With the advent of monitor-based retina technology, and the increasingly popular 1080p display resolution, it would seem like a really good idea to turn things up a notch and upgrade the visual clarity of osu!. And by that, I mean increase the resolution standards of the osu! skins, because as things currently stand, there isn't much of a point to playing osu! at a larger resolution other than having the font appear smoother.
Right now, and for as long as I can remember, osu! skins have revolved around a base resolution consisting of 768 vertical lines. Now, for your typical 1080p screen, that means that most skin elements will be upscaled by over 40% - and even more if it's a larger resolution. This upscaling is especially evident on maps with XL hitcircles, and on newly appearing approach circles. Full screen bitmaps could also use a resolution bump, such as spinner components.
Now, the obvious solution to this is to create another variable in skin.ini to indicate HD skin status. But let's take things a little further and add an optional VerticalResolution value, to enable skins of any resolution. Basically what this can do now, is take a larger-sized skin element, and scale it proportionately to its proper ingame size (for example, a 1080p skin element which is 40% larger in resolution would be mapped to a polygon the same size as the corresponding standard resolution skin element). This allows us to make skins of any resolution, giving osu! maximal flexibility.
If a VerticalResolution value is not given, a default can be 1080p. And if the HD boolean field is not present in the skin.ini file, then it defaults to false, or just standard 768p resolution.
I know that it will amount to quite a lot of reworking of osu!'s rendering engine, but let's face it, times are changing, and technology's advancing. I'm not trying to make this an ultra-high priority request, but this game is over 5 years old now, and in that time the graphical quality of games have escalated immensely. osu! isn't a massive graphical masterpiece, but the visual improvement would still be very much welcome, especially for future upgrades (oh boy).
And yeah I know I know, you're gonna be all like "Oh hurr what about all the craptops that can barely handle osu! right now at 30 FPS D:". First and foremost, this is, for the most part, an option to give osu! the flexibility to look more sexy. But to prevent an onslaught of HD skins, what we can do is enforce a rule for skinners to also upload a standard-definition skin, for those who don't have big enough screens or enough system resources. Hell, with custom resolution skins, we can even make ultra high-performance skins at sub-standard resolutions (perhaps for the economically challenged at 640x480) for a bit of a boost performance-wise.
Another thing to help integration is if we can get some skinners to get some HD skins prepared first. As a matter of fact, for the ones who have vector-based project files, it can be as simple as re-exporting everything at a higher resolution, however it may take a little longer for other people to get their skins sorted out.
But yeah, that'll be all for now. Holy crap this is probably the longest post I've ever written.
Obligatory tl;dr: osu! needs HD skins
Right now, and for as long as I can remember, osu! skins have revolved around a base resolution consisting of 768 vertical lines. Now, for your typical 1080p screen, that means that most skin elements will be upscaled by over 40% - and even more if it's a larger resolution. This upscaling is especially evident on maps with XL hitcircles, and on newly appearing approach circles. Full screen bitmaps could also use a resolution bump, such as spinner components.
Now, the obvious solution to this is to create another variable in skin.ini to indicate HD skin status. But let's take things a little further and add an optional VerticalResolution value, to enable skins of any resolution. Basically what this can do now, is take a larger-sized skin element, and scale it proportionately to its proper ingame size (for example, a 1080p skin element which is 40% larger in resolution would be mapped to a polygon the same size as the corresponding standard resolution skin element). This allows us to make skins of any resolution, giving osu! maximal flexibility.
If a VerticalResolution value is not given, a default can be 1080p. And if the HD boolean field is not present in the skin.ini file, then it defaults to false, or just standard 768p resolution.
I know that it will amount to quite a lot of reworking of osu!'s rendering engine, but let's face it, times are changing, and technology's advancing. I'm not trying to make this an ultra-high priority request, but this game is over 5 years old now, and in that time the graphical quality of games have escalated immensely. osu! isn't a massive graphical masterpiece, but the visual improvement would still be very much welcome, especially for future upgrades (oh boy).
And yeah I know I know, you're gonna be all like "Oh hurr what about all the craptops that can barely handle osu! right now at 30 FPS D:". First and foremost, this is, for the most part, an option to give osu! the flexibility to look more sexy. But to prevent an onslaught of HD skins, what we can do is enforce a rule for skinners to also upload a standard-definition skin, for those who don't have big enough screens or enough system resources. Hell, with custom resolution skins, we can even make ultra high-performance skins at sub-standard resolutions (perhaps for the economically challenged at 640x480) for a bit of a boost performance-wise.
Another thing to help integration is if we can get some skinners to get some HD skins prepared first. As a matter of fact, for the ones who have vector-based project files, it can be as simple as re-exporting everything at a higher resolution, however it may take a little longer for other people to get their skins sorted out.
But yeah, that'll be all for now. Holy crap this is probably the longest post I've ever written.
Obligatory tl;dr: osu! needs HD skins
