Question about making HD game

Hi

I try to make a game with HD graphics (1080p, 1920x1080). However when I try to run the game with fullscreen Construct says that display resolution is not supported.

My monitor is 1680x1050 so yes full HD resolution is too big for me but I think it should be possible to downscale the resolution in runtime so that me and other guys with lower resolution could run the game?

Why would you make a HD game when you don't even have the display?

Besides your going to lock out ALLOT of players at that resolution cause they can't run it(wheter because of the monitor or graphics card)

You could use some zooms and whatnot but its going to be a pain to make it synchronized and smooth

If you want the extra rez go in the 1280x720/800/1024 range

It still is a bit high but you want the detail(right?)

Also HD ratios are rare cases for something like pc and you can't compile for consoles either

[quote:wiucgt9y]Why would you make a HD game when you don't even have the display?

Because I would like to remade one of my favorite indie game with high resolution graphics. Have you heard about those Monkey Island Special Editions? They have high resolution graphics and although my monitor's resolution is not as high as 1920x1080 I can still play them. I can even play them with my laptop (1280x800) because the game downscales the size.

[quote:wiucgt9y]Besides your going to lock out ALLOT of players at that resolution cause they can't run it

Downscaling would be the solution. For example I watch Full HD videos with my laptop (1280x800) and my media player automatically downscales the video size to my laptop screen.

Just allow multiple resolutions. For starters, always rendering the game in 1920x1080 on a computer with a monitor that doesn't support that resolution would be a waste of processing power. Secondly, it's a wise thing to do in case the game doesn't run well on older computer.

The key for this to work well is to make sure that your graphics are dynamically scaled proportionally to the chosen screen resolution. For example, if you're designing all of your graphics for 1920x1080, then the scaling factor for your graphics would be:

DisplayWidth / 1920

You'd apply this scaling factor(multiplied by 100) to the display zoom level. This will ensure that all graphics, when displayed at full screen regardless of resolution, appear the same size.

I hope that helps. If you want, I could whip up a quick example later tonight.

Yes I'm designing all graphics in 1920x1080. A little example file would be great if you have time to do that

Okay, here's an example of changing the graphics scaling