What's you opinion on screen resolution?

[quilty]

When I originally created some of the GUI for my game it was done in 800x600 pixels as I didn't really consider the size. But now I think about it, it would probably be better if I resized my menus to something like 1028x720 pixels- especially for people who like to play fullscreen.

What do you guys think, do you have a certain preference with screensizes?
Thanks.

[Kato]

All glory to 1280x720!

[ShippoK]

All glory to *800x600!

I fixed that for you.

[Ophelia]

I don't really care. I never ever play in fullscreen mode and always prefer to play my games windowed because I can't do only one thing and always have my browser open on the side.
For my own VN I'm going with 800x600... but only because most free backgrounds come in that size.

[nyaatrap]

I made 1366x768 commercial game (demon master chris).
Some people praised the resolution, and no people complained the resolution. This is result.

[silverpikachu99]

Personally, It doesn't matter to me. As long as everything is visible and big enough for the screen, it's fine by me.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

This has come up before in a very extensive thread worth reading here: Game Resolution Thread

I'll just quote myself from perhaps my most important post in that thread:

There is something very important to consider, here. Picking a resolution for your game is essentially doing market research - i.e. what resolution is going to make the most player's happy? (Presuming you only pick one to go with.)

I cleaned up the Top Web Resolutions chart and made it easier to read.

Keep in mind that these are the resolutions of the people that browse the Internet, not necessarily gamers. Also, a VERY important thing to note is that this chart includes the resolutions of MOBILE DEVICES that are accessing the web. So using it to reach a decision might give you a skewed perspective unless you are planning to make a browser based or online VN.

Here are the Top Steam Resolutions, set up like the chart above. Notice the drastic changes in majority when you are counting just the resolutions of those that play a lot of games.

Note that the sample size for the Steam resolutions is over 5 million users, so the results are just as highly accurate as the web resolutions chart above. These are the resolutions other 2D game developers are looking at, like Popcap, when they make their new games. The latest Bejeweled, though entirely 2D, had many different resolution options available.

Look especially at what happens with the 1024x768 resolution, and the 1920x1080 resolution between the two charts. 1024x768 looks very viable as a choice based off the web chart, but falls to only 5% of users on the Steam chart, while 1920x1080 looks unimportant on the web chart at a measly 5%, hardly worth bothering with as a choice, but becomes the #1 screen resolution gamers are likely to have when looking at the Steam chart.

I also took the liberty of marking those resolutions that are widescreen aspect ratio. If you take nothing else away from this comparison, it should be that your VN DEFINITELY needs to support widescreen formats and aspect ratios. 72% of people browsing the web have widescreen monitors, and 85% of gamers have widescreen monitors.

If you MUST pick only a single resolution to make your game in, 1366x768 looks like the best compromise that is likely to make the most player's happy based off pure numbers.

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot ... All Glory to 1920x1080! Ahem.

Oh, and an update from the Steam 2013 hardware survey from just a few months ago:
Users of the 1920x1080 resolution jumped to 32.30%
Users of the 1366x768 resolution jumped to 21.57%
Users of 1280x1024 resolution fell to 7.79%
Users of 1680x1050 resolution fell to 7.67%
Users of 1024x768 resolution fell to just 3.18%
If you are curious how many gamers on Steam (which remember, is a sampling of over 5 million gamers, including ones that play a lot of indie games) use the 800x600 resolution, it is 0.10%

So in just one year, you can see the trend is definitely towards higher resolution wide-format ratios.

[PN04]

I've seen a lot of people suggest that 1080p is pointless on a 17 inch laptop monitor (or anything below 30 inches) so unless you expect someone to output to a big screen or they just have a desk top with a giant monitor then getting in the 1280x800 or 1024x786 area might be just on the verge of overkill but at least will offer a nice sharp picture should someone choose full screen. Seems like the most logical thing would be to choose a resolution with a 16x9 aspect ratio and scale as you see fit.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I've seen a lot of people suggest that 1080p is pointless on a 17 inch laptop monitor (or anything below 30 inches)

That's not true. It isn't the physical dimensions of the monitor that make the most difference.

