Resolution [change] - to widescreen?

[winternight119]

How do I change the default resolution of my game? I'm not worrying about scalability. I just want it to run at 1280x720, as widescreens are becoming increasingly popular and widespread and are typically the norm, so I'd think it'd be interesting to make my game in widescreen.

So far, I'm loving Ren'Py. Haven't ever used Python before, hopefully I won't have to delve too deep into it. Just started a game (the day before yesterday) in Ren'Py. I originally tried to decide between it and Novelty, but I'm not regretting my choice of Ren'Py (buttons and menus for some reason seemed more confusing and less customizable...! And Ren'Py is alot more reputable and widely-used.)

Thanks!

~Night

[Guest]

To set a widescreen resolution, simply open options.rpy file in your project folder.

Now you can see a commented-out code which starts like:

Code: Select all

    ## These control the width and height of the screen.

    config.screen_width = 800
    config.screen_height = 600

It's piece of a cake. Isn't it?

P.S.
I'm loving Ren'Py too!

[mirokoon]

To set a widescreen resolution, simply open options.rpy file in your project folder.

Now you can see a commented-out code which starts like:

Code: Select all

    ## These control the width and height of the screen.

    config.screen_width = 800
    config.screen_height = 600

It's piece of a cake. Isn't it?

P.S.
I'm loving Ren'Py too!

Oops, I didn't notice that I'm not logged-in.

[IceD]

Just note if you'll make the game in with widescreen support, it might be displayed inproperly on standard 4:3 monitors. Ren'Py doesn't support both 16:9 and 4:3 at one time, and you have to chose the reslution through the options.rpy. I don't know if there's any other way to implement various screen resolutions, it may be possible but would require some heavy hardcoding.

Altohugh it would be great to see a VN using widescreen resolution, I don't think its neccesary unless you're going to make a game in really huge resolutions (1280 x 720 or others). Most of the nowadays novels run in 800 x 600 (new ones tend to use the 1024 x 768, but it's still not much compared to 1280 x 1024), and thus will be displayed both on 16:9 (in windowed) or widescreen monitors without any problems.

The worst problem with VN (unless they're 3D) is that they use graphics specially designed for a proper resolution and it makes them hard to be equally accesible for all the standards and resolutions. That's why most of them still use older resolutions, such as 800 x 600 ...

[winternight119]

To set a widescreen resolution, simply open options.rpy file in your project folder.

Now you can see a commented-out code which starts like:

Code: Select all

    ## These control the width and height of the screen.

    config.screen_width = 800
    config.screen_height = 600

It's piece of a cake. Isn't it?

P.S.
I'm loving Ren'Py too!

Oops, I didn't notice that I'm not logged-in.

Thanks Mirokoon! That's pretty easy.

Just note if you'll make the game in with widescreen support, it might be displayed inproperly on standard 4:3 monitors. Ren'Py doesn't support both 16:9 and 4:3 at one time, and you have to chose the reslution through the options.rpy. I don't know if there's any other way to implement various screen resolutions, it may be possible but would require some heavy hardcoding.

Altohugh it would be great to see a VN using widescreen resolution, I don't think its neccesary unless you're going to make a game in really huge resolutions (1280 x 720 or others). Most of the nowadays novels run in 800 x 600 (new ones tend to use the 1024 x 768, but it's still not much compared to 1280 x 1024), and thus will be displayed both on 16:9 (in windowed) or widescreen monitors without any problems.

The worst problem with VN (unless they're 3D) is that they use graphics specially designed for a proper resolution and it makes them hard to be equally accesible for all the standards and resolutions. That's why most of them still use older resolutions, such as 800 x 600 ...

I see, IceD... Good point. I'm still wondering if I should do my source graphics in 1280x720 just for the "cool" factor in case I ever decide to release a "Widescreen" version of my game. (Two versions for 3 OS'es = 6 versions?! Haha.) But for a first project, 1024x768 should be enough, and easier, too...

For VN's, their screen resolution limitations are somewhat disappointing. But I guess you're right in that - I might tackle widescreen some other time. Mirokoon's comment for resolution stands as useful, then, for changing to 1024x768, hehe.

~Night

[Jo'ogn]

I'm still wondering if I should do my source graphics in 1280x720 just for the "cool" factor in case I ever decide to release a "Widescreen" version of my game.

