[crossfire] character image size

[Mark Wedel]

  Recently on irc, there was a discussion about map size.  One point raised in 
favor of very limited (11x11, 13x13) map size is that in larger maps, there ends 
up being so much data, the player can get lost in it.

  While I don't agree with having a small map size (which is a separate 
discussion), I do agree that the player can often get lost on the map.

  So I did a quick test. Using gimp, I took the warrior image, scaled it up 50%, 
used autocrop to eliminate the blank pixels around the image, and then centered 
it with a normal 32 pixel wide image.

  After the scaling phase, the images ranged from 28 to 33 pixels wide IIRC. 
The final size of the images where 32x40 ±2.

  I find that after this scaling, the player character is much mor noticable, as 
shown in the attached images.  Scaling up 50% may be a little large (and for 
same races/classes, just may not be possible as it makes them too wide), but it 
would seem that increasing the size to eliminate most of the transparent pixels 
around the image may be good.  Doing the math, it would seem that for the 
warrior at least, the actual solid bits are around 21x26.  Even keeping the 
character within the 32x32 cell, that is still about a 25% increase that could 
be done.

  Other than making the character more visible, at least for things like 
equipment, it seems to help the scale some.  Now the character is larger than a 
shield. The size of armor almost looks reasonable, etc.

  Yes, it does through the player image size off to other things (the armorer 
looks like a munchkin), but I think that will have to be the case if the idea is 
to make the player more visible (if the monsters get scaled up, then the player 
gets lost in the monsters).

  Thoughts?  This is more just a random observation I thought I'd share than any 
definite proposal.


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