Remember when Scratch Cat used to be pixelated in Scratch 1.4? Why is Scratch Cat even pixelated in Scratch 1.4?

It was drawn in bitmap, not vector, and bitmap is lower quality than bitmap, making it look pixelated.

Scratch 1.4 did not have vector graphics — only bitmap graphics. So, naturally, this Scratch Cat had to be pixelated, since bitmap doesn't allow for “smooth” graphics of the same quality as vector.

You can call bitmap graphics raster graphics too!

cs3866870 wrote:

Remember when Scratch Cat used to be pixelated in Scratch 1.4? Why is Scratch Cat even pixelated in Scratch 1.4?

Vector was introduced later in scratch after 1.4, and since There was no smooth graphics, Scratch cat had to be pixelated. Think of it as the first mario brothers, back then every game was pixels.

Wild_Fl0wers wrote:

cs3866870 wrote:

Remember when Scratch Cat used to be pixelated in Scratch 1.4? Why is Scratch Cat even pixelated in Scratch 1.4?

Vector was introduced later in scratch after 1.4, and since There was no smooth graphics, Scratch cat had to be pixelated. Think of it as the first mario brothers, back then every game was pixels.

Correct

Za-Chary wrote:

Scratch 1.4 did not have vector graphics — only bitmap graphics. So, naturally, this Scratch Cat had to be pixelated, since bitmap doesn't allow for “smooth” graphics of the same quality as vector.

Ihatr wrote:

It was drawn in bitmap, not vector, and bitmap is lower quality than bitmap, making it look pixelated.

Wild_Fl0wers wrote:

cs3866870 wrote:

Remember when Scratch Cat used to be pixelated in Scratch 1.4? Why is Scratch Cat even pixelated in Scratch 1.4?

Vector was introduced later in scratch after 1.4, and since There was no smooth graphics, Scratch cat had to be pixelated. Think of it as the first mario brothers, back then every game was pixels.

While that explains why the Scratch Cat is not in vector before Scratch 2.0, it doesn't explain why Scratch Cat was pixelated. Because most people don't have oscilloscopes as monitors, all vector images have to be converted into bitmap to even be displayed. Because Scratch 2 and 3 have the same size stage as Scratch 1.x, we can use insert them into Scratch 1.4, and it will look completely normal because the pixels can be colored to appear smooth, which is what all bitmap representations of vector objects do anyway, and why this imported png of Scratch Cat looks very smooth despite it being in Scratch 1.4.



How I did this was export the Scratch Cat sprite from Scratch 3 as an SVG, use this tool to convert into a PNG and set the height and width were 96 and 101, the dimensions of Scratch Cat in proper bitmap form, and then import it into Scratch 1.4. Note that Scratch 1.4 does not seem to support transparency – it's either completely opaque or completely transparent, so you'll get these nasty edge artifacts unless you remove it yourself. I did it manually in Paint.net so the area around Scratch Cat is transparent instead of white. You can see all the shades of light grey around Scratch Cat that used to be very transparent pixels in the icon.

So I guess that still begs the question, since 1.4 was clearly capable of handling bitmap images that appear smooth and vector-like, why was the Scratch 1.x Cat pixelated? Perhaps it's to minimize artifacts from rotating and scaling; since Scratch 1's rendering engine was not very good, changing the size or direction of the sprite will look awful and have artifacts not present in later versions. Perhaps back in the late 2000s, color palettes were still limited for a lot of people, so keeping it pixelated will make sure everyone sees the Scratch Cat properly. Or maybe they just compressed, resized, and/or converted the sprite in a terrible way, resulting in pixelation.

If you want to create your own cursed Scratch 1.x screenshots or just look at it, you can download the PNG I used here, assuming I did that right.

In scratch 1.4's scratch cat is pixeleated along with 1.x and 0.x versions. Previously versions are pixelated too. But scratch cat has low quality of his desgin then it became high qualitied.

OK…