You could ask yourself, "what would be the benefit of a higher resolution?" I prefer 1024x768 over 800x600, because in fullscreen the font looks more smooth. Increasing the resolution to 1280 doesn't give much - at least on my 19" monitor.

Bigger images might also increase your game MB-wise. Do your 1280x720 images show more details, than smaller images would?

[DaFool]

Isn't there a good Imouto mode implementation that's good for netbooks?

My current development environment has 1680x1050 resolution, but I plan to make games that will look good on EEE PCs. (1024x600 and 800x480).

From my experience, when a widescreen game goes fullscreen on a 4:3 monitor, there will be black bars top and bottom. But when a 4:3 game goes fullscreen on a widescreen monitor, it will be squished pretty badly (such is the fate of Fate/Stay Night currently, pun intended).

[Guest]

Sorry I need some hand-holding, how would environment.txt look like, it's been a long time since there was a topic on imouto mode.

For example, you have a 1280x720 game, and you want to downscale to 800x480

[PyTom]

Code: Select all

RENPY_SCALE_WIDTH="800"

Put that in environment.txt and it should scale things down.

[EwanG]

Seems like the "ideal" solution here would be to have backgrounds and character graphics that have "wicked" high resolutions (2048 or above) and then use the crop and zoom functions to match the desired resolution - preferably picked off an options menu rather than trying to "sense" the native resolution. Otherwise you have to have multiple versions of everything, and even if you're willing to put in the work, the file sizes could get unwieldy quickly.

IMNSHO of course.

[DaFool]

Seems like the "ideal" solution here would be to have backgrounds and character graphics that have "wicked" high resolutions (2048 or above) and then use the crop and zoom functions to match the desired resolution - preferably picked off an options menu rather than trying to "sense" the native resolution. Otherwise you have to have multiple versions of everything, and even if you're willing to put in the work, the file sizes could get unwieldy quickly.

IMNSHO of course.

Mmm, maybe not that 'wicked' but definitely something wider than 1000 pixels, I guess. Come to think of it, this is a good idea. I'm reminded of games that have some pre-launcher where you customize your settings, before you actually launch the game. I think some visual novels had those too.

In Ren'Py's case it could be a game within a game (an instance of Ren'Py I guess) which you select (or type in) your resolution, then it saves a new environment.txt file. Then you can select 'Launch' and it will use that file. JQuartz did something similar with his mainmenu generator, maybe the technique can be refined and ported here.

-----------------------

Something even cooler perhaps would be to have a single multi-platform Pre-Launcher that is coupled with a single game distro. Besides asking for your screen resolution setup, it will ask whether you're on Windows, Linux, or Mac, then it can display the message 'Installing...' while it is in fact merely building for your specific distribution at run-time. Then the built distribution can auto-run with the settings which you entered.

[PyTom]

Don't forget, Ren'Py slows down in proportion to the number of pixels it has to push. There are roughly 5 times as many pixels on a 1920*1200 display as there are in an 800*600 window.

[EwanG]

Don't forget, Ren'Py slows down in proportion to the number of pixels it has to push. There are roughly 5 times as many pixels on a 1920*1200 display as there are in an 800*600 window.

Well someone should contact the author and ask him to fix that then... err...

Seriously, while I understand the issue, is there THAT much difference in speed if you're doing a fade or dissolve (for a background)? For character sprites where you're changing the expression reasonably often I suspect that's more of a concern. Would be interesting to see some times on that...

[jack_norton]

I can spot the difference already from 800x600 to 1024x768...it's software rendering, it's already quite fast for what it does

[Jake]

is there THAT much difference in speed if you're doing a fade or dissolve (for a background)? For character sprites where you're changing the expression reasonably often I suspect that's more of a concern.

It's a problem which manifests only at the instant things are changing, it's not a cumulative thing. So sure, you quite possibly spend more pixel changes changing character expressions or rendering text or whatever over the course of your VN, but the framerate will drop more significantly when you're dissolving the background in a scene change (1024x768 pixels all changing at once) than when you're changing a character's expression (say, 300x600 pixels all changing at once), because Ren'Py is doing more work. And you'll notice that slowdown more on background dissolves, because the whole screen is actually changing rather than probably a 40x40-pixel area around the face.


This is why those of us with remotely recent PCs are waiting for an OpenGL-rendered version of Ren'Py.