An Xbox engineer fixed a user’s small 15-year-old Xbox 360 gamer image so that it now displays correctly on modern devices.
Earlier this week, producer and video editor Gabriel Roland tweeted a photo of their gamerpic 360 as it now appears on modern consoles: tiny.
This Pac-Man gamerpic, bought for 80 Microsoft Points in 2006, shrinks with each new console generation as the resolutions increase.
Most Xbox users updated their gamerpic years ago. Not Roland, however.
“With each passing generation, Xbox tries to shame my Pac-Man phantom avatar by making it smaller and smaller,” Roland said.
“I won’t give in. I bought this gamerpic for 80 Xbox Points in 2006, and I’ll be screwed if it doesn’t have the best dollar I’ve ever spent until the sea boils over.”
With each passing generation, Xbox tries to shame my Pac-Man ghost avatar by making it smaller and smaller. I will not give in. I bought this gamerpic for 80 xbox points in 2006, and i’ll be screwed if there’s not the best dollar i ever spent until the sea overflows pic.twitter.com/Ji5ttoUVjh
– Gabriel Roland (@noukon) August 19, 2021
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Xbox Engineering Manager Eden Marie took note and promised to do something to help Roland’s aging gamerpic.
“Look, I can’t promise anything, but I’m going to make it my personal mission to solve this problem,” Marie said.
Marie began her quest by purchasing the Pac-Man avatar, which is still on sale, though it’s now priced at $ 2.38.
First step: I ACTUALLY PURCHASED THE GAMERPIC PACK. It was .38 and not a dollar so I already went above that already give me my bonus pic.twitter.com/Yo1v51YlJT
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) 25 August 2021
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First of all, this is going to be a multi-stage journey and I cannot promise that there will be steady progress. But if I asked you how many ways we display player images on the console and your answer wasn’t something like “all” then you would be irrelevant.
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 26, 2021
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Marie later discovered that 360 gamerpics can never exceed 72 x 72 pixels, which is why it looks tiny. She also found that if you upload a transparent PNG as a custom gamerpic, the dashboard and guide will respect that transparency in most places. Some of the built-in gamerpics also have built-in transparency.
Something changed a while ago and part of the plumbing broke as a result. So this page at least was an easy fix. Sorry, Tiny Fez, you are the first victim of this thread!
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 26, 2021
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I needed a square gamerpic for testing, remembering the time I bought Far Cry 2 at full price just so I could unlock this one pic.twitter.com/PyW4vXwnSC
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 26, 2021
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So, Marie treated the 360 gamerpic as a square in a larger gamerpic circle, the rest being transparent.
Let’s talk about making them more beautiful now. A long time ago, someone decided that no matter what size gamerpic we wanted to display, the 360 gamerpic would never exceed 72 x 72 pixels. The rest of the background is filled with a magnified, faded version of itself. pic.twitter.com/MBPJvurlPC
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 27, 2021
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Fun fact: Did you know that if you upload a PNG file with transparency as a custom gamerpic, the dashboard and guide will respect that transparency in most places? Some of the built-in gamerpics have built-in transparency. Maybe we can take advantage of it here. pic.twitter.com/DMKQAxUTLW
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 27, 2021
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Revisiting Tiny Fez (rip, thanks @TetroniMike) it doesn’t look bad (I added the pink circle as a reference). Would have been better using nearest neighbor tween, but that’s a headache for another day, UWP XAML seems determined not to make that easy. pic.twitter.com/RWKbvg2vOx
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 27, 2021
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Below is the final result:
It’s a lot of fun, and sometimes you even learn something new, like … apparently 360 gamerpics have supported transparency from the start?
SURPRISE
Anyway, what do you think, @noukon? Do you feel better with that dollar? pic.twitter.com/zxQx7SmHJw
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 27, 2021
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Roland replied – and looked elated: “I have never felt and will never feel better with a dollar in all my life.”
Then:
It really helps that your bug report tweet made me laugh
– Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) August 27, 2021
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That’s a cool result for this gamerpic, of course, but, Tweeter, Marie said a change can be made to the way all 360 player images are displayed on the console, not just some. This is an update that will need to roll out along with other console updates, but it looks like it’s coming.
Hopefully my little Master Chief face will soon be pretty enough to see it again!
Article source https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-28-xbox-engineer-makes-users-tiny-15-year-old-360-gamerpic-big-enough-to-see-again