Proper tilemap / sprite sizes for Paper 2D? [UE 4-27]

Hey
I’m currently trying to learn Paper 2D for my first smaller project and I was wondering about one technical and graphical thing and can’t find (succesfully at least) any info on that.

As my gameplay scene will always consist of one tilemap room (arena) that is fully captured by the
static camera every time, where moving to different room will move the camera to capture second prepared tilemap and capture it whole on the screen (for reference, image below) is there a best specific size for the tilemap for it to have good quality on every resolution?

SceneAndCameraVizualization

For example, should the map have size of 3840 x 2160 px so it will have good quality while playing in 4K?
Or can I make the map any size I want and it will look the same even on higher resolutions than the map size itself?

Personally, i wouldn´t use the resolution as the determining factor, i would check, if i can build detailed enough tilemaps or scenes with the tiles available (for lenght and width), while making sure, that the tiles themselfes are not too low res, or have a fitting style and charme.

What i mean is, can you design all the scenes with 26x15 tiles? (if i count that correct).

Will the rooms have enough interesting stuff? Because usually the world scrolls left right up and down, if the artist can´t fit everything into one scene, but you decided to basically have no scrolling, each room is one level, so to speak. of course, you always can use multiple screens for bigger structures or buildings.

One game i know (an ancient DOS game), that uses the same way of displaying the world, is built with 40x30 tiles (4:3 resolution for the number of tiles ^.^), of which 40x28 tiles are for the actual level/scene/game world. With 40x28 tiles you can build pretty detailed rooms, or wide areas, without the need for scrolling.

The interesting part for me was, that the tiles were not square, they were pretty unusual 16x12 pixel in size, transforming the whole level to a 16:9 resolution → 40 tiles x 16 pixel = 640 pixel in total, 30 tiles x 12 pixel = 360 pixel, perfect 16:9 format, therefore easily scaleable.
Multiply that by 3 and you get a 1920x1080 resolution, by 6 and you get your 4K, while all tiles fit perfect to all pixels.

What is your tile resolution? 3840 / 26 tiles = 147,69 pixels, that one seems odd, did i count wrong or misscalculate somewhere?
2160/15 = 144 pixels, that one works → 72 pixel at 1080, but are your tiles actually either 72 or 144 pixels in size?

Personally, i wouldn´t use the resolution as the determining factor, i would check, if i can build detailed enough tilemaps or scenes with the tiles available (for lenght and width), while making sure, that the tiles themselfes are not too low res, or have a fitting style and charme.

So if I understand correctly, I shouldnt worry about if the size will be rendered correctly on all types of resolution, just focus on being able to make the proper scene and it should work correctly on any resolution?

What i mean is, can you design all the scenes with 26x15 tiles? (if i count that correct).

The map that you see on the screen, is just as placeholder using the assets I had under hand and will very probably be later replaced when I’ll have proper assets for the game from my artist and this is actually why I asked this technical question, as it is our first game and such detail how the game will work could be useful later.
But about those scenes, the plan is to have every scene (one room/arena) fit always whole on the screen, as the theme of the game is “Training combat simulation”. So yeah, the plan is to have all scenes designed at the same size, but current one is just as placeholder and will very probably be changed later to match the proper assets.

What is your tile resolution?

Current one using those placeholder assets are with Map size 26x15, and Tiles 32x32.
By reading your calculations, I bet it would be a good idea to actually design the tilemap and tiles size to match with screen resolution?

Also, sorry for responding so late, didn’t had time lately.

That´s how i would approach it, since you can´t even make it fit for all resolutions, thanks to some using 16:9, others using 16:10, and mobile devices… well, they seem to have even weirder resolutions ^.^ So i would settle on the most common resolution format (probably a 16:9 res), then decide, how much tiles you will use for your scenes (which then automatically will give you a hint about the tile resolution).

If your tiles don´t fit perfectly, f.e. 32 pixel tiles don´t fit perfectly in your desired resolution, then you still can fill the remaining space with something else, like a menu bar or HUD.
F.E. 32 pixel tiles work great with 1920 pixels ( = 60 tiles), but not so great with 1080 pixels → 33,75 tiles. 33 tiles with 32 pixel would only require 1056 pixel, so you would have an unused bar of 24 pixel at top or bottom.
Same for another 16:9 resolution like 1280:720 → 40 tiles and 22 tiles, with 16 Pixel unused space.

And Unreal can scale this up or down really good, if you set new resolutions for your game, if you switch between resolutions of the same format.
The 2D games, i have played recently, even give options about how to scale to displays with more exotic formats. They let the user decide, if f.e. black bars should be added, to contain the original format, or if it should be stretched, to fill the window/display.
With that, you can make all users happy, and don´t have to worry, about maybe not getting it work pixel perfect on all displays. Let the users decide, what works best for them :slight_smile:

Here f.e. the video options from the game CrossCode (awesome game :heart_eyes: :revolving_hearts: )

Display type lets you choose, how the game scales the window, pixel size then lets you decide, wheter you want ahve blurred/mip mapped, (1) or really sharp and unfiltered pixels (4)

Comparsion between pixel size 1:

and pixel size 4:

Alright, thank you for helping with this problem