Preferred screen Resolution

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I see, so the common verdict is to go with 1920x1080 so it can fit HD screens and people can shrink the size down to fit all other sizes.

Scaling images down is actually more detrimental to image quality than scaling it up.
If you have an image with a 3 pixels wide line drawn on it and you scale it from 1080p to 720p, you'll end up with a 1.33 pixels wide line. What happened to the other 1.7666^ pixels? You lose them, they're gone forever.
But if you scale that image up, you end up with a 6.75 pixel wide line.
taking into account the percentage of change, you have 1.875 pixels per edge that will be blurred. But as long as you properly aliased the image before it was scaled up, there should be no real issue.

Except with scaling down, yes, you lose pixels, but none are added. Nvidia cards actually use this to make games look better with DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) - the video card renders the image at 4K and reduces it to 1080p, resulting in a better looking image. Even professional photographers do this with images they'll display on the web, as it reduces noise.

The trick is to do the scaling down in an application like Photoshop, using the proper settings. I don't just plug 4K images into a game engine for it to resize on it's own.

With scaling up, the computer is making up pixels (interpolating) to plug into holes on a 'best guess' basis. This results in a 'fuzzy' or 'blurry' image. It can also introduce noise into the image. Maybe some people can deal with this, but as an artist, and someone who has worked in film, I can't stand it. It's like trying to watch a movie on VHS after watching the Blu-Ray. It's going to diminish my enjoyment considerably.

And if you are making the art, why NOT make it a higher resolution? It doesn't take that much more effort to make a background or sprite at a higher resolution versus a smaller one. And if you are thinking of ever printing your art or using it for marketing materials, you'll need it a higher resolution anyway. Instead of having to create brand new images, you can just go back to your original raw file and it's all there.

Not to mention, this is how comic book art has been created for DECADES. The art is drawn and inked on 11x17 or larger Bristol boards and then reduced to 6.5 x 10.25 for print. It hides mistakes, and improves the look of the lines. Even comic artists working digitally now still do this, for the same reasons.

[Imperf3kt]

So I'm the end, it comes down to two things:
Preference
Skill

Professionals do indeed scale down, this is called adaptive super sampling.
Problem is, it's only used on HD material. Use it on SD and you crush all fine details. Though, I guess that's what everyone wants now anyway.

Scaling up Introduces ringing, not noise.

[ISAWHIM]

1080p + is the most common "display type", world-wide.

It is low by computer standards, but almost all digital TV's and even phone-screens are now at-least 1080p.

4K (2160p) is the next television standard, which I am sure will be like lazer-disks and plazme-tv's... A phase to a "real standard", of 4320p displays...

You know, because seeing actors pores isn't enough, we need to see the bacteria in the pores too!

Maybe they will make 4K stick, and cheap-out with "true-color" displays, and "absolute black", and "absolute white"... with 19,999,999,999:1 contrast ratios!

1080p, final answer.

The "1366x768" is apples "retinal screen", which is actually 1080p, squished into a 1366x768 resolution, and most other phones and "tablets", that are in the low-end range of computers. (Actually apples screen is less than that, but that is what they "report" as the resolution. 1334x750 is the "real" resolution in pixels, but they "display" a 1080p screen in those pixels.)

This covers almost everyone in the world, on the internet...
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

Why does 1366x768 exist? (It is poor-mans HDTV 720p with 1080p mashed into the slightly larger size... Why? Because "China manufacturing and false advertisement". Growing countries upgraded from 1280x1024 to 1280x768, as cheap as possible, and 720p is essentially all gone. Trick to make them think they are getting 1080p resolution, like apple does... just another trick. Like Prego-"It's in there", some of it...)
http://hd1080i.blogspot.com.ar/2006/12/ ... blems.html

[jeshii]

Yes I have heard the same. 1920x1080 (full HD)/16:9 seems to be a safe standard these days.

[Imperf3kt]

Whoever wrote that blogspot has never heard of pixels per inch.
A 1080 display does not mean you have 1080 pixels top to bottom...
1366*768 exists because TFT screens and laptops. It just so happens that you can fit a resolution of 1366 into a standard 14" laptop monitor without increasing PPI. It's nothing to do with false advertising.

[ISAWHIM]

Whoever wrote that blogspot has never heard of pixels per inch.
A 1080 display does not mean you have 1080 pixels top to bottom...
1366*768 exists because TFT screens and laptops. It just so happens that you can fit a resolution of 1366 into a standard 14" laptop monitor without increasing PPI. It's nothing to do with false advertising.

