iOS Displays

Hey Everyone-

This is my first post in this forum, so sorry it has to be a question rather than a contribution!

I've been struggling with this for over a week now, so hopefully someone can end my agony here.

I've designed a game, using Construct2, to be played on iPhones and iPads (mostly geared towards retina displays, so iPhone 4 and 5, and iPad 3), but I cannot for the life of me achieve that sharp look on the phones screen.

I've tried every combination of "fullscreen in browser" scale options (crop, letterbox scale, scale, integer scale) and window sizes (everything from 320x480 up to 1536x2048). The "Use iOS Retina Display" is set to iPhone.

No matter what I use, nothing looks very good on the iPhone screen. I actually get the best results (but still marginal) with 320x480, which I don't really understand. I've also seen Ashley say that window size shouldn't matter if fullscreen in browser is set, but it seems to produce wildly different results when I change the window size.

I've used the over-the-LAN preview in Construct, and previewed it locally on the phone using the intel xdk / appmobi, and both look about the same, so I don't think I'm battling preview problems (but I'm not 100% certain).

My question is this:

Can somebody simply tell me what to set the window and layout sizes to in order to support the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 (portrait only)? I'll worry about iPad's later..

Also, should my background be the same size as the largest screen size I wish to support? I.e. if the iPhone 5 is as large as I go, can I simply use a background of 640x1136?

All of my graphics are super-sharp vectors converted over to .png's for the game, and they look great on my PC, but not in the game.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here - I'm a programmer, not a graphics guy - I've never had to worry about this part before :)

(Please don't say read the multiple screen sizes tutorial - I've read it at least a hundred times. I would not post had I not exhausted all searching options and tutorials I could find <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Thanks for your time!

So I think I've figured it out - 640x960 is what works best (obviously), however, when exported to appmobi and then previewed some funny things happen with scaling, etc. I was battling preview problems.

I exported my app to CocoonJS and it seems look pretty good now. I'm not sure why appmobi can't display my app properly at 640x960, but I think it must have to do with the phone emulator's status bar.

Hey.

I was asking myself exactly the same question. I want to distribute a Game to iPad's. Did you figure out what's best for iPad?

In general i would like to know if i have to make the game like resizable or do i have to create diffrent versions of the game with different screen sizes?

Did you try to deploy it on a test device with Xcode?

I was assuming that somehow i would have to set the DPI rate different for retina displays, because the actual size of the screen is the same but there are a lot more pixels.

I havent exported to appMobi yet since i haven't finished my game but i was wondering about that ever since.

Greetings

Glad to hear I'm not the only one still pondering this!

Here's what I've figured out works best (in my experience thus far)-

Design the game for iPhone (640x960), and make the background the size of the iPad (768x1024) - note you may have to set parallax to 0,0 on all of the objects, or else I've noticed that they will move to undesirable locations when the game gets scaled. This way the game works on iPhone at 640x960, and when played on iPad at 768x1024 it looks the same, but shows more of the background.

So I've found it's best to make the game to the size of the device that is your main target, and then when it's played on a larger device (up to the size of your background) it will look the same but with more background (as long as aspect ratios don't give you trouble - letterbox scale helps, but the black bars look unprofessional).

As far as the retina display goes, I drew all of the graphics for the game as vectors at 300 dpi in Illustrator. Once you have the super-high res vectors, export them as png's (at 300 dpi!) and drop them into the game. They will have that super sharp retina display look! Note: Draw large vectors, then you can scale to any size in Illustrator without losing any quality (hence vectors)- when you export to png's at 300 dpi, the images will be huge - you'll have to experiment, but make the graphic really small compared to the size you want the exported png to be.

I found this capx for testing the retina display: scirra.com/forum/r92-retina-display-and-touch_topic52658.html

However, all of the images in it are 72dpi, which doesn't give that sharp look. There is a lot of debate about this on google, but I can confirm that you are correct - with retina displays your one pixel gets stretched over multiple pixels of the retina display. You must use a 300dpi image to get that super-sharp look when that happens. Many people will say dpi doesn't matter and its for "printing" only - but try it, you'll see! You should be able to avoid having to set dpi for different displays, just use 300dpi for everything (maybe someone who knows more can chime in here).

I have not deployed it directly with Xcode yet, just through the cocoonjs and appmobi previews (along with Construct's preview-over-LAN). As soon as I do I will post an update.

mmh i guess it's the best solution to make the game in the solution of the best device you want to deploy and than scale it down somehow.

i have distributed Apps in Xcode (but not made with C2) and i will try to make one game for the iPhone 5 resolution and then a GameXY HD version for ipads. i've been searching the forum for iOS screen sizes for a while now and i think no one has made a real breakthrough at this subject.

I'm currently building a app with 640x960 for iPhone. I use scale and have a background with dimension of 2kx2k the game looks perfect on iPhone3 (320x480), iPhone4, iphone5, ipad mini and ipad retina (1536x2048). Also works for new Htc one and Sony Experia S. I haven't had to change anything for each of those devices and the assets look native! Had slight issue finding Center point of screen but after making a variable to work out scaleratio and deviding windowwidth by ratio and 2 I got it fixed.

Don't want to start a whole new topic so I'll revive this one. I've got my game set at 780x520. The game fits perfect on my ipod touch, but on an iphone size, you can see outside the layout to the right. I've tried telling it to scale etc, but nothing seems to be changing. How can I support iphone 5 and ipad?

I'm gunna go ahead an bump this...

I'm gunna go ahead an bump this...

Hi Draspur,

did you fiund a solution?

I'm begginer on C2 and I've read a lots of different things about window settings...

I'm wainting for a water down on this issue and mybe one day I can start making games for IOS

thanks