RE: [GD-General] Scaling GUI graphics

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

Depends what you mean by "usable space". I would assert that for a game, you
want everyone to have the same usable space as everyone else, regardless of
resolution, i.e. they have the same field of view, etc. Otherwise
multiplayer games are unfair, and/or it will be hard to balance the
single-player game. If the game is hard to play in 640x480, then that's not
friendly to the lower-end of the market. If it's easier to play in high
resolutions, then you're not going to entertain the hard-core. If there's no
difference in gameplay, then - er - what did you need the usable space for
again? (I'm not explaining this very clearly - sorry).

So higher res should really only mean the game looks better, it shouldn't
change anything about how it plays.

In StarTopia, we dodged the bullet by only allowing one window open at a
time (er... except for a bug we found post-ship), and everything fitted on a
640x480 screen, so greater screen space didn't help at all. Which meant we
didn't bother scaling in the end (though we did think about it). We did
still get complaints that the text was too small to read in the higher
resolutions, so we probably should have put scaling in.

Tom Forsyth - purely hypothetical Muckyfoot bloke.

This email is the product of your deranged imagination,
and does not in any way imply existence of the author.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: brian hook [mailto:bri...@py...]
> Sent: 25 June 2002 16:10
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: RE: [GD-General] Scaling GUI graphics
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > My favourite solution is to scale, but only by powers of 
> two. So you 
> design
> > GUI graphics for 640x480. For 800x600 and 1024x768, you 
> don't scale, 
> you
> > just move them further apart (i.e. the bits stick to the 
> cornr, edge 
> or
> > centre as required). For 1280x1024 and above, you double 
> the size so 
> that at
> > least stuff is readable.
>  
> Doesn't this have the rather unintuitive property that usable space 
> actually drops every N resolutions?  So you have more usable space at 
> 1024x768 than at 1280x1024?  Or is that under "acceptable 
> compromise"? 
> =)
> 
> -Hook
> 
> 
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