Focus on mobile or PC games?

I'm with this question lately, and it is consuming me.

On the one hand I love the PC platform because I don't have many limitations of hardware or inputs, but the mobile version is easier and faster to be made, since we do not create a mobile game too complex.

I'm lately also facing serious problems with the size of the screens for the games, I'm using pixel art for practically all my current work, and so the text must have a minimum size to be able to be displayed right, and pixel art is not very cool when it stretches the screen without proportions (the diversity of mobile screen sizes is ridiculous).

That's it, if you can help me to illuminate this question I will be eternally grateful! :3

thats terrific..

gillenew Really like all your projects you have posted here on the forum. Your art is top notch!

Why do you get scaling issues? What type of scaling are you using?

I also use pixel art and usually use scale outer and the game won't stretch a pixel. So it looks pixel sharp on any kind of screen from SD to a huge tv screen. Letterbox would also scale it without stretch but maybe leave black bars around the edges on some devices

I also question this about making games for PC or mobile. But to be honest I hate making iOS games because it is just so complicated and the review time for a game is just too long. And when it finally is up something doesn't work and you have to update it and wait again. I'm an organized person (OCD maybe

Wish it was as simple as google play where you can update a game within minutes. But iOS is by far the best platform if you want to make money.

So I quit doing mobile games just because of the apple hazzle and made a game for PC instead which will be released on Steam soon

JessieMcguire - yes, it is something terrible when it will analyze

Anonnymitet - thanks for the compliment. I also have my frustrations with IOS but also with Android at the time of publishing, but the issue of screen size, I particularly look try vary my screen sizes, so I haven't stayed in a single scale and this problem is only noticed in mobiles.

I don't know what the real trouble to put a game on steam through the greenlight, I already own my account greenlight paid and can release a game for it whenever I want. Do you believe it is the best option for those who like to develop games and not want to have a lot of headaches with the current mobile market?

I understand but My mobile games look exactly the same on all devices and screen sizes. It should work for your games as well If you use the Correct scaling options.

When I went over to PC development it felt so much easier. No limitations to worry about and simple touch controls. You can just have fun making the game. But then you have to get it on Steam and greenlight is not that easy. But luckily my game went through pretty fast.

Majority of the games won't get greenlit and many of the ones that do may take over a year.

But I haven't released my game yet and I am working on the steam intergration in my game as we speak. So hopefully that part will go smooth as well

So i prefer pc development and when you want to take a little break and get creative I'll take a day or two off and make a fun casual mobile game

I'm developing for mobile too, but I'm not using pixel art so i can't give you any advice there, but from what I've noticed, scaling is pretty good. Most of the time I'm downscaling instead of upscaling. My project is done in 720p and downscales well, it also upscales quite well but will be a little blurry or choppy depending on if i use point or linear sampling. Doing a low res pixel-art game and upscaling to 1080p shouldn't be a problem (I think) as long as you sample by point instead of linear. Play around with the project settings to see which gives the best rusluts.

Anonnymitet - Games for mobile usually short-lived, and the vast majority are casual games for casual gamers, but there are fun too in mobiles. Although I confess that I never had so much fun in a mobile as a PC with a game.

tunepunk - My problem with the screen size, it's that I do very little for the pixel art become more easily manipulated, but depending on the size (very varied) are black edges around the application and the screen is reduced, to display the screen fitting better I have to leave the Letterbox scale option (not Letterbox integer scale) on, but for pixel art it will distort the pixels of non-proportional basis, generating not very nice distortion. ]

So it's actually a screen aspect ratio problem than a resize problem? I think there should be some ways around that... I havn't looked in that that much yet, since I'm not that far in to the production yet, but yes that's an issue i have to deal with as well at some point. If you're making a game in 16:9 format and displaying on a 4:3 screen there will be black borders under and over, but I don't really see it as a huge problem since most smart phones today are in 16:9 format...

Iphone 4, and iphone 5 differs in ratio for example, but if you really want to optimize your game for phones with aspect ratios other that 16:9 i don't think it would be too much trouble, just have to be taken in to account when designing the game, especially the UI. But i wouldn't worry about it too much since most smartphones use a 16:9 ratio. If you want to please a few% that has other screen ratio then i think it can be done properly without too much hassle.

Scaling a 16:9 game to fill a 4:3 screen vertically without black borders might crop out stuff that are to the left or right, (Probably mostly UI Stuff) but that can probably be adjusted for with events.

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/73/supporting-multiple-screen-sizes

UI elements can be placed using these system expressions instead... if you want something to stick to a certain point, like the lower right corner you could probably use set position to: WindowWidth - 30 windowHeight - 30, that would probably work for any screen ratio.

gillenew As I said if you choose scale outer or scale inner everything scales perfect without any distortion in the pixels. So pixel graphics will be exactly as sharp whatever size on the device. Both on 4:3 as well as 16:9 it doesn't matter because the scaling is always interger and to fit all screen sizes the games instead scales the view of the game. So on a 4:3 landscape screen you see a limited amount to the sides and on a bigger 16:9 landscape screen you see a little further. So by planning it right you can make it look sharp as hell whatever screen size and shape.

I promise you that all my pixel art games look exactly as sharp on any device on the market. And the best thing with pixel art is that it can scale up to huge proportions and still look awesome without any blur. So take a look at the link tunepunk sent and you'll see that screen sizes isn't a problem on pixel graphics

This is how my game looks on different devices and aspect ratios

So the drawback is that the users with bigger phones has an advantage over the small screens because they see the obstacles earlier than the small screens Also you have to make the UI anchored to the view so it always places correctly. And for games with borders you can just make the borders really thick. Looks better than black lines anyway.

Anonnymitet It all depends what kind of game you're making though... For a sidescroller it would work fine. If you're doing a game with a fixed Level size, like the gif gillenew posted. (Does not look like a sidescroller) .If The level is fixed in a 4:3 area, I don't think he would want to crop out stuff that's either over/under or on the sides. He should do a vertical fill, and design some elements that could be outside the Game level, or maybe just use a fancy backround there instead of black.

He could design like this... to use any area outside the 4:3 aspect to just repeat graphics. They won't be missed if you play on a 4:3 ratio screen.

tunepunk I know and it can also easily be fixed with events. So that is why you have to plan depending on what type of game it is. But you can use a fancy background as you said to make it very simple. It's better than blurry scaling anyway. But as I said you can make scale outer/inner work for fixed sizes as well with some tweaks

tunepunk That is exactly how you would do it on that type of game/level!