Hello all, I have been working on my first full 2D project in gamestudio. This is the first time I've rotated panels using .angle, and so on, although I've done lots of created panels stuff before. I'm posting here because I'm asking beginning questions and am not sure where a 2D panel rotation question would go anyway.

I can't get my rotated panels to look good.
They get all jaggy and un-anti aliased when I rotate them. I've tried using scaled down versions of large .tgas, anti aliased them as much as possible in photoshop, tried upping the games screen res as high as possible, and nothing worked.

I just want to know, am I missing something? Is gamestudio just crappy for real time rotation panels? Are my little 2D tanks going to be jaggy because I have not set some engine variable to 1? Is gamestudio fine for this, but I've drawn my units wrong and should do X to them in photoshop?

I've built a 2D rts engine, with path finding, and all the systems I want over the last two weeks, and now I can't seem to make the units look smooth when they move. I'm about to switch to 3D sprites! arrg.

Thanks for any and all advice,
-Michael

Sry for the double post, here is a screen shot. They look worse when moving, as the rotation is not smooth at all.

Have you tried changing the screen resolution?

I always heard that 3dgs could make 2d games. But, since I wasn't interested in 2d games, I never researched about this.

But I'm curious! How can a 2d game be made? Maybe panels are not the ideal path.

I've tried making the screen res larger and small, from 640x480 to 1280x1024.

I've used oanels from battleships forever, I've made 256x256 .tga's of tanks and scaled them down. I've tried just making the units bigger on the screen. Nothing comes close to smoothness that my 3D projects have.

ever tried using sprites rather than panels?

I'm just about to. It's a big step, as the engine is 2D, but I did a few tests using another project, and it was not great. Still, I'll post back here with sprite results. Thanks for the suggestion.

-Michael

EDIT: I've switched over to 3D sprites placed a certain dist in front of the camera, and then tilted so that they appear 2D. There was enough difference between this and panels to make it worth it. I can now use particle effects in 3D, and the movement is less jerking (something panels were doing).

However, most of the antialiasing I solved by scaling the units up a bit and using .tga's with alpha channels. I then used a black outer glow on the outlines of the units, which blurs them a little. It works, but it only fakes antialiasing.