Re: Reduced Image Quality for 32x32 Pixel Units

[mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> I've noticed in the new release of XConq that any unit
> images based on a 32x32 size now appear chunky and
> enlarged.  I submitted a bug report at

The issue, basically, is that the interface asks for images to be 44x44
(depending on the zoom level).  If there is no 44x44 image, the kernel
creates one by scaling.  The older behaviour was to just return the 32x32
image as the closest match.

One possible way of dealing with it might be to say, okay, 32x32 looks
better than 44x44, so we'll make the interface request 32x32 instead of
44x44.  That raises issues if the designer actually wanted 44x44.  We've
become accustomed to 32x32 unit images (even though the interfaces have
actually been programmed to request 44x44); during my work on the scaler
we already addressed one issue of this type by changing the Tcl/Tk
interface to request 32x32 unit images in the unit type list pane.

Another possible way of dealing with it might be to change the APIs so
that the interface can request from the kernel "Give me an image somewhere
in this range of sizes, and try to avoid scaling if possible."  It's
already looking like the API for getting images has to be made a lot more
general anyway, to deal with issues like isometric/non-isometric terrain.
At present, the kernel just has to kind of guess which kind of image the
interface wants based on the dimensions, and there's Trouble if it guesses
wrong.

I'm starting to get a rough idea of what API changes need to be made.
Maybe it'd be appropriate to do the CVS-branch thing, and/or wait until
after the next non-pre release, because it's going to require
across-the-board changes to both kernel and interfaces.

FWIW, I actually like the blocky look of the scaled images, but I'm
guessing I'm in the minority there.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/