How to scale texture2d in XNA with window resizing

Question

I'm developing an UI for a project for school, and I've tried similar methods to scaling my texture as listed here, but here is the issue:

Our project is developed at 1440 x 900, so I've made my own images that fit that screen resolution. When we have to demo our project in class, the projector can only render up to 1024 x 768, thus, many things on the screen goes missing. I have added window resizing capabilities, and I'm doing my scaling like this. I have my own class called "button" which has a texture 2d, and a Vector2 position contruscted by Button(Texture2d img, float width, float height).

My idea is to set the position of the image to a scalable % of the window width and height, so I'm attempting to set the position of the img to a number between 0-1 and then multiply by the window width and height to keep everything scaled properly.

(this code is not the proper syntax, i'm just trying to convey the point)

Button button = new Button(texture, .01, .01 );
int height = graphicsdevice.viewport.height * button.position.Y;
int width = graphicsdevice.viewport.width * button.position.X;

Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(0,0,width, height);

sprite.being()
sprite.draw (button.img, rect, color.white);
sprite.end

it doesn't end up scaling anything when i go to draw it and resize the window by dragging the mouse around. if i hard code in a different bufferheight and bufferwidth to begin with, the image stays around the same size regardless of resolution, except that the smaller the resolution is, the more pixelated the image looks.

what is the best way to design my program to allow for dynamic texture2d scaling?

Why are you multiplying the size of the window with the position of the button? Also XNA doesn't directly handle window resizing by dragging, do a google search on how to implement this in XNA. You shouldn't have a problem if you just run it in fullscreen. — Hannesh

Darkhydro Darkhydro · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-03T03:53:40

As Hannesh said, if you run it in fullscreen you won't have these problems. However, you also have a fundamental problem with the way you are doing this. Instead of using the position of the sprite, which will not change at all during window resize, you must use the size of the sprite. I often do this using a property called Scale in my Sprite class. So instead of clamping the position of the sprite between 0 and 1, you should be clamping the Size property of the sprite between 0 and 1. Then as you rescale the window it will rescale the sprites.

In my opinion, a better way to do this is to have a default resolution, in your case 1440 x 900. Then, if the window is rescaled, just multiply all sprites' scaling factors by the ratio of the new screensize to the old screensize. This takes only 1 multiplication per resize, instead of a multiplication per update (which is what your method will do, because you have to convert from the clamped 0-1 value to the real scale every update).

Also, the effects you noticed during manual rescale of the sprites is normal. Rescaling images to arbitrary sizes causes artifacts in the rendered image because the graphics device doesn't know what to do at most sizes. A good way to get around this is by using filler art during the development process and then create the final art in the correct resolution(s). Obviously this doesn't apply in your situation because you are resizing a window to arbitrary size, but in games you will usually only be able to switch to certain fixed resolutions.

How to scale texture2d in XNA with window resizing

1 Answers