Hello, I've trying to achieve the Pixel Art look with squishing and stretching.
Something similar to this which is shown in the editor.

However when shown in the playtesting it looks like this:

A friend has mentioned about upscaling the pixel art and reimporting. I was wondering if there's a different solution.

I would also be interesting in adding high quality UI and text and maybe smooth lighting.
Something similar to Celeste or Eastward.


(Eastward has the smooth lighting and haze on their pixel art)

Here's what my settings look like:

Any Godot experts know how I could go about this.

You could either do an AnimationPlayer attached to the sprite that adjusts the scale over time and loop it or you can just transform it in code itself. Depends on the application.

Something like:

$AnimatedSprite.scale.x = 0.99

would shrink the scale horizontally and...

$AnimatedSprite.scale.y = 0.99

would shrink it vertically.

But you should just be able to edit those values in an AnimationPlayer node - even easier, to be honest. You can have the AnimationPlayer change the sprite values while the sprite plays its own animation frames without having to do it "manually" in the art as you did above.

As for the lighting effect, the WorldEnvironment node is what you're looking for. It is likely just some settings in that one to dampen the color values of the scene. That, or perhaps a 2D overcast sprite with a low alpha value.

    SnapCracklins I apologise. I didn’t get a notification on a comment. Thank you on the shading answer. I’ll have to look into the world node.

    For the squash, I’ve already done that in the animation player and it’s more on the final rendering as it changes it to a result I don’t like. It’s fine in the editor but when playtesting, it becomes quite pixelated that doesn’t look too good. I’ve tried messing with the settings but not too sure how to fix it. Wondering if you know how, thank you for the help!

    What size is your screen?

    In the Editor it uses the resolution of your monitor, which is usually 1920x1080 or higher, and the game can be much lower, like 640x360. So the pixels will look different.

    Unfortunately, you cannot use Scale animations on low-resolution pixel art, and expect it to look good. You have to draw the animation frames by hand. As for high-res dialog, it is possible with a Viewport, and so is the haze/lighting with CanvasModulate. But they are not simple