That is exactly what 1080p display resolution is... 1080 pixels high and 1920 pixels wide.

1366*768, exists because of false advertising. It is advertised as 1080p (when it is not), HDTV, when it is not, "retinal view", which is just advertising hype for "pixels too small to see at arms length".

Fitting into a 14" screen, without increasing the PPI... increasing it from what? That is irrelevant. 14" screens have had 1080p, and 1024x768, and 60" screens have had the same resolution, and 8" displays have 1080p.

Not being able to make small pixels is "old technology", and they are all in china, pumping out 1366*768 resolutions, before all the manufacturing hardware breaks, to cut their losses making fat pixels with old technology. (TFT is 20 years old tech made for slow and cheap devices)

But, whatever... It's in every cheap knock-off device and $200 tablet and laptop, mostly in foreign countries among the poor. Sort-of a "My first app" kind of thing. They are just discovering e-mail, and won't find-out about visual novels until they have a standard device... (If they are not on an iphone, which is also registering as that resolution on websites.)

[Sonomi]

For what it's worth, a quarter of hits to LSF are 1366x768. 1920x1080 is only 17.25%. While I think the data is ratty, I'd say 1366x768 is a resolution one should consider, even if it's just testing to see what the game looks like scaled down.

This covers almost everyone in the world, on the internet...
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

Judging from these two comments, I think it may be acceptable to try the 1366x768 resolution. w3schools.com reports 35% for 1366x768, and 18% for 1920x1080 as of January 2016.

While many people do prefer 1080p for obvious reasons (higher quality), it is very likely that most people opt to play visual novels on mobile devices at a lower resolution.

[PyTom]

My general opinion is that since games will likely be scaled up or down on a majority of systems regardless of what resolution is chosen, the main way to choose seems to be what the artist is willing to commit to. Going from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 means that 2.25x the number of pixels need to be drawn. Going from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 ("4k") means that 4x the number of pixels need to be drawn.

While the time it takes to draw probably isn't totally proportional to the number of pixels, I assume some part of it (coloring?) is, if you want to take advantage of the higher resolution. So there's a trade off between higher resolution art, more art, and getting the game done faster. The correct tradeoff there probably varies depending on the project and team.

[Aviala]

PyTom, it doesn't work exactly like that, but high resolution images do take a bit longer to draw because the details will be more clearly visible, and screens with a big resolution will probably be bigger in size too in many cases. So it's easier for the player to spot any mistakes or details you didn't put quite enough effort into.

But most artists draw in very high resolutions anyway - if I'm drawing for a 1080p game, there's no way I'm working in 1080p resolution. The canvas I use is usually at least twice as large as the final product - that way, when I'm doing details, I won't have to look at a blurry mess when I zoom in, and scaling the artwork down to it's intended size at the end usually makes it look more crisp and hide mistakes like slightly wobbly lineart etc.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

PyTom, it doesn't work exactly like that, but high resolution images do take a bit longer to draw because the details will be more clearly visible, and screens with a big resolution will probably be bigger in size too in many cases. So it's easier for the player to spot any mistakes or details you didn't put quite enough effort into.

But most artists draw in very high resolutions anyway - if I'm drawing for a 1080p game, there's no way I'm working in 1080p resolution. The canvas I use is usually at least twice as large as the final product - that way, when I'm doing details, I won't have to look at a blurry mess when I zoom in, and scaling the artwork down to it's intended size at the end usually makes it look more crisp and hide mistakes like slightly wobbly lineart etc.

Exactly. It's why I laughed at a Japanese development studio's finance breakdown, when they said moving to 'HD' graphics (their games where all 2D dating sims) would cost them twice as much money. Either they were lying to pad their wallets, or their artists were taking an opportunity to get an easy raise. They were talking about going from 720p to 1080p. The extra effort required on the part of an artist to do that is virtually non-existent. It sounds reasonable to non-illustrators that a higher resolution drawing is harder to create than a smaller resolution, but you know what the difference between me drawing on a 100% sized canvas at 1080p and drawing on a 25% sized canvas at 4k is? Nothing. I can just zoom in more and everything will stay clear.

As Aviala says, the ONLY difference in time or effort when drawing higher resolution images is the knowledge that details will be more visible. It's not as easy to 'cheat' details. But most artists don't cheat details anyway. AND you can avoid this by drawing at an even HIGHER resolution and still scaling down. Final output needs to be 4K? Draw it larger and scale down, the same as you do for 1080p. Or, just be careful with your line work at 4k.

