Game resolution

[Greeny]

I just had a lecture on this this morning, so forgive me if I ramble.
JPEGS exist for the sake of photographs. Any photo that you take will have huge amounts of different colours, even in an area that appears monochrome. This means that the lossless compression algorithms used by GIF and PNG(Which work on large blocks of colour and repeating patterns) are basically useless, you'd get almost no compression at all. JPEGS use an incredibly complicated algorithm to work out which colours will be missed least and removing them.
Hence, anything created in a computer ought to never be saved as JPEG, since even with the messiest art you can create, it will never be as messy as a photograph, so lossless compression should have at least some effect.

Now that's useful knowledge.

[nyaatrap]

While I was doing some image resampling experiments, I found the best range of bilinear resizing is 0.8~0.9. In this range, resized images aren't blurry but not jaggy.
What does this mean on the game resolution? It adds acceptable quality range of monitors.
For example. If you set game resolution 1280x768, then it's also good on laptop's window mode and XGA monitor's full screen mode, because scale factor is 0.8~0.9.

[Coren]

I tried 1366x764... It's a bit too wide for me. S:

[Anna]

I tried 1366x764... It's a bit too wide for me. S:

Why use that and not 1280x720? I never saw that resolution before actually, though I might have missed it here. What's it used for?

[Greeny]

My laptop's screen is 1366x764.

[Anna]

My laptop's screen is 1366x764.

Ooh, You're right, found some laptops with the same resolution. Funny I always found/used 1280x720.

[nyaatrap]

1366x764 is the top share, 1280x800 comes next. There is no 1280x720 monitor - I never saw such resolution in real. This is why I'm saying 1280x768 is better than 1280x720.

[ShippoK]

1366x764 is the top share, 1280x800 comes next. There is no 1280x720 monitor - I never saw such resolution in real. This is why I'm saying 1280x768 is better than 1280x720.

StatCounter-resolution-ww-monthly-201207-201209-bar.jpg

Too bad it's horrible when you try to full screen most PC games. I always end up having a huge black bar on the side of my screen with that resolution. None of my other resolutions do that besides that one as well.

Could just be my monitor though.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

1366x764 is the top share, 1280x800 comes next. There is no 1280x720 monitor - I never saw such resolution in real. This is why I'm saying 1280x768 is better than 1280x720.

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.

[Anna]

1366x764 is the top share, 1280x800 comes next. There is no 1280x720 monitor - I never saw such resolution in real. This is why I'm saying 1280x768 is better than 1280x720.

StatCounter-resolution-ww-monthly-201207-201209-bar.jpg

Oh damn, I'm so sorry. That was some amazing brainfail there. My old monitor was 1280 wide only, and the nice scaling on my laptop tricked me into thinking it was 1280x720 while it was 1024x600. I'm never posting while being sick again.

Oh well, I'm sticking to 1920x1080 anyway, since I'd rather downscale than upscale. Widescreen is nice too, since if you don't have a widescreen monitor you'll get two black borders at the top and bottom, right? But that's a little bit like watching a movie, while games without widescreen give those with widscreen monitors black borders at the sides. I really hate the latter, it feels so unnatural.

[nyaatrap]

The best aspect is depending on your target user's preferable: people who prefers to play games in the upscaled full screen, or people who prefer to play in an actual pixel window.
1280x720 is aimed for the former, since 1280x720 is a video compression format for 1920x1080 TV screen.
My play style is the latter and target user of my game is the latter users, so I don't need to stick with 16:9.

Oh well, I'm sticking to 1920x1080 anyway, since I'd rather downscale than upscale.

1920x1080 itself is a good choice, but down scaling from 1080 to 768 is out of range. I checked the readability of fonts of it, but not good. If you're thinking to support height 768 monitors, it'd better to have some special coding or alternative package.

Edit: I'm assuming games with ren'py engine here, but your latest game isn't made with ren'py, right? I'm not sure in this case.

[AxemRed]

I checked the readability of fonts of it, but not good.

Just tested how it looks, scaled from 1920x1080 to 1366x768 it still looks pretty good to me. Maybe it depends on the font and text size? Can you post a screenshot showing what you mean?

[nyaatrap]

Maybe font setting - because I always use drop shadow. Without drop shadow, Japanese font looks bad.
Or perhaps, this problem only exists on Kanji languages - scaling it into under 75% kills some important details.

[AxemRed]

I see what you mean, but I think it's probably the outline more than the shadow.

[nyaatrap]

I also think 75% is the bottom line to preserve 1px details from my drawing experience. If rescaling is lower that this line, 1px details are completely killed.