Crate bevy_pixcam

A simple camera plugin for the Bevy game engine, to help with the use of pixel-art sprites.

This crates provides a plugin to automatically configure Bevy’s Camera2d. It works by setting the camera to an integer scaling factor (using Bevy’s ScalingMode::WindowSize), and automatically updating the zoom level so that the specified target resolution fills as much of the sceen as possible.

The plugin can also automatically set and resize the viewport of the camera to match the target resolution.

Comparison with other methods

There is two main methods to render pixel-art games: upscale each sprite independently, or render everything to an offscreen texture and only upscale this texture. This crate use the first method. There is advantages and drawbacks to both approaches.

Advantages of the “upscale each sprite independently” method (i.e. this crate):

• allows for smoother scrolling and movement of sprites, if you’re willing to temporarily break the alignment on virtual pixels (this would be even more effective with a dedicated upscaling shader);
• easier to mix pixel-art and high resolution graphics (for example for text, particles or effects).

Advantages of the “offscreen texture” method:

• always ensure perfect alignment on virtual pixels (authentic “retro” look);
• may be more efficient (in most cases, the difference is probably negligible on modern computers).

Structs

PixelCameraPlugin

Provides the camera system.

PixelViewport

Configure a Camera2d to automatically set the viewport so that only pixels inside the desired resolution (as defined by the PixelZoom component) are displayed.

Enums

PixelZoom

Configure a Camera2d to use integer scaling and automatically match a specified resolution.