Now try to imagine the same screen at 1600 x 1200.
Can you?
I can't because I don't use such a high resolution.
And I wouldn't because at such a high resolution
Role-Playing in itself seems riduculous to me.
I mean - I play the role of a person that has the height of a Fairy in other games ? How am I supposted to do good role-playing if I almost cannot see the the char whose role I'm playing ?
Bingo. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
That is why I am suggesting the modifications that are necessary to make playing an RPG at 1600x1200 becomes a pleasure rather than being a ridiculous idea.
My technical calculations produced a value saying that within our current technological state we need the avatar to be 200 pixels high for super-deluxe quality, or 175 pixels high for an acceptable and fabulous quality, while a lower bound limit is 120 pixels for an acceptable and enjoyable quality but without anything special about it.
Given that the market insists on considering the 800x600 to be still the standard around (which I strongly doubt), a character would be one third of the screen tall and consequently there would be no space for any interesting scene but it is perfect for zooming in and object manipulation. With 1024x 768 the character becomes a quarter of the screen rather than a third and a perfect resolution for a melee battle. With 1200x1024 the avatar becomes 1/5 of the screen’s height and the player may enjoy the high quality from close distance if the battle field is not to be seen as a whole. 1600x 1200 is the inevitable destination of computer based games and the reason behind that is the simultaneous quantity of information per screen and the avatar is at perfect quality with a height of 1/6 screen while being informed of all the immediate environment.
Fixing the details of the avatar is only a benchmark of course but it does not work that way.
Let us say that the majority of PC users have 1024x 768 screens and graphic cards (which is a fact).
Zooming in on the avatar should bring the lower spec relation where the avatar is 1/3 of the screen and here the avatar should be 256 pixels high in relation to the resolution being used. Normally you would zoom to normal with ratio = ¼ and an avatar being 192 pixels high with full details. Now zooming out to 1/5 and 1/6 should bring the avatar’s height to 154 and 128 pixels respectively. This specification is concerned with the dominating resolution and the minimal number of pixels that carry information. If there was someone out there with an 800x600 screen zooming out to a 100 pixel should be acceptable at such low resolution, but why do we have to suffer all of us as if we all have that system and at a maximum zoom out? You see, the 200 pixels were the benchmark of all resolutions to calculate the ratios only. We concluded 1/3, ¼, 1/5 and 1/6 to be the four dominating ratios of the avatar to the screen height. Now with one resolution being your favourite option And let us recall the dominant 1024x 768 we still apply all those ratios for zooming in and out. This means that your maximum zoom in shows your avatar 256 pixels high and your maximum zoom out shows the avatar as 128 pixels high. The currently implemented height in RR screenshots is between 100 and 110 pixels, which really does not make a big size difference but it makes all the difference with details.
I really hope that Marian should give it a try and experiment with avatars being at least 128 pixels high and then you can see the difference I talk about.
Cheers.
