Sprite sizing techniques

When it comes to level design, it is important to think about how big things are going to be. Will the game have small graphics and a small display size? Will it feature big graphics and have the camera pan to follow the player? These are things that should be thought about during the planning of any game.

This brings us to a not so big, but important issue when creating games.

Sizing techniques are used to scale and match graphics together so that everything fits within a game. We are going to take a look at some techniques that may help when creating graphics.

The power of two

The simplest technique is the power of two. Keeping your graphics sizes to a power of two makes it easier to fit them on a grid; this is often important when it comes to keeping things symmetrical in a game. It also solves any issues with 3D texturing should the game feature such things. Due to the way graphics hardware works, powers of two are also more optimized. Common powers used are 8, 16...