Make Your Own Games: How Can Bitmaps and Vector Graphics Make Your Game Look Professional?

If you want to learn how to make your own games, there are several things that you need to know first. One of the most important areas in Game Design and Development is the area of Graphic Design.

The Graphic Design in a game can make all the difference between a poor looking game and a professional looking game. In Game Design, there is one distinction that is particularly useful, and that is the distinction between Bitmaps and Vector Graphics.

Vector Graphics are graphics created based on mathematical equations. They store images in the form of lines, colors and vectors (points), which makes it so that it is very easy to scale Vector Graphics without loosing quality in your image's information. Actually, the vector image needs to be rendered before it can be seen, as it is stored in the form of mathematical information to be interpreted visually.

Bitmaps (raster images) on the other side are built pixel by pixel. Each dot (pixel) on the image has color information. This is how digital photography is stored, and it has the main disadvantage of not allowing you to scale the image without the computer having to invent information, which very easily leads to a kind of visual noise know as pixelization.

What pixelization is is that pixels (dots) in the image are so big that they are actually visible. This was the case in old computers (8-bit graphics, for example), and is used today as a graphic design technique to give images a bit of a technostalgic look.

Now, how can bitmaps and vector graphics make your game look professional?

First of all, know that vector graphics are created in a different manner. They are more like illustrations or drawings that can be easily modified (and for example, this is used as a 2D animation technique). The thing is, you can easily use vector graphics to make animations and even games (Flash is a good example of this) that are "illustration based".

On the other hand, bitmap manipulation will help you in the design of interfaces and giving that feeling that you want to give to your buttons, menus, displays... The thing is, if you do not know what vector images and bitmaps (raster images) are, and how to use them, this will be a great start to get you rolling on your graphic design.

You can either try Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator solutions or go for the free alternatives (great and very powerful, I recommend them): The Gimp and Inkscape.

You will discover that most of the time you can combine the power of Vector and Raster Graphics to make your designs much more powerful. From the sprites (if you are working on a 2D game) to textures (if you are working on 3D), to the interface and the motion graphics for your video games animations, there are many ways in which Bitmaps and Vector Graphics will make your designs much more attractive and professional, thus making your video games look much more professional (and sell better).