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I came over from Stack Overflow, I'm not really sure if this is the right place to ask this question, I'd like to apologize in advanced. I just finished a couple of isometric maps, the first map is an image with a 28712x27744 size. I know how big that is. The reason is that my screen (based on the return values of my program) returns a size of 3840x760 (fullscreen), the program (an RPG Game) should be able to project that size from the image and feature scrolling all along the x and y axis of the image since the image acts as a map.

The image was made at inkscape. But I'm planning on making a texture over at GIMP, the thing is that it takes a heck lot of time so I tried to export the image from inkscape at half the size of the original, but GIMP still runs pretty slowly. I was thinking of going smaller but I feared the the image but appear blurry in-game (I'm not using a commercial engine but a personally made engine so I'm trying to make the resources fit easier).

My question is- Is there a way to texture this without my pc processing like a snail? OR If there's no other way then if I were to downsize it, do you guys have any techniques on how I should tackle the texturing so that it won't appear blocky when enlarged? an example would be those old 2d rpg games (usually from the ps2 era), I noticed that no matter how gigantic the screen goes, the texture doesn't really seem like you're looking at a pixel, instead, it seems like you're looking at a proper image.

I'm really sorry if this was the wrong place, I was thinking if I should post this at gamedev or graphicsdesign, though I chose gd since I might get more people who have proper tips.

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    Have you tried to procedurally texture your image directly in Inkscape?
    – Paolo Gibellini
    May 6, 2015 at 9:15
  • That'd what I ended up doing. I just had to avoid the filters on inkscape since they beefed up the export time and size.
    – kdyz
    May 6, 2015 at 11:03
  • At the moment this is a big resolution to be processed. Are you working on a Linux machine?
    – Paolo Gibellini
    May 6, 2015 at 14:32
  • I'm working on a windows, I don't really process the whole image. Instead, I just get a portion of the image and process that.
    – kdyz
    May 8, 2015 at 4:56
  • I see. In my experience on the same machine GIMP is a lot faster when I boot with Linux. Anyway, good luck for your game!
    – Paolo Gibellini
    May 8, 2015 at 5:17

3 Answers 3

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I am not an expert on game developement. But an image 28712x27744 as 8 bit RGB tif is about 2.2 Gigabytes in Photoshop. I created a test image. On the Mac Os it is 2.4 G on the disk. I was able to open it in Gimp but it took a while. The image crashed the filter plug-in I tried to use. I think GIMP has issues with large file sizes. You might try to find someone who knows GIMP better than me. There may be some settings you could change... Remember that when you are going from Inkscape to GIMP, you are going from a vector program (I believe) to a bitmap program. Also I think in games they have a procedural way of switching from lorez images for large scale views and higher rez as you zoom in.

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  • Hmmm, Mine is 9 mb. It even has colors separately added so that I could pick a color out and apply a texture for that color.
    – kdyz
    May 5, 2015 at 4:18
  • Well, 3d games don't read polygons from afar but they become more precise from upclose, I made a research on 2d games and noticed something about those pixel art, when zoomed, they still hold onto those pixels which is why they aren't blurry. In the end all of them uses only one image. I'm not even good at picking a color for an image all the more for making pixel art ahahahahha, thanks though.
    – kdyz
    May 5, 2015 at 4:21
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You can and probably should cut the image up into tiles. This allows your gane to load each segment separately into the graphics cards memory. But as a side effect it makes texturing easier for you.

PS before you go on make sure your game engine wont choke on your texture size. Many gfx systems have a 8k texture limit. (altough it could have several of those)

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  • I did this and took the render time, the render time for the original image was faster. I'm thinking of doing the texturing at inkscape instead, thanks though.
    – kdyz
    May 5, 2015 at 4:25
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The best way to do this would be to split up the image into many smaller "chunks" (just smaller images). While your character is moving around in the game it only displays the chunks that can be seen on the screen. This will free up some RAM while the game is running. It might make it slightly annoying to paint on multiple separate chunks and keep it seamless at the same time, but it will help with game performance in the long run. Because on lower end computers, a 28712x27744 image can be a large hit to performance.

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