Tile image size

froamer

Hi, I have a floor actor whose image is 24x24. The actor's size is 24x24 with a horizontal wrap set to "tile" and a vertical wrap set to "fixed".

I expected this to tile my 24x24 image horizontally as I stretched out my floor horizontally so I could make floors of different widths without adding lots of actors.

If I add the actor to the scene it is 24x24 (like its image). As soon as I stretch the image horizontally the image used to tile is much bigger (it looks like 48x48).

GS Bug or Pilot error?

beefy_clyro

i just tile my little images like that in photoshop to one big file and then put that in GS. That way you use a lot less actors!

froamer

Hi beefy_clyro, thanks for the suggestion.

You mean like a big image that happens to contain tiled visuals? Isn't that more memory hungry?

Am I using this tile feature incorrectly or is this another GS feature that falls short?

froamer

I guess if GS will only tile 48x48 images, I could make a 48x48 image containing 2 of my 24x24 images horizontally, then leave the rest transparent.

Surely this is a bug though?

quantumsheep

There is no official tile feature. Sorry!

QS

froamer

Hi quantumsheep,

Under the Graphics section of the actor attributes it has "Horizontal Wrap" and "Vertical Wrap". These can be set to Stretch, Fixed or Tile.

Am I misunderstanding what "Tile" does (or is supposed to do)?

iDeveloperz

Whats this?

[img url="http://i47.tinypic.com/2mcy6gl.png"]



http://i47.tinypic.com/2mcy6gl.png here.

froamer

Hi iDeveloperz,

Yes, they are the settings I am talking about. They seem to tile the image at 48x48, no matter what the image size or actor size is.

eaguirre

I use inkscape to create my images, then export to png. If I don't export the images with 132 dpi (for iPad) and 140 dpi (for iPhone) the actors with Tile Horizontal and Vertical in GS does not work for me. For example if I create a 24x24 image but dpi is 32dpi or 72dpi the tiles are bigger than expected in GS.
So I always use 132 dpi when creating my PNGs.

Hope this helps,

Cheers

beefy_clyro

Ok you have a 24 x 24 actor, you want to tile it to a size of say 240 x 240, if you ere to tile this in some way within GS, you will have 10 actors! Or, you could tile it to a 240 x 240 image in something like photoshop, import that in GS and then you are only using 1 actor instead of 10. For every image you place in a scene, the game engine has to draw it so 1 big image will be better than 10 smaller ones. Hope that helps.

beefy_clyro

beefy_clyro said:
Ok you have a 24 x 24 actor, you want to tile it to a size of say 240 x 240, if you ere to tile this in some way within GS, you will have 10 actors! Or, you could tile it to a 240 x 240 image in something like photoshop, import that in GS and then you are only using 1 actor instead of 10. For every image you place in a scene, the game engine has to draw it so in theory, 1 big image will be better than 10 smaller ones.

@eaguirre, interesting

froamer

@eaguirre - That sound promising. I use Inkscape too, when I increase the dpi it increases the image size. How are you setting the dpi independently from the image size? Or do you export it at the right dpi then size it in another tool?

froamer

OK, I found that GIMP's Image > Scale option will let you set the dpi independently from the pixel size. I then confirmed that the dpi value effects the tile size GS uses. After some experiments I found 72 dpi got my 24x24 image tiling correctly in GS. I don't understand why, but it worked!

Thanks for all your input. I hope the above helps others with the same problem.