Sprites Backgrounds Should Use Nearest Neighbour Scaling

Have you ever noticed this at all? Does it bother you?

  • Yes, and it drives me up the walls.

    Votes: 4 66.7%
  • Yes, but it doesn't really bother me much.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, but now that you mention it, I do notice it. It's pretty bothersome.

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • No, but now that you mention it, I do notice it. It's not that annoying though.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, and I still can't see it.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6

I am Merp

The Destroyer
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Introduction

So, you may've never noticed it, and if not I apologize for making you notice it now. Basically, every single background in the game (as in the backgrounds that get disabled when the Backgrounds setting is turned off, not cave wall backgrounds) uses Bicubic or Bilinear scaling when viewed in-game because they're scaled much larger than their actual sprite size. What that means is that rather than using a solution that accounts for the pixel art style of the game, they look fuzzy and there is ugly colour blending. There's no reason for it to be this way, is there? If everything else uses nearest neighbour scaling, why can't the backgrounds use it? You could potentially even scale the sprite files themselves up instead of having the game engine scale them up.

Comparison

Here you can see the sprite for one of the new mushroom biome backgrounds. It looks so nice and crisp, and so well made that you could even mistake it for a screenshot of a 3D model. (Bear with me here, it looks fuzzy when viewed here because all browsers use different scaling methods, but if you were to download this image and put it into an image editor, you'll see how crisp the edges look.)
Background_289.png
On the other hand, here you can see how it looks in-game. It's really fuzzy and doesn't look right, especially when compared to the foreground, which looks crisp and pixel-y as ever. There's just something about the background here that makes it look weird when it uses a different scaling method.
Capture 2020-06-27 13_44_46.png

How I Suggest Fixing This

Let's be honest. A lot of these backgrounds were never even made with being this large in mind. I suggest either scaling them WAY down because in the example with the mushroom biome, the Mushrooms in the background are massive compared to the ones in the foreground, and so are the hills. It just looks weird for them to be so much bigger than everything, or to to make the sprites themselves larger rather than scaling them in real time. Every single background (except Hell) can be scaled down without looking wrong, and I'll even go as far as to say that the game would look so much better with a change like that.

Conclusion

Backgrounds use some scaling method other than nearest neighbour which ends up making them look fuzzy and objectively ugly. Seriously, what's the point of making pixel art backgrounds if they're going to be all fuzzy and stick out when compared to everything else? Sure, they could be fuzzy like that because it's supposed to look like they're far away and out of focus, but if that's what was the intent then why aren't the background sprites themselves blurred? What's worse is that this issue has been present since 1.1, which was released on the 1st of December, 2011! As someone who loves the pixel art style of Terraria, this has bugged me for years and years, and now I'm finally getting to talking about it. So please, Relogic, if it isn't and insanely difficult task, I would absolutely love to see this fixed. It'd mean the world to me.
 
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Good idea, but the devs would probably have to do an extension on the backgrounds because otherwise it would be strange to see that the background image starts again when you move somewhere, do you understand?
 
Good idea, but the devs would probably have to do an extension on the backgrounds because otherwise it would be strange to see that the background image starts again when you move somewhere, do you understand?
Yeah, I completely understand that. I can imagine it'd take quite some effort, but I hope it's something that they're willing to pull off since it's a pretty nagging issue in my opinion.
EDIT: If you're talking about the fact that you'd be able to see where the background image ends and where it starts again, all of the backgrounds are made to account for that and they connect to themselves if tiled next to each other.
 
If backgrounds were scaled nearest neighbor, then it would be harder to distinguish between back and foreground.
 
Full Support! I really love the background artstyle, but I can see not blurred backrounds only on startup and the size of objects pisses me off (I think those huge objects are like huge living trees, not sure about mushrooms tho). Also, what about clouds/flying things in the background?
 
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