Is RPG Maker VX Ace capable of a 2x mode?

[Autofire]

Hi, peeps!

I got VXAce with the Humble Gamemaker's Bundle a couple years back. However, being more a coder, I never really got much use out of VXAce in particular. However, I recently decided to show my younger brother VXAxe, and he's been having a lot of fun playing around with it. Because of this, I'd like to make a little side project using VXAce so that I can learn the engine.

Since I've spent most of this summer writing oodles of code, I want to make this side project more art-focused. I'm not too good with pixel-art, though, so I thought I'd try developing the game with a very retro aesthetic. My goal is a pixelated, low-res game with just 4 colors.

But my initial sprites look all wrong in VXAce, since they're drawn in their true size. I would like to have some way to double the size that sprites are drawn at. Is there any way of easily doing this?

No, I'm not asking to increase the resolution. There is this nice script that seems to add support for slightly higher resolution (as well as some other bug fixes), but that's not what I'm looking for. I would rather be able to scale up the size that sprites are rendered so that it looks more retro. This would also go for tiles; they would render at twice the size, so only a fourth of the tiles could show on the screen at once. This would better mimic the small screens of systems like the GB.

If VXAce doesn't support sprite scaling, I could probably work around this limitation by splitting up characters into 4 objects that move together, but I don't even know if the engine can support this at a code level, and it seems like it would be really hacky and out of the scope of such a small project.

I could also mimic a low resolution by drawing my characters at 16x16. This isn't quite ideal, though...I'm pretty sure that a GB couldn't render that many tiles at once.

EDIT: I want to emphasize that, if there is a code-based solution, I don't need a detailed piece of code that does that. (Though that does help!) I specifically want to know if there is any support for what I'm looking for. I did some searching, and I didn't find anything of the sort, so I assume it's not possible. However, I wanted to ask before I gave up.

EDIT2: It appears that RPG Maker 2003 is a little closer to what I want, but I don't really want to buy another RPG Maker, especially when I have a newer version...

 

[BadMinotaur]

If I were going to try a low-res retro-type game, I'd first call Graphics.set_size to change the resolution to something smaller (the exact method name and parameters should be in your VX Ace help file). For that true retro feel, you should stick with a 4:3 screen ratio. Then I'd use Zeus81's Fullscreen++ script to artificially scale the game's output in both fullscreen and windowed mode.

On a side note -- you don't have to draw characters as four separate objects and move them in tandem in VX Ace. You can just create a spritesheet with larger dimensions. Look up the help topic "Resource Standards" in your VX Ace help file and it'll explain how to make larger character sprites.

 

[Autofire]

Yay, quick reply!

Alright, I'll look into Graphics.set_size and the script you've linked.

Okay, I'll have a look at making sprites with larger dimensions, too. I did look that page before, but I got the impression that things scaled down when they were too big...or something silly like that.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Autofire]

I got it working! I'm still not exactly sure how to resize the screen as soon as the game starts, so I currently just have an NPC to talk to that shrinks the screen. (I'll figure out to do it at the game's boot, I'm sure.) Then, in order to get the camera to center on the player, I had to walk through a door to reload the level.

It was working pretty up until I tried starting a battle. It turns out that one of the built-in functions doesn't know how to cope with such a small screen, leading to a crash. This is my current solution (to be put in Materials, before anything else that overrides Window_BattleStatus):

class Window_BattleStatus
  #--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  # * Draw Basic Area (override)
  #--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  def draw_basic_area(rect, actor)
    draw_actor_name(actor, rect.x + 0, rect.y, 100)
  
    # If the screen size is microscopic, iconWidth will
    # go negative, causing a crash. This ensures that it
    # gets a valid value.
    #
    # ALSO, this just fixes the crash, but doesn't necessarily
    # make things functional.
    icon_width = rect.width - 104
    if(icon_width <= 0) then
      icon_width = Graphics.width
    end
  
    draw_actor_icons(actor, rect.x + 104, rect.y, icon_width)
  end
end

The end result is very bad by default, though; the font is way too large and all the menus get mashed together. But that's alright; I can take it from here.

I intend on releasing the code for doing this (in a more fitting section), in addition to any custom fonts and such to get it to all fit on the screen. This is just a band-aid fix for anyone who might stumble across this thread and is willing to get things looking nice on their own.