Ideal resolution?

[this_barb]

I'm thinking ideally it might be 800 x 600 or another 1.33 ratio resolution, but I'm just guessing. Right now, I'm drawing my characters at approximately 6000 pixels in height and it is a LOT of work. Since, the image will eventually be scaled down anyway, I wonder what the most common resolution is for visual novels.

[killdream]

It depends on your game, on the target platform and on the engine you`re using. I personally like 800x600 (even though my monitor is wide-screen, so fullscreen looks all messed up .-.) for PCs, either because you make sure peoples will most likely have a resolution of 800x600 or above and because using software rendering this resolution is fine to apply some effects without slowing down way too much.

If you're using Ren'Py as your VN engine you have to think about which effects you'll need. If you have to use lots of them a lower resolution might be better (even with the caching that Ren`Py does, updating the screen with software rendering is awfully slow).

Otherwise you just need to pick a resolution that is not completly weird to the target platform, like 500x1280 in a PC

[delta]

Most common? Still 800x600. Should you use this? No, decide for yourself.

[IceD]

800x600 is still the most widely used VN screen resolution because of few things:

• Background CG's made in this resolution doesn't eat up that much space on HDD, so the finished novel will likely become of a smaller file size, which can be quite important (I know we have 2009, but there is still a large ammount of people that doesn't own a high speed ethernet connection; downloading weighty stuff can take hours on those); also you have to consider all of the eventualites, for e.g. releasing your novel on various media like CD (smaller size of your installer file will still do - another plus for older machines)
• Pictures will eat up less memory. Smaller size of those will enable the novel to run smoothly on older machines, especially if you consider to use many graphical effects.
• Resolution of this size will allow the novel to run correctly on smaller sized screens (for e.g. those of netbooks - they mostly use screens with a resolution of 1024x600)

Of course, it's all of yours consideration but thats how it works and this is why most proffesional companies still create their novels using this resolution. There are also many novels that still use 640x480. I think you should chose one you'll seem to fit your needs the best.

[luminarious]

Either 1024*600 or 800*480, since widescreen is what most of us are using. If space is of no concern, 1280*720. But that size is uncomfortable to use in windowed mode on my modest 1440*900 laptop screen so don't do it..

[Guest]

Either 1024*600 or 800*480, since widescreen is what most of us are using. If space is of no concern, 1280*720. But that size is uncomfortable to use in windowed mode on my modest 1440*900 laptop screen so don't do it..

TBH, width isn't very important from what I can see. Unless you want to make chubbier characters.

[IceD]

TBH, width isn't very important from what I can see. Unless you want to make chubbier characters.[/quote]

You got a point there

As long as you use 600 pixels of height for the screen resolution, everything will be fine and your novel shuold become more compatible with most of computer hardware.

[Aleema]

Call me old fashioned, but I love 640x480.
My reasoning is that, for a game that is basically just pictures and text, either make it full screen or keep it manageable.
My first game was 1024x768, and when I go to play it I'm just .... overwhelmed. x_x
Personal opinion, though.

[jack_norton]

I've always used 1024x768 resolution so far for my VN. Maybe should have used lower res, the only complaint I actually had were from users with macmini. Nobody using Pc (or linux) complained about slowness.

Problem with 1024x600 for example is that if you go fullscreen on pc/mac, you'll see the image with the black borders around (so not a real fullscreen). At 1024x768 and other standard 4:3 / 16:9 res you'll see the game going fullscreen properly...