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Discussion about resolutions

U

Uhfgood

Guest
I would categorize this more as a discussion rather than me asking a question. How do you guys handle resolutions -- I don't mean how to program some sort of resolution manager -- but how do you design around a certain resolution or not?

I've figured out, that when I have a scale of 1 on my game which is 135x240 -- my phone scales it up automatically -- when in html5 the web does not and I have to scale it.

I'm talking generally about fixed playfield sizes -- When you're making a game that's more-or-less resolution independent then this isn't as critical. A sidescrolling platformer for instance doesn't quite need to worry about the end device resolution -- I'm not saying not at all, I'm just saying mostly. You have a larger than the screen playfield in a scrolling game, so you can pretty much fix the size of your sprites or tiles, but don't need to worry if the whole playfield is on the screen.

My game is a single screen game, so I have to worry about it more.

Any recommendations for doing a low res single screen game? What do you guys do?

Please discuss!
 

RangerX

Member
Since you want your game to fit in most people devices and screens without too much drawbacks, I think what's the most important aspect to consider first is "what are the most popular screen resolution". This data is easily found on the internet.
Most screens today are of 16:9 screen ratio so whatever the resolution I want, I would take a 16:9 one. After that you probably want to facilitate scaling for certain sizes. Per example in the "mister everybody" world, the most common resolution on PC is 1366x768 (a size I can't wait for it to die in a fire and never come back). However, amongst gamer the most common resolution is 1920x1080 commonly called "Full HD". This is, in my opinion, the resolution for which your game should be optimised.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I mostly go for feel when I decide on the resolution for my games - I'm a lot better at drawing stuff based around 16x16 sprites, and if you want a 1:1 base resolution to work around, you need to pick something that's not too big; it's nice with screen space, but the player need to be able to see what's on the screen. In my current project, I'm using a resolution of 480x256, which is bigger than the NES (which I'm mimicking) but close enough to 16:9. I think it's important to have a screen resolution that's an integer multiple of your tile size so you never need to worry about visual balance with tiles being half-outside of the view and such, but of course this is less of an issue in 3D games and other polygonial-based games.
 
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