Squint

"Maybe if I squint, those pixels will look better"

Squint is a live upscaler companion program for Aseprite that allows you to see live what your drawing would look like upscaled through one those filters:

xBR-lv1-noblend (simpler, but less fancy)
xBR-lv2 (fancier with extra smoothness and settings)

Usage

Aseprite setup

Install the extension named squint-client.aseprite-extension. Either double-click the file or install it through Aseprite by locating the "Extensions" tab in the Preferences menu, pressing the "Add Extension" button and locating the extension.
In the File menu, a new "Connect to Squint" entry should have appeared. If you don't see it, you probably haven't reloaded Aseprite or you may have accidentally disabled the extension.
When clicking on the new menu entry, a small window should appear. It's non-blocking so you can still edit the current sprite while it's on.
Aseprite is now waiting for squint to wait for a connection.
You can now launch squint and see it showing your sprite once the communication is done.
As a quirk from the first version of the script, the script will shut down if you switch to another sprite. This is well known and is planned to be fixed.

Controls

F1 to toggle the help screen.
F2 to toggle the background's color between white and dark gray.
Right-click or TAB to toggle the options screen.
S to save the current result into saved.png.
F11 to toggle fullscreen mode.
F12 to screenshot.

Compilation

Squint requires a compiler with C++17 and C11 support and CMake.

It has a few dependencies: raylib, raygui and IXWebSocket.

Tested setups

Windows 10 x64 and Visual Studio 2019
Archlinux x64 and GCC 11.1.0
- The AUR's aseprite package doesn't build with websockets and scripting enabled. You might want to tweak the PKGBUILD to compile a version with those.

Dependency handling

Raylib will be downloaded automatically by CMake if it wasn't installed on your computer
The other libraries will be fetched once you type git submodules init --update at the root of the repository.

Compilation steps

Install a compiler.
Create a build folder inside the repo's root.
Open a terminal there and press

    cmake build .. -DUSE_ZLIB=OFF

CMake should create either a Makefile or a Visual Studio solution (or anything else if you precised it). Use your favorite IDE to use those to compile.
If everything is alright, you should get a squint (or squint.exe) in the build folder.

Eiyeron/squint