Ideal Resolution Size for Desktop + Mobile

[WinterMochie]

Hi everyone! I am a complete newbie to VN making with zero development experience. As I am starting, one thing that is confusing me greatly is the resolution. I want to create a desktop game that can also scale down to mobile.

What is the typical resolution used for desktop and iphones in pixels? Especially when factoring in Retina?
-Is it ok to use a HUGE resolution size so everything will be sharp across all systems? I'm just not sure how it works if it will look wonky on one screen or unified across different platforms.

If I start off with desktop resolutions, will it scale down naturally for mobile in the right ratio? Or do I need to fix up ratio of pictures?
-I want to release on iOS so I looked at the resolution of iphones from 4s to 6s+. I'm just confused because the sizes are all different so I'm not sure how it will scale across all the iphones either. Like do I need to fix up ratio for everything or will it scale naturally across them all? Especially if I am drawing in resolution size for 6s+ and then 4s resolution is like way smaller.

If someone could help explain the ratio, the numbers of pixels that people typically use for VN, and if you have any tips for creating for desktop & mobile that would seriously be a huge help to me, especially because I would like to release on mobile first then desktop.

I am very thankful!!! Thanks for the help in advance!

[Pando]

Interesting question - I don't have all the answers, since I never developed for the mobile, so I'm also interested if someone has knowledge on this topic.

Not sure how mobile games typically handle this issue.
Of course the obvious way would be to pick a phone's resolution and then just make everything in the game on a scale of that resolution so it looks good on both PC & mobile.
But as you said, all phones don't have the same resolution...

One way I could imagine is that creators make multiple versions of the assets fitting different resolutions, bundle them all in the game package, and then the game decides at runtime, by detecting the model and aspect ratio of the device, which assets must be used.
But as I understand it (I'm no artist) it would require a tremendous amount of work, and would probably increase a lot the size of the game package. (The game could be smart and, once it ran for the first time, delete the assets it won't use, but still.)

one common approach is letterboxing, more on that here for example. (not using renpy, but the theory is the same nevertheless)
But I don't know if it suits very well the visual novel kind of games.

Let's see if someone a little more informed comes to the rescue...

[gas]

A good standard resolution to work with nowadays is 1280*720.
It fit almost everywhere.

Also mind that, thank to VARIATIONS, you can actually create scaled down version of the same gui/images without any need for extra stuff for lower resolutions (like tablet).

The upcoming release (6.9.11) will focus directly on this, to look good on (almost) all the devices.

[WinterMochie]

Thank you both for answering! That cleared things up a bit, and allows me to do more research. Since 1280x720 is the standard desktop size, does it also scale down as a standard size for phones?

Many thanks! <3