Hello, everybody. I'm learning how to program in C++ and use Allegro to make games. What I want to do for my first big milestone is make something along the quality standards of the Atari 2600. Following this, I want to get into making something along the lines of the NES. Now, I realize with Allegro that I don't have to get into the nitty-gritty Assembly that the original hardware for those platforms required. I can use C++ to do the job with way too much power, surely. Here's my theory: on a pixel-by-pixel level, I can make a game like that for the Atari 2600 or NES using Allegro within small dimensions (say, 120 x 120 pixels for NES). This will be very small on my computer, which is running at a resolution of 1280 x 800. Clearly, this is terrible for playing purposes. Surely it's possible, but undesirable. What I would like to do is be able to scale the game, once it's been implemented, so that it grows to be several times its size and is thus much easier to play. One can see how this looks if one downloads an emulator for the NES and plays it on their computer at the size where pixels from the NES are the same as his or her computer. With emulators, one usually has the option to scale the game to their liking. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to where I can go to learn how to scale a game in such a manner as just previously described? I don't know how simple or how difficult it is, really, as I don't have much experience thus far. At best, I know the basics of C++ and some of the Allegro library's functions and features, but I'm about 3% of the way toward efficiency with either of them. Haha. Help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for your time :] Colton

Sorry to bump, but if anyone doesn't know how to do this with Allegro, does anyone at least know how to do it with SDL or OpenGL? I'm making the switch over to those two right now and help with those instead would actually be more beneficial to more (though the theory, independent of which library I choose, is what I'm after the most). Thank you.

Colton

Oh wow, that actually makes sense.... and as a result of this, the sprites will be scaled, as well, not just the screen itself? Thank you for your reply.

Colton

If the aspect ratio is proportional to its original, however, will it still look good? At three times size, for example, at 768 x 720, will it look to be of a similar quality? I appreciate your help.

Colton

Thank you very much. I'm glad to know that it's not going to be a strenuous endeavor to scale the game. :]

What scaling like that won't do, though, is offer the same type of quality in the scaling that you get in an emulator, which typically use something like hqnx or 2xSal rather than nearest-neighbour. They aren't as simple to implement, but can deliver much better results with pixel art.

DeathRay2K,

I don't mind learning more advanced methods of doing anything to produce optimal results and to learn. In fact, things like that interest me greatly. I see them as challenges. When I get to the point where I may need scaling and better quality, I'll probably end up trying to learn one of those two scaling methods. Thank you for your input.

Colton