Re: [Adonthell-artwork] Fwd: Screen resolution(s)

[Kai Sterker]

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:34 AM, James Nash <address@hidden> wrote:

> Sending the original failed (probably because I had attached an image). Here 
> it is again with a link to an uploaded copy of the image...

Strange. Should have held it for moderator approval ...
Anyway, I think up to a certain size, attachments are fine. Over 100
or 150k, that's the result.


>> I've been thinking about screen resolutions. If I'm not supporting we have 
>> currently fixed the game at 640 x 480 (aka "VGA").

Yeah, although I definitely wanted to add support for 16:10 and 16:9
aspect ratios for the Waste's Edge remake. I got the MacBook Pro
that's 1440x900 and the TV that's 1920x1080, and I'd like to run WE on
those without ugly borders or image distortions. (I've also got an old
17" flatscreen with 1280x1024 and the iBook with 1024x768).


>> The main reason is that this allows us to delivery a consistent game 
>> experience to the player. The amount of map that is visible and the size of 
>> characters and objects relative to that remains fixed. (Imagine if we used 
>> the same graphics but scaled the viewport up to a big resolution - you'd 
>> probably see the entire Waste's Edge village on one screen but you'd need a 
>> magnifying glass to find your character!)

Exactly. Adjusting for different aspect ratios should be fine, but
opening up the resolution completely might ruin the level design.


>> So, if we designed our graphics to fit comfortably within these sizes and 
>> layout maps (and design the gameplay) such that things a player must be able 
>> to see on screen fit within the minimal view area, then we can scale and 
>> stretch to pretty much any common screen resolution using integer multiples.

Yeah, that does sound appealing. Even though Ingo specifically noted
that he had scaled the remade graphics for 1024x768, they are
currently still being used at 640x480. I'm not sure if they are too
large if it gets much smaller than that, though. OTOH, if you want to
move to more pixel-artish gfx, perhaps sizing them down a bit will be
good for the quality.

Chosing a bigger, native resolution, means that other common
resolutions can not be had with Integer scaling. (OTOH, try walking
into a store and buy a display that's not 1920x1080 these days). It's
late again, so I won't do any numbers, but perhaps we could work
something out in the range of 960x540, 720x450 and 640x512, if you
don't mind the 320px difference in the horizontal direction.

Kai