Lemma Soft Forums

I was thinking of making the native resolution of my new game 800x600, rather than 640x480. (This would govern the size of the background and character images.) I was wondering:

1) Does anyone still, in 2004, have a monitor not capable of handling 800x600?

2) What resolutions are other games running at?

3) Is there some other reason why 800x600 would be a bad idea?

(I'm also still toying with if I want the game to be letterbox or not. But that's a more stylistic issue.)

This is only IMHO: 800x600 is not necessarily a bad idea; I feel however that there might be situations when even 640x480 is acceptable (say, to reduce the file size) if it is zoomable to fullscreen.

What about making the size user-definable? That way, everything is possible, and older RenPy games would still run with newer engine versions if the preferred size changes over time.

PyTom wrote:I was thinking of making the native resolution of my new game 800x600, rather than 640x480. (This would govern the size of the background and character images.) I was wondering:

1) Does anyone still, in 2004, have a monitor not capable of handling 800x600?

2) What resolutions are other games running at?

3) Is there some other reason why 800x600 would be a bad idea?

(I'm also still toying with if I want the game to be letterbox or not. But that's a more stylistic issue.)

1) If so I seriously doubt it will be their main monitor.

2) I think (no idea on the reality) that the newer commercial games of this genre are now running at 800x600

3) Umm not that I can see. My install of Windows XP doesn't seem to feel that I'd even want the option of setting the desktop resolution to that, since the lowest setting on the slider is 800x600.

You might just have to bear in mind that 800x600 might even be the current resolution, so some sort of test at startup would be needed to determine whether the user should have the option of windowed enebled or not.

Some people using old graphics cards are sometimes not able to have TrueColor when in 800*600 and they can only use it in 640*480. Other than that, there should be no real problem.

ad 1.) what Grey said...

ad 2.) All the commercial bishoujo games I know of run in 640*480 or less.

ad 3.) Not really, if you don't count the fact that everyone is used to 640*480 stretched fulscreen and 800*600 might be "too detailed"

Come to think of it, considering that the engine is pretty much open for editing - the player can resize the screen as he/she wants if it does not show as the player would like it.

All they have to do is open up the config file (with the screen size options) and edit the number as they would like it. Say, the game was distributed at 640x480 size - the player can easily just open the config, enter 1024x768, save the file and play.

Then it's just a matter of resizing.

Of course, mention of how to do this should be in the Help file or something.

I think 800x600 is good, but 1024x768 would be perfect. I assume that if someone has Windows installed he should have a monitor capable to display at least 1024x768 resolution. Even my old 14" monitor that I stoped using last year has support for 1024x768 at 60Hz.

When studying website design we are told that 800x600 (it's more like 740x600 in web design though cos of web browser scrollbars...) is the minimum.
So I'd say 800x600 is fine...

I should point out that just because an engine supports games int multiple resolutions, doesn't mean that a game written with that engine will support multiple resolutions. Specifically, in the case of Ren'Py, each game will tell the engine what resolution it expects to run at, and that's it.

The need for a fixed resolution for each engine comes from the fact that all the artwork for the game comes at well-defined sizes. I don't think it makes sense for the engine to scale the artwork. Not only would such scaling slow the game down, it would also tend to hurt the quality of the image.

The reason I asked was because I'm planning to make a game in Ren'Py (indeed, that's why I wrote it), and I'm debating making it 640x480 or the smoother 800x600. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I haven't totally decided yet.

In other Ren'Py news, I finally got backtracking working. So the user will be able to go back to a menu (within some number of steps) and save or make a different choice. Or at least he will be able to, should I ever get around to implementing menus.

PyTom wrote:I was thinking of making the native resolution of my new game 800x600, rather than 640x480. (This would govern the size of the background and character images.) I was wondering:

1) Does anyone still, in 2004, have a monitor not capable of handling 800x600?

2) What resolutions are other games running at?

3) Is there some other reason why 800x600 would be a bad idea?

(I'm also still toying with if I want the game to be letterbox or not. But that's a more stylistic issue.)

1. I personally would be aghast if someone could not run 800x600. I personally run 1280x1024 for my desktop. Standard desktop backgrounds come in 800x600 and 1024x768.

2. The newer professional big business games run at 1024x768 all the way up to 1600x1200. Although 1600x1200 changes the refresh rate to 60hz which is bad for your eyes, compared to standard 75hz.

3. I cannot imagine a higher res would be worse, because in general i would think it would jsut allow you crisper images and text.

2002~2004 Japanese Ren'ai games standard dictates that standard games are to be run in 800x600 resolutions while high quality graphics are in 1024x768. Very rare will you EVER see anything higher, because it's hell to get such detail graphics.

I usually have mine set to 800x600 so it's no problem for me.
In fact I get annoyed when I have to change things temporarily just to be able to play something or visit a website that the stupid owner made in such a way as to force people like me to have to change things just in order to see everything.

Setting it at 800x600 as a default is a good idea since most people have monitors set at 800x600+. However, I agree with making if configurable by the user incase you run into the odd crowd.

2400x1800, 2800x2100, 3200x2400

mikey wrote:Some people using old graphics cards are sometimes not able to have TrueColor when in 800*600 and they can only use it in 640*480. Other than that, there should be no real problem.

ad 1.) what Grey said...

ad 2.) All the commercial bishoujo games I know of run in 640*480 or less.

ad 3.) Not really, if you don't count the fact that everyone is used to 640*480 stretched fulscreen and 800*600 might be "too detailed"

Most games do in fact use 800 x 600, also Internet Explorer 5.0
and above require 800 x 600 to run. However I advise against
useing 1024 x 768 because Direct X 8.0 doesn't support resolutions
higher than 800 x 600 for sprite maping. Most people I know
have upgraded to at least a 386 or 486.

What about 1024x768? Is there a reason why game makers favor 800x600?

The only reason why I can see gamers preferring 800x600 is for LCDs that have a native resolution of 1024x768 (such as a laptop).
I mean, it'd nullify the point of having full screen and window mode...