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Caravel Forum : Other Boards : Crystal Shard Games : Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing?
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johniemi
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icon Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
I don't know the real terms but I'd like to know whether the crude graphics on HQ can be smoothed out via settings or other software. I know the image can be scaled but I'm looking for a "smooth filter" to smooth the graphics.

DosBox for exmple has a setting for this, It's also called "scaler" like the setting HQ and I use it to smooth out the graphics on my original Quest for Glory 1-4 games.

Any ideas? Here's a copypaste from Dosbox settings to clarify what I'm looking for:

advmame: smooths corners and removes jaggies from diagonal lines.
advinterp: identical to 'advmame'.
sai: similar to 'advmame' but with much softer color gradients and edges.
supersai: similar to 'sai' but sharper.
hq: a 'high quality' scaler which delivers a cleaner and sharper image than 'advmame' or 'sai' scalers.

I don't know if anyone can make any sense of this but basically my question is: can the HQ graphics be smoothed out via a 3rd party app or via HQ's own settings?

EDIT: Just to clarify, my game runs from Steam (whatever that is, just had to install it to get this game installed) so there are no HQ files on my hard drive I think.

[Last edited by johniemi at 01-04-2015 10:03 AM]
01-04-2015 at 09:58 AM
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Fizzii
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
The engine we used for Heroine's Quest was Adventure Game Studio. As far as I know, at best you can smooth the sprites when they are scaled, but that just makes them look blurry. I don't know of anything which can apply a smooth filter to it. The overall look is meant to be blocky since the native resolution is 320x200, but playing in a smaller window will make it less blocky.

The game is installed on your computer via Steam - you should be able to find it in C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\Heroine's Quest. You can also look at the set up options to see what is there (can be run from the Steam launcher itself, or the winsetup file).
01-04-2015 at 11:26 AM
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johniemi
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
Thanks, I'll look into the settings. That was exactly what I meant: smoothing and/or blurring the edges just a bit making the display a little less blocky as the AGS resolution is a bit rough. Hopefully I can make sense of the settings :D


[Last edited by johniemi at 01-05-2015 05:52 AM]
01-05-2015 at 05:51 AM
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bongles
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
Hello I too have this question as that's what I thought the "Smooth scaled sprites (fast CPUs only)" option would do, keep the background blocky/pixelated but smooth/blur the sprites, however the sprites look exactly the same whether the option is checked or not and whether you use DirectDraw or Direct3D.

Here's a screen shot, it looks exactly the same if the smooth sprites option is checked or not.

oi57.tinypic.com/j7z42u.jpg

Here's a quick and dirty mockup of what I would expect it to look like, obviously all the sprites not just the main character like I have done and different smoothing methods will look a little different but you get the idea.

oi61.tinypic.com/wmmeer.jpg

No matter what combination of options I have enabled the sprites are always blocky/pixelated like the top image and never smoothed/blurred.
04-20-2015 at 12:06 PM
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Radiant
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
That's because in most cases, the sprites aren't scaled (that is, they are shown at 100%). AGS doesn't have functionality for "blurring" sprites that are shown at their regular size.


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04-20-2015 at 12:27 PM
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bongles
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
They are being scaled though, 100% size of the sprites are when the game is running at 320x200 resolution but the game isn't, it's running at 1280x800 "scaling: 4x nearest-neighbour filter".

The nearest-neighbour filter scaling is why the sprites look the same as when they are at their 100% size with the game running at 320x200 and the "smooth scaled sprites" option should then be smoothing the sprites since they are not 100% now they are scaled 4x.

They would be shown at 100% if "scaling: none" was selected (in which case the game runs as a tiny 320x200 box in the center of the screen with most of the screen being black. But with scaling set to 4x it is indeed scaling the sprites (along with the background and everything else) by 4x so it's no longer just a tiny little box in the center.

[Last edited by bongles at 04-23-2015 10:44 AM]
04-23-2015 at 10:40 AM
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Fizzii
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
What Radiant is referring to is the selected scaling within AGS. Basically, with each background, there is a walkable area, and you set what the scaling of the sprite is. In most of the backgrounds in HQ, the character sprite is set to 100% zoom.

When you run at 4x scaling, the game makes a window four times the size of the native resolution, and the sprites are scaled likewise. But relative to the background, the sprite is still at 100% zoom.

The "smooth scaled sprites" option refers to when the sprite is scaled to a different size relative to the background, so if the sprite is larger or smaller then you should see some blurring of the sprite. To be honest, the effect does not look very good as AGS is indiscriminate in the way it does its smoothing.
04-23-2015 at 01:37 PM
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bongles
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icon Re: Heroine's Quest graphic blending/smoothing? (0)  
Thank you, that makes more sense.

It would be nice if there was some indication in the settings or documentation that the smooth sprite setting works in that relative manor rather then just letting you think you are scaling the game so the sprites are scaled so this should smooth them like the scaling and smoothing in the QFG games and what not does :angry
04-24-2015 at 04:20 AM
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