I have decided to take up the problem of the face displays. This is very early, but I have nothing better to do. I know that I have done earlier design work on this, but I'm going to start fresh.
The first matter is the size of the image. The old image was definitely tight at 192h x 256v (50K pixels); so what do I use instead? The maximum size would be 330h x 440v (145K pixels). I am tempted to go with 256h x 340v, (88K pixels), as this would leave 100 pixels underneath for the character's text.
How big is this? Well, I am now typing in a box that is confined to those dimensions. As you can see, it definitely includes a goodly amount of text. I am now up to five lines of text and it all seems to fit just fine. No, make that six lines of text and still going strong! Can I try for seven lines of text? Yes!
I realize that this demonstration uses my especially tight Palatino font, but even so, there's enough text to handle most situations well. So let's commit to 256h x 340v. That's a little overwide, but I think it gives us an opportunity to let the stage background show up.
Double-check one fact: with 88K pixels per image, we'll need about 60K compressed per facial background. If we provide 50 facial backgrounds, then we're talking 3M of face imagery. Oh, well, they can download it.
After some thought, I've decided to discard the idea of variations in the background face, as it will consume far too much storage space. No skew, no yaw, and no tilt. For now, this will have to do.
However, I do need to consider the question of number of colors. I really hated all those restrictions with 256 colors; I think we should simply demand thousands of colors. The source images, though, should be only eight bits deep; that will keep their disk sizes small. I think that QuickDraw can manage the conversion quickly enough.
So, will I enhance the image drawing itself? Clearly I'll be able to improve the resolution of the facial stuff, but not by much: it's only a 30% gain. But I might be able to use greater color depth in the lines themselves, or perhaps some shading. This will require direct examination.
Ende.