1024x600 resolution

[sa]

Hello.

 

I'd like to suggest adding the 1024x600 resolution, present in many netbooks today, to the ones possible to choose at the beginning of the game (if that option appears in this game).

 

Thanks.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Why not just auto-detect the screen resolution? Or at least add that as an option.

[Randomizer]

The game already auto-detects resolution, but new games don't go to that standard.

[Niemand]

The major problem is that game interfaces tend to be held together with a large amount of artwork, and so they aren't very flexible. Even if the game can handle scaling to different resolutions, handling varying aspect ratios is likely to get ugly.

 

The problem will be worse at lower resolutions, where the program will have very few pixels left to draw anything if it cuts down the area it uses to recover an aspect ratio it's used to. Trying to crop a 1024 by 600 screen down to a more old-fashioned aspect ratio of 4/3 results in a drawable area of 800 by 600 pixels, which is less than .8 of the total pixels on the physical screen being used. Given that people with higher resolution screens are clamoring for more visual detail, trying to make it all fit into 800 by 600 if necessary is likely to be a nightmare.

 

The other alternative is to actually rearrange graphical elements depending on the shape of the screen. In some cases this is a problem because it effectively alters the rules of the game, by changing what all the player can view at once (Examples which spring to mind are Chip's Challenge, a puzzle game which sometimes relied on exactly how far the player could see from the current position, and BoA, where designers regularly rely on the limited viewport size to be able to build 'sets' for cutscenes.) Even when that isn't a problem, it still takes extra time, effort, and possibly artwork, to reshape the game interface.

[sa]

Hello.

 

Both Geneforge 5 and Avernum 6 can run in 1200x800, 1200x768 and 1024x768. The difference between these resolutions, from what I have seen, is that a bigger or smaller dungeon area is visible in the screen, without any scaling or change to the aspect ratio of the artwork.

From the Avadon snapshots, I think the graphic engine seems similar to the one in these games.

So, it seems to me quite easy to implement 1024x600 by showing a bit less of screen. Of course, the game will be less pleasant than with a bigger resolution, but I think it's better than not being playable. The biggest issue to me seems to be the amount of text that can be shown on screen, but perhaps that could be solved with a smaller font.