[Request]Decimal X and Y coordinates (for actives)

[LazyCoder]

I think it would be really cool (especially for low res games) if there was an option to have x and y coordinates to be decimal numbers. Not only would it behave differently in the events, it would look a heck of a lot better too.

If you're not quite sure what I'm talking about, I can make a quick video describing this effect.

[DJFuego]

what's wrong with pixel values?

[James]

Pixels are quite a jump on the screen, while decimal values would look much nicer for movement. They can be achieved with anti-aliasing.

[Sphax]

Maybe decimal positions will be put when HWA will be available.
Actually no anti-aliasing is possible for sprites in a software renderer but decimal positions could be cool too, to allow us to have calculations on them without using alterable values.

[stuckboy]

Yeah Sphax, I think you're right. Since HWA works using coordinates, not pixels, it would probably just mean extra work to make everything snap to 1px.

[Dynasoft]

Of course floating point co-ords are possible in a software engine, everything is. It just might be slow.

Anyway, the normal reason for requesting floating point co-ordinates is for custom movement engines, where a speed is added each frame that won't be a whole pixel. 1px/frame and 2px/frame are quite different speeds. Even if it only rendered as being at the nearest pixel it would be better than using alt values to mirror the position.

[Francois]

Of course, in the movement routines we use floating points numbers (well binary floating points). We do not do the movement by chunks of pixels. The result of the calculation is rounded to the nearest pixel for display...

[Blake]

You can always use an alterable value to store the 'real' X/Y position as a floating point, and then set the active's position to those values.

[LazyCoder]

You can always use an alterable value to store the 'real' X/Y position as a floating point, and then set the active's position to those values.

Yea I've always done that. But what I'm talking about here is more about the appearance of it, rather than the benefits it would bring to the event editor.

I've made a short (8 second video) illustrating this technique. XVid codec required.
http://www.savefile.com/files/941733