So, number of pixels doesn't matter to the artist, because unlike drawing in real life on a larger sheet of paper, a digital artist can draw on the 'same size paper' as usual, just at a higher resolution. No extra arm or wrist movements required, no extra expenditure of materials, etc.

The ONLY thing that higher resolution art consumes is more RAM. You'll eventually hit a point at higher resolutions where drawing lines isn't smooth anymore if you lack the RAM to support it.

[Amberbaum]

As for my personal opinion, I'd be really annoyed if a modern game wasn't able to fill my HD screen.

Yeah.

[Imperf3kt]

PyTom, it doesn't work exactly like that, but high resolution images do take a bit longer to draw because the details will be more clearly visible, and screens with a big resolution will probably be bigger in size too in many cases. So it's easier for the player to spot any mistakes or details you didn't put quite enough effort into.

But most artists draw in very high resolutions anyway - if I'm drawing for a 1080p game, there's no way I'm working in 1080p resolution. The canvas I use is usually at least twice as large as the final product - that way, when I'm doing details, I won't have to look at a blurry mess when I zoom in, and scaling the artwork down to it's intended size at the end usually makes it look more crisp and hide mistakes like slightly wobbly lineart etc.

Exactly. It's why I laughed at a Japanese development studio's finance breakdown, when they said moving to 'HD' graphics (their games where all 2D dating sims) would cost them twice as much money. Either they were lying to pad their wallets, or their artists were taking an opportunity to get an easy raise. They were talking about going from 720p to 1080p. The extra effort required on the part of an artist to do that is virtually non-existent. It sounds reasonable to non-illustrators that a higher resolution drawing is harder to create than a smaller resolution, but you know what the difference between me drawing on a 100% sized canvas at 1080p and drawing on a 25% sized canvas at 4k is? Nothing. I can just zoom in more and everything will stay clear.

As Aviala says, the ONLY difference in time or effort when drawing higher resolution images is the knowledge that details will be more visible. It's not as easy to 'cheat' details. But most artists don't cheat details anyway. AND you can avoid this by drawing at an even HIGHER resolution and still scaling down. Final output needs to be 4K? Draw it larger and scale down, the same as you do for 1080p. Or, just be careful with your line work at 4k.

So, number of pixels doesn't matter to the artist, because unlike drawing in real life on a larger sheet of paper, a digital artist can draw on the 'same size paper' as usual, just at a higher resolution. No extra arm or wrist movements required, no extra expenditure of materials, etc.

The ONLY thing that higher resolution art consumes is more RAM. You'll eventually hit a point at higher resolutions where drawing lines isn't smooth anymore if you lack the RAM to support it.

Many Japanese studios use 3D, not 2D, artwork. It's got a bunch of filters applied to make it look 2D.
These filters take time to process, and 1080 resolution artwork takes dozens of times longer to process, than 720. Sometimes a single image can take an entire day to render, yes - 24 hours.
Since it costs money for electricity, maintenance on CPU cycles and replacing the "render farm" every so many hours, not to mention deadlines, 1080 resolution artwork is infact far more expensive than 720 resolution artwork.
This is the main reason animation is mastered at 720p then upscaled to 1080p during m2ts encoding for bluray, DVD and web authoring.
It's not some hoax played by the artists.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Many Japanese studios use 3D, not 2D, artwork. It's got a bunch of filters applied to make it look 2D.
These filters take time to process, and 1080 resolution artwork takes dozens of times longer to process, than 720. Sometimes a single image can take an entire day to render, yes - 24 hours.
Since it costs money for electricity, maintenance on CPU cycles and replacing the "render farm" every so many hours, not to mention deadlines, 1080 resolution artwork is infact far more expensive than 720 resolution artwork.
This is the main reason animation is mastered at 720p then upscaled to 1080p during m2ts encoding for bluray, DVD and web authoring.
It's not some hoax played by the artists.

Maybe. I know it is a common practice now. But this was years ago. And looking at their games, it didn't seem to be the case with them. But maybe that was what they were doing. I wish I could still find the article, but it's been 5+ years. When I worked for Paramount, I rotoscoped in IMAX resolution (8000x4000 pixels), and could produce several hundred frames a week (45-50 hours of work) and my workstation wasn't a monster or anything. It was weaker than my home gaming PC at the time.

It doesn't matter anyway, as my point (and Aviala's) about producing 2D illustrations at higher resolutions still stands. Provided you have the RAM, drawing at 4K is no different than drawing at 1080p.

[Imperf3kt]

Yes, of you're hand (or tablet) drawing, a 2D image, that is definitely true. I'm no artist by any means and even I can pump out a fully colored character sprite at any resolution in about 5 hours.