Game Resolution

Discuss how to use the Ren'Py engine to create visual novels and story-based games. New releases are announced in this section.
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number473
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Game Resolution

#1 Post by number473 »

Something I noticed was that there was a setting to set the resolution of the game, but I need some help on what is actually the best resolution to make the game in. Is it possible to make this settable by the user, and I read something about Ren'Py scaling it down on too-small screens.
I want to make the game in a decent resolution if possible, but I don't know how this is going to affect display on smaller screens.
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Re: Game Resolution

#2 Post by thebackup »

It's best to leave the default 800 x 600 as it fits most computer screens these days. Though, if you're worried about smaller screens you can try 640 x 480. You also can try making the game run by default as fullscreen. Though, on widescreen monitors it doesn't exactly take up the full screen: http://renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/cookboo ... un_Setting

Not sure about how you'd go about creating a setting in the preferences for display resolution, but I know it's possible because I've seen a screenshot for multiple resolutions: http://renpy.org/wiki/File:classic_preferences.png

When in doubt, 800 x 600 default is best. I'll try and whip up a script when I have time.

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Re: Game Resolution

#3 Post by JinzouTamashii »

ARGHJSKASD;; fullscreen default games.

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Re: Game Resolution

#4 Post by reaktor »

Others might disagree, but I'm towards making everything for 1366 x 768, because it seems to scale nicely for almost every modern laptop/netbook and LCD monitor/television... Now a days it's quite hard to find 4:3 monitors anywhere, since you can buy cheapest brand new 16:9 LCD for ~50$.

First I planned to have couple of different resolutions supported, but after I found out it's little too much work to have specific settings for each element / resolution, I finally took the one-resolution -road.

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Re: Game Resolution

#5 Post by JinzouTamashii »

Yeah, you think so?

Does it scale down well? I might change my future releases, if that's the current standard. I have an old crappy PC and XP so.... yeah. :P
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Re: Game Resolution

#6 Post by Samu-kun »

All of this will be solved the day Pytom finally implements OpenGL and we can actually... resize windows. O_O

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Re: Game Resolution

#7 Post by DaFool »

3D hardware-acceleration enables the same game to run in multiple resolutions. For 2D games that have a set resolution, I think going by 720p convention is a good idea. Netbooks these days have bigger screens anyway.

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Re: Game Resolution

#8 Post by Wintermoon »

Samu-kun wrote:All of this will be solved the day Pytom finally implements OpenGL and we can actually... resize windows. O_O
I should hope not. OpenGL texture stretching looks like shit for 2D images and even more so for text.

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Re: Game Resolution

#9 Post by number473 »

DaFool, what do you mean by 720p?
I was thinking of a higher 4:3 resolution because the backgrounds that I have are 1600x1200 photos and I took them t be backdrops so I don't know how it's going to work to resize them. I think that resolution is probably too high, but I don't want to go as low as 800x600! Would it be okay to make it about 1280x960 to resize down? What's the usual pixel height of widescreens?
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Re: Game Resolution

#10 Post by luminarious »

number473 wrote:DaFool, what do you mean by 720p?
I was thinking of a higher 4:3 resolution because the backgrounds that I have are 1600x1200 photos and I took them t be backdrops so I don't know how it's going to work to resize them. I think that resolution is probably too high, but I don't want to go as low as 800x600! Would it be okay to make it about 1280x960 to resize down? What's the usual pixel height of widescreens?
720p means 1280*720px. Which I think is a very good choice for a game, given the amount of widescreen of widescreen monitors/ laptops sold these days.

800*480 is a smaller alternative and of course there's the 1080p option of 1920*1080px, since Ren'py 6.10.1 has fixed the scaling down issue.

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Re: Game Resolution

#11 Post by reaktor »

luminarious wrote:
number473 wrote:DaFool, what do you mean by 720p?
I was thinking of a higher 4:3 resolution because the backgrounds that I have are 1600x1200 photos and I took them t be backdrops so I don't know how it's going to work to resize them. I think that resolution is probably too high, but I don't want to go as low as 800x600! Would it be okay to make it about 1280x960 to resize down? What's the usual pixel height of widescreens?
720p means 1280*720px. Which I think is a very good choice for a game, given the amount of widescreen of widescreen monitors/ laptops sold these days.

800*480 is a smaller alternative and of course there's the 1080p option of 1920*1080px, since Ren'py 6.10.1 has fixed the scaling down issue.
What you say is true, but actually 1280x720px is rarely used anywhere. From Wikipedia: "Actual 1280x720 flat-panel native resolution is uncommon". Personally, I haven't seen many LCD panels with that resolution, but most common NATIVE widescreen resolution seems to be around 1366 x 768. Just check some LCD TV / Notebook -catalogs and draw the conclusion by yourself.

Still, it's no big deal whether to use 1280x720 or 1366x768. Both should scale nicely for widescreen. In my opinion it's more important to have more accurate resolution as your base and let renpy downscale it, because downscaled images usually look nicer than upscaled.

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Re: Game Resolution

#12 Post by luminarious »

I think this is appropriate to mention here.. Lifehacker.com poll for readers' screen resolutions. http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2399176/?view=results

Resolutions below 1280*800 are becoming rarer. Common netbook resolutions are missing, but only 5% have answered "other", so it seems that either netbooks are not common among lifehacker readers, or that everyone answered for their main PC screen size.

Also, what about those who don't play fullscreen? My laptop screen is 1440*900 and in windowed mode a 1366*768 game takes too much desktop room, whereas 1024*600 would be perfect.

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Re: Game Resolution

#13 Post by iichan_lolbot »

Maybe we are insane, but we are developing dual-mode game.

At the first run a small starter window appears, asking to select from 1024x768 and 1920x1080 (FullHD!!!!1one).
Choice is stored at persistent, so all other runs are performed at selected resolution.

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Re: Game Resolution

#14 Post by Samu-kun »

Why the hell that huge!? Less than 1% of the populace has monitors that large!

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Re: Game Resolution

#15 Post by JinzouTamashii »

My maximum resolution limit on this old PC is 1280x1024.
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