Long time ago we had a small game project called DragonWars. It was a strategy game using hexagon maps and hand drawn graphics. Unit graphics are nice  but the  problem with them is the size.  Units are 16px * 16px which is way too small for today’s modern games. Therefore Juha has been playing around with different scaling algorithms to see how we could use those old graphics without the need to fully redraw them. The most promising algorithms have been Hq4x and Microsoft research center’s Depixeling the Pixel art -project (DPA from now on).

Hq4x is widely available while the DPA has no reference implementation available. What makes DPA more appealing in our eyes is the fact that DPA generates vector graphics from the raster graphics while hq4x just scales the raster graphics into new fixed size raster graphics. For our longer plans vector graphics would be ideal but for now we will have to stick with raster graphics and hq4x.

If Juha gives me his permission I will later post some example icons to this blog.