there’s a metagame progression.
Some of the art is mine; all the 2D art on the panel is mine (except the fonts…), mostly done in gimp. The panel background is a closeup of a metal door on an electrical box in a nearby park I took on my phone. I’m sort of OK as a self-taught artist particularly for low-res pixel art, but my skills don’t scale to more detailed work.
The tilemap art is commissioned from an artist, and most of the stuff on the left side that isn’t tilemap is actually 3D models I commissioned. I also found someone to do some soundtrack for me, and (since this screenshot) someone to do some icons for me, so I’ve actually commissioned art from four separate people. I’ve got credits screens in the game with links to all the people who did the work.
I’m also planning to internationalize, but I’m going to start doing that post-launch. I have quotes of ballpark $0.13 USD per word per language for translations, and between UI text and the in-game equipment/lore browser, I’ve got about 8000 words of text.
I’m thinking it’s probably a $10 (USD) title? We’ll have to see. I’ll probably make some noise around here (maybe in the Showcase section, I’ll have to see where is appropriate for self-promotion) when I’m shipping.
I’m definitely a fan of console RPGs; I’ve been playing them since the 80s. Actually, a good friend of mine worked on the FF7 PC port, too. They’re fun, just bear in mind that they can be a lot of work…
Yeah it’s going to be a boatload of work which is why I have little to no intention of starting it until I’ve completed a simple pong, platformer, kinda games to learn as much as I can before I jump in the deep end on the RPG.
Jeez that’s like what a grand per language USD ?
One of my other ideas was a weird top down Vegas like city where you travel In the overworld and then participate in mixed mini games like wario ware.
If you do want to try an RPG, you might try messing with the RPG Maker series. They’ve automated away most of the technical stuff so you can largely concentrate on the story and the art. It’ll give you a sense of what needs to be done, and if you decide to build an RPG in Godot it will give you a good feel for the tools you need to build.
Those ought to be plenty. The ryzen with the 4070 should be a good mid to high end game system, and 64G should be plenty of RAM. Honestly the biggest concern there is, if you’re planning on shipping these games to other people (as opposed to just making games for fun, which is also a thing you could do), you might want to grab something slow and cheap to make sure your game will run well on a potato. Keep doing dev on the box you’ve got, but try the game on the potato once in a while to make sure it’s playable on low-spec hardware.
As for the mac, it should be fine, if you want to do dev on a mac? Actually shipping games (or anything, really) on apple platforms is kind of a PITA. I spent about 15 years doing that professionally, and… well, let’s just say my personal dev boxes are all Linux, with a windows box for testing when necessary.
But if you want to make games on the mac (or iOS, or some other other apple platform) and you’re willing to jump through all the hoops, an m3 macbook pro should run Godot just fine.
