Pixel Perfect Time Pilot in Unity 3D
My challenge to recreate Xevious has piqued my interest in the mechanics of other games of the time. One of my old favourites is Time Pilot.
What makes Time Pilot (and Bosconian before it) is that your player (a plane) remains centred in the screen. When you move your plane rotates and the everything else moves relative to your direction. That sounds like a challenge.
Pixel Perfect
In my recreation of Xevious I just used a standard camera. However, Unity has set of features to support just this sort of retro game feel. One such component is called 2D Pixel Perfect camera. So how does this effect recreating Time Pilot.
Time Pilot details
The Time Pilot sprite is a sequence of 32x32 pixels. The original screen resolution is 254x256 — It certainly was not Ultra HD quality.
Default Camera View
Just using the standard camera and placing the sprite on the screen this is the result
Adding 2D Pixel Perfect
What does it look like with the default Pixel Perfect Component?
NB I am using the experimental version as my project is using the URP (Universal Render Pipeline).
Now to use the original details as the settings.
Force the screen to crop and stretch
Tweak the scale by x2, add a little UI and…
Pixel Perfect is not just about screen size it is far more about how the sprites are rendered. In theory it should not effect the game play/code, but…Time…will tell.
