RE: [GD-General] More screen res love (tile graphics)

[Troy G. <Tr...@cs...>]

> Well, consider the pixel density.  You're probably using a 15.1" 
> laptop screen with a 1600x1200 resolution, so your pixels are going 
> to be very small.  A standard 17 or 18" LCD is running at 1280x1024, 
> so you're going to see much 

Agreed. Probably the reason that all those LCDs at E3 look so crappy.

> >I assume the best solution is to have multi-resolution artwork
> Yes, this is the ideal solution, but it requires a lot more content 
> generation and it also requires a lot more storage and download size, 
> so it's not practical in every situation.

Well, of course. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You've got to
either play the odds on what the consumer will have, or put more work in to
cover your bases, or be prepared to handle special cases with special
instructions or support (or "sorry!").

There is no perfect solution for one-stop, unconstrained content production
paired with perfect, multi-resolution display. Well, there is vector artwork
(designed to solve this exact problem) like Flash or SVG. And of course 3D
(vector artwork in the next dimension!).

> >targeting the major resolutions (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768,
> >1280x1024, etc.). Of course, it would be a pain to hand design this
> >artwork. 
> 
> Unfortunately there are a lot more major resolutions than that.  
> 1152x864 is common on Macs; 1400x1000 (?) on some laptops; 1600x1024; 
> 1600x1200; 1920x1200; etc.  And while neither of these individual 
> resolutions is very common, combined they make up a sizable fraction 
> of the market (I would guess).

Before you spend too many hours fighting this issue, I would do more than
guess about your target market. A quick perusal of TheCounter.com (who
gather statistics off the web -- skewed, yes, but you did mention
downloadable content so it is applicable) reveals that ~46% of potential
customers are using 800x600, ~42% using 1024x768, ~5% using 1280x1024, ~3%
1152x864, and ~3% other. Now, this does sound a bit skewed from what common
knowledge would suggest, but then again I hang out with a bunch of game
developers and artists, not exactly the crown who'd be using out-of-the-box
screen resolutions. But if I was selling a game (particularly one where the
mainstream crowd meant something to me) I'd be targetting 640x480, 800x600,
1024x768. Anything else, I'd just ask the user: "Do you want the image
stretched (which might be blurrier) or centered (which might be smaller)?"
Not all things can be solved algorithmically (particularly when you start
second-guessing people's preferences).

> >would be to produce the highest resolution originals and use a
> >better-than-bicubic down-sampling filter (which most often muddies
> >pixelart).
> 
> That's probably the best route, except it does keep content sizes 
> fairly high.

Again, you can't have your cake and eat it too!

Troy
Developer Relations
Criterion Software
www.csl.com