What exactly is this project? Basically, it is an attempt to bolster game education as well as scale back feature creep, by attempting to promote the use of lower resolution rendering in video games. That might have been a bit of a mouthful. Let’s see if we can break it down a bit…
Modern Displays Are REALLY Big!
Once upon a time, most monitors or televisions that people used to play video games on maxed out at 640 x 480 pixels, and most were only 320 x 240 pixels. As far as pixels go, that’s pretty small. If you are to consider the screen you are targeting as though it is a canvas, that is a manageable area for painting a picture on. Modern displays usually start at 1920 x 1080 pixels, and can be 4x that size in the case of 4K screens. Screens this high resolution make individual pixels almost indiscernible to most users. If we can return to a painting comparison, that’s like going from painting on a standard sheet of paper, to painting on the side of a building.
The larger your canvas, the more detail and overall work is expected. This gets exhausting, and/or very expensive. Moreover, getting lost in detail often prevents students from stepping back to look at elements like basic color theory, sight lines, and compositional balance. One of the easiest ways to avoid this is to simply reduce the size of the canvas. For developers, it is not possible to insist that your users choose a smaller screen. But it IS possible to intentionally reduce the resolution of your in-game rendering, even if you then scale your rendering up to the full size of the screen.
Art Fundamentals Don’t Require High Resolutions
Most art schools don’t start their students off by having them jump directly into oil painting on huge canvases. They typically start them off using construction paper and glue, and intentionally teach them art fundamentals first. The same should hold true for game development. Tossing new students into the deep end, expecting them to populate complex worlds with 3D objects is insane. And one of the quickest and easiest ways to scale back those expectations is to reduce the targeted resolution.
Focusing on a low resolution canvas allows students or hobbyist developers to focus on the artistic fundamentals of their work, instead of attempting to cram an enormous canvas with unnecessary detail. Playing around with these fundamentals at lower resolutions will allow them to prototype faster, while providing more targeted visual feedback to their players. Learning to get these elements working properly at lower resolutions will make it easier for them to scale their work up later when they tackle more ambitious projects.
Performance and Costs Are Improved With Low-Res
The more detailed art assets are, the more they cost. This is true in terms of both time and money. On top of this, one of the most consistent methods for improving a games performance, is to lower it’s rendering resolution. This isn’t a universal bottleneck, and there are plenty of other factors to consider when it comes to performance. But it remains true that reducing the rendering resolution is one of the quickest, easiest, and most consistent means of making games run faster. Pushing less pixels is almost always to the advantage of the developer.
For large-scale developers, the extra detail is worth the extra cost. But for students, hobbyists, or small-time indie developers, there is much to be gained from stepping back to lower resolutions. Many developers have already realized this, and freely employ this approach. While it is often referred to as “pixel-art,” the actual assets used do not have to be pixel-based. The tools available today make any number of approaches viable. Being able to reduce costs, reduce development time, and improve performance are huge advantages for small-scale development.