Hi,
a few ideas...
There's also some special resizing routines that work well with pixel art.
See the whole scale2x, h2x etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hqx
Some people like or even love the whole pixelated look. Creating high
resolution art work requires more skill, more time, storage, and processing
requirements. To make old school pixel art by hand at 1920x1080 with
200fps animations... well, your animators would simply die before they
finished their work.
I think going for a Style which takes advantage of the limitations is a
good way to go.
****
"Responsive design" is one where you define things in an abstract sense,
and then depending on the capabilities of the screen. There's plenty
written about that.
****
Having a view area on a map is a nice way to make use of more display
area. But that can affect gameplay too.
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 9:07 PM, Ian Mallett <geometr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Santiago Romero <srom...@sromero.org>wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> (Sorry for the long message, but I like to give them an historical
>> context; you can jump directly to the question below if you want)
>>
>> ---- Historical context ----
>>
>> As I told in an old thread (about 3D rendering in pygame), I started
>> writing games/programs in a Sinclair ZX Spectrum with a fixed 256x192
>> screen resolution. Very simple resolution choice: just 256x192.
>>
>> After that, worked on PCs where you could just select between my beloved
>> mode 13h (MCGA 320x200x256, paletted) and VGA 640x480x16 colours (SVGA VESA
>> modes were not really very used then).
>>
>> You had really not more resolutions to select (maybe mode-x such as
>> 320x240), so you selected just 1 resolution (for speed = 320x200, for
>> detail = 640x480) and you created your game according to this resolution.
>> Very simple: you draw sprites and menues and backgrounds and position them
>> with that resolution in your mind, and everything fits.
>>
>> After that, it came a lot of years where the maximum system resolution
>> for PCs was 1024x768 and you could create a game in either 640x480, 800x600
>> or 1024x768 (tipycally, 640x480) and it looked "good" in that display,
>> either windowed or fullscreen. But, again, for 2D games, you usually
>> selected and used a single resolution.
>>
>> ---- End historical context ----
>>
>> And the question:
>>
>> I have problems to determine the best way to "create" game graphics and
>> to "design" the game engine to allow the player to change the game
>> resolution, or just to fit my game in the "available display".
>>
>> Nowadays you have a very large variety of possible displays: from simple
>> PC's with 17" 1024x768 to 22.5" FullHD monitors, to tablets that range from
>> 640x400 to 1280x800, not forgetting that the displays can be either 4:3, or
>> 16:9, or 16:10...
>>
>> Selecting a concrete resolution (640x480 or 800x600 typically) can annoy
>> the user because it can be too small in window mode or too "big" (low-res,
>> really) in fullscreen mode... so I think that we need to adapt the game in
>> real time to the resolution that the user wants to use. Very easy in 3D
>> games, but ... not in 2D games.
>>
>> So, my doubts:
>>
>> - Game graphics (pixel-art, not vector or 3d graphics): What's the best
>> way to create the graphics? Do them "high-res", try to ask always for the
>> highest resolution and downscale if not (losing quality)? Do them "mid-res"
>> and upscale / downscale depending on the resolution? Create them in 2 or 3
>> different sizes to minimize quality losing in scaling?
>>
>> - Game engine: when creating the scoreboard, menues, inventories,
>> position items in the screen, define sprite-speeds ... should I use
>> "percentages" instead of pixels? ( % ). Should I, instead, work in a "base
>> resolution" (640x480) and scale all (pixel-speed for sprites, on-screen
>> text and scoreboards positions, etc) according to the relation
>> base-resolution / real-resolution? And what about the ratio (16:9 <-> 4:3)
>> change (it's not just an "scaling" problem)?
>>
>> How do you think I should be handling all this?
>
> It's tempting to ask: what is the right answer? Computers have larger
> screens now. 2D games designed for smaller screens simply won't look right
> no matter which way you put it. You upsample them, and they'll look either
> blurry or blocky, depending on how you do it. You keep your window small,
> people will complain.
>
> So, the question is: what *should* you do? Do you *want* upsampled
> blockiness? Do you *want* a small screen?
>
> My personal solution is to write the game engine in OpenGL, and then just
> render it at whatever resolution the user has (usually, this means
> upsampling, so the "pixels" in the pixel art are very large indeed).
>
> Ian
>
