Vector Graphics: Me Wantee

So after looking at what's been done with vector graphics inside Adobe Flash 2D games, I've decided I'm all for it, and I believe that we can achieve the same effects with either of the games currently in development here at Pezad Industries.

The problem faced with our side-scrolling platformer game is that I want to give the user the ability to render the game at various resolutions, but not have the camera appear to "zoom-out" at higher resolutions. It's like the effect everybody sees when they increase the resolution on their Windows XP desktop: All the icons and text have the same pixel size, but because there are more pixels that can be displayed on screen, more icons can go on the desktop.

I don't like it for two reasons: 1. The user now has to squint to see their character. 2. It destroys the difficulty of the level: Part of the fun of a game is in not knowing what you may run into next.

The problem might also be solved if the image is scaled properly. For this to work, I imagine that we'd have to start with a fairly large "base image" and then scale it down to fit properly with the displayed resolution. However, this just isn't as fun as going for the gold and having an engine that can efficiently perform vector graphics. And it is possible even today!

Just take a look at the Anti-Grain Geometry project, a GPL'ed project ready to be used in today's C++ projects. Combine that with something that can decode the SVG format or just make one of our own formats, and we're good to go! Never mind that doing this would set our project back to a crippling schedule, it sounds really neat. Anyone else on board?

What about the Java Entrippy project? Perhaps the Apache project batik and it's rasterizer source, properly modified of course, would provide just what we would need to go that extra step to get vector graphics going as well.

And it isn't like we have to do what Adobe Flash does and render the vector images in real time. We could just draw each character frame once in a back buffer, save it to memory, and then call upon it to draw the frame later. No fuss!

The idea sounds good to me, but that sure does look like much more work too. What are your thoughts?