Pretty scaling in 2D Pixel art game

[fast dagger]

Hi there, I'm currently making a 2D Pixel art game.

Therefore, I configured my project like this:
Size:
Viewport width : 640
Viewport height : 360
Stretch:
Mode : viewport
Aspect : keep
Scale : 1
Scale mode : integer

Which is a blast.

The problem is : My screen doesn't fill up the whole window if it's size is not an integer factor of my base resolution.
Your answer will be : "It's not a bug, that's the feature you triggered yourself"

Yes. I want my scaling to be an integer but I also want my game to fill up the screen it's in. To do so I wanted to scale my game by the integer ROUNDED UP of the float that could fill my window. This way I lose the borders of my image but I can make a game larger than it's needed to in order to not lose anything important when I cut a part of the borders.

How to do that ? I tried to play with cameras, with the viewport properties etc, but I had no luck. What is the good way of solving this ?

[jovial onyx]

I don't know how to do exactly as you asked, but one way around this issue is to use a setting menu with set resolution options and then adjust the project scaling based on that option.

It could be something that's conceptually like this:

const RES_STR_TO_INTEGER_SCALE: Dictionary = {
"640×360":1,
"1280×720":2,
"1920×1080":3
}

func set_custom_project_scale(screen_resolution_str: String) -> int:

*insert project scale variable here* = RES_STR_TO_INTEGER_SCALE[screen_resolution_str]```

When you call that function or set the variable is up to you.

If no one can come up with a good answer, this seems like a legitimate option. There's also probably a better way of doing this using an enum.

[steady hill]

Think I found half of what you need :
small original view vs scaled up (grey bar is empty scene as opposed to letterbox)
Though idk if/how to keep it centered if you find that let me know!

[fast dagger]

It doesn't work, my game is still smaller than the window containing it:

My goal is for my game to fill the whole space

[fast dagger]

I don't exactly understand what would be the perks of doing this regarding my original problem. I would like to scale to a "float", not by really scaling my game by a float but rather by cropping anything that wouldn't fit the window by scaling bigger. I don't know if i'm clear here.

Thank you to both of you to give me some of your time

[steady hill]

Damn right I forgot about the Integer pixel scaling

If you know how to set a custom integer pixel scaling directly I can figure out the math to zoom it in our out and fit it

[fast dagger]

The problem is, when my viewport is 640x360 and my scaling is set to integer, zooming doesn't do anything to the size of the game.

I suppose I should put it back to fractional scaling, stretching the game to the window's size and zoom afterward in order to have an integer scaling on each pixels. Do you think it's possible ?

[hybrid jungle]

I'm just going to mention subviewport in a subviewportcontainer as a wrapper around your scene, rendering at a fixed 360p, and then scaling the subviewportcontainer so that it always is covering the whole screen

[steady hill]

My idea was to set the scaling to integer still but use basically ceil(the closest scale value)

[fast dagger]

Seems doable but why would it work better than just doing a fractional scaling ? I feel like I'm missing something

[steady hill]

Which sounds like void's idea with extra steps I think

[hybrid jungle]

fractional scaling would distort the viewport I think, and if I understand correctly you want to cut off the edges isntead right

[fast dagger]

Yes, the thing i'm trying to avoid is to scale pixels to not integer number of pixel, making the game either blurry, either hideous. So, if i'm understanding correctly, you solution would cut the edges because the subviewport would be bigger than the actual viewport ?

[hybrid jungle]

yeah it would require some setup but be possible

[fast dagger]

I'll give it a try and share my result in this post in the next days

[steady hill]

Thanks appreciate it I'll have to implement something similar eventually too

[fast dagger]

My only fear is that id could be impossible to a subviewport to be bigger than the actual viewport, I had this problem in the past

But the setup was completely different, I'll do my tests

[hybrid jungle]

I would say
SubviewportContainer with stretch disabled, size set to the pixelart resolution, then use its scale and position to make it occupy the window however you like
as a child Subviewport, again set to the pixelart resolution and all the settings you might want
as a child of that your active scene