For instance, most LCD monitors must display in their native resolution for a sharp, clear picture. Almost all new wide-screen LCD monitors come with a native resolution of 1920x1080 - that's the reason for the big jump in screen resolutions I showed above - and 1920x1080 IS 1080p. It is the same resolution a Blu-ray movie is in. Even a 720p video looks comparatively worse on a 1920x1080 monitor. The actual pixels on screen will physically be different dimensions, and become very obvious. This isn't as noticeable on live action movies filmed on 35mm film (which already has some blur and softening), but on crisp lineart with painted colors, it can get ugly fast. When Disney rereleased the Lion King on Blu-ray, they had to redraw parts of the movie so they wouldn't look bad on the higher resolution displays.

TV manufacturers are already starting to support higher resolutions than 1080p - they are now embracing 4K resolutions. Probably not a big deal for us game makers at the moment, but progress marches on.

[Greeny]

I just can't believe how many people still hold to 800x600.... what's the reasoning here?
What sense does it even make?

[trooper6]

LWR thanks for the data, I'll probably use it to change the aspect ratio on my game! When I first started making it, I went 800x600...since that seemed to be the default, and what did I know? Even though it looked small on my computer. Then I read some of the older aspect ratio threads and went up to 1028x720...but if there is one thing I got from your data LWR is that I really need to go to a wide screen ratio. So maybe I'll go up to 1366x768. I haven't commissioned the sprites yet, so I still have flexibility.

By the way, do you have a website of your art? I'd love to see the things you do since you always say such cool things on the message boards.

[trooper6]

I just can't believe how many people still hold to 800x600.... what's the reasoning here?
What sense does it even make?

Perhaps it is nostalgia? Or inertia? Or just general resistance to change?

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I just can't believe how many people still hold to 800x600.... what's the reasoning here?
What sense does it even make?

I don't know. I'm assuming we are talking about people that have very old computers and haven't updated them in like .... a decade. They may view VNs as sort of the last bastion of games they can play, and don't like that VNs releasing in HD puts them performance and ratio-wise out of their reach.

But as a VN maker, I think there has to come a time of diminishing returns when supporting a certain screen resolution. Only 10% of the potential audience even uses a 4:3 resolution, and the Steam survey for this year showed only 0.10% of gamers are using the 800x600 resolution. That means, if their sample size is 5 million, then only 5000 gamers are using that resolution. And the resolution doesn't even rate high enough to show up on any of the charts I've seen for web browsing from this year. So not even MOBILE devices are using 800x600. So why support that?

Yeah, it's baffling.

By the way, do you have a website of your art? I'd love to see the things you do since you always say such cool things on the message boards.

Not at the moment. My file hosting ran out on the one I had up from college (I still own the domain), but I haven't needed it for my current job and clients. I should have a new one back up by the end of the year. There's an old joke we had at the studio about how you can tell when an artist is job hunting - their portfolio site will suddenly be updated for the first time in years! EDIT: I'll probably start a Halloween art thread in October here, so you should see some stuff then.

[Tempus]

Thank you for saving me from having to post. The notion that 800 x 600 is good in any way, shape or form today is so utterly, utterly wrong. This is a thread I posted in a while back (it's different from the one LWR linked to) about resolution and aspect ratio.

My opinion is that people should use research and data to support their decisions. The first thing I did when considering BG dimensions was to find out what people were using, rather than ask devs what they thought. People think all sorts of things, usually crap.

[quilty]

When I posted this I didn't expect so many responses, thank you so much guys! This has been really helpful, I will probably resize the game graphics to 1366x768 (also I just looked up my own resolution which is 1366x768 anyway, so I probably wouldn't be able to do any bigger- but I will try my best so that everyone can enjoy it).

@LateWhiteRabbit I just can't thank you enough for the statistics, not only do I love stats but they've been really helpful, I will try to do something with different ratios.

@Tempus Thanks for the link, I've favourited the document of files as it seems useful. (and I'll consider saving as GIFs)

@Greeny I think the fact that 800x600 is the default size of the ren'py window when you open it is one of the reasons, as well as more free images at lower qualities, smaller file size or just people being lazy.