Pixel aesthetics: need for a new screen mode?

Pokitto Software
1

Hi,

Idk if it is just me, but sometimes the Pokitto emulator (2x) screenshots on the mobile phone look so much nicer than the actual game on Pokitto. I do not mean that the screen quality is much different but sometimes I would like to see pixels more clearly on Pokitto. Even in the 110x88 screen mode the pixels are not visible enough.

I was thinking that do we need yet another, “pixel-lover” :wink: , screen mode? That would be a 73 x 58 mode, which is zoomed (3x) to the (almost) full screen. Of course, you could use 220x176 mode and just use 3x3 pixels to build your bitmaps, but that would be huge waste of cpu and memory resources.

What do you think? Would you like to have this kind of screen mode?

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I love the idea. I want huge pixels, that I can almost hug!

It should be called the

A E S T H E T I C mode

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3

why not go 4x?

getting to that atari look

alternatives would be to use a 3x4 pixel and have a text line on the bottom or top in a higher resolution?

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73x58x16-bit color is still only 8,468 bytes. We can buffer that.

And ofcourse we can have

A E S T H E T I C 4 X 4 mode also

Hint, the joke is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporwave

5

Never heard of it before but here is a video explaining the vaporwave

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Lets have a poll. Here are the examples. Please scale the browser window ([ctrl] and [minus]/[plus] in Chrome) so that the screenshot size matches to the Pokitto screen physical size to see how it actually looks on Pokitto.

220x176:

110x88

Which new graphics mode do you think we need for Pokitto?

  • 73 x 58 x 16 colors
  • 73 x 58 x 65536 colors
  • 55 x 44 x 16 colors
  • 55 x 44 x 65536 colors
  • No need for a new mode

0 voters

Edit: note that these screens are just scaled down from to original. The graphics quality do not match to the real use case where the graphics would be originally designed for the resolution in question.

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Seeing those pics I think 55x44 is not useful

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kuva.png1164×600 78.6 KB

For me 73 x 58 x 16-bit would be the most useful

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I like 73 x 58 16 bit, reminds me of lowresjam https://itch.io/jam/lowrezjam2017.

I’m still having fun with half res 16 color too though. I guess we can never have too many screen modes :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’ll really like 220x110 16 color (4bit mode)

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Did you mean 220x176x16 color?

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Yes 220x176, sorry I mix some resolutions :sweat_smile:

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What about new modes from other well known retro consoles?

Sega VMU Virtual Memory Unit - 48 x 32

Nintendo Pokemon Mini Handheld - 96 x 64

Gameboy Classic / Pocket - 160 x 144

Atari Lynx - 160 x 102

Sega Gamegear 160 x 144

So people will be able easily port graphics/games from them to Pokitto.Also this will create interest in Atari, Sega, Nintendo homebrew communities.

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Interesting information!

There is a Game Boy mode in Pokitto Lib: GameBoy Mode (160x144 @ 4 colors)

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Ok, looks like we have final results of the poll: 73 x 58 x 65536 colors.

I am curious. Why do you need so many colors on Pokitto? (Well, I am probably just too obsessed with C64 color modes:-)

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You don’t have to use them all, but it’s nice to know they’re there

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Colors are good for textures so demoscene, 3D engines, voxel engines…

I am Atari 800 fan.So what about 160x96 mode?
Here is example (just 4 colors on Atari but some are cool).

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Could that be a slightly modified Game Boy Mode: 160 x 144 ==> 160 x 96 ? Though, it do not fit to the Pokitto screen size well ==> big borders.

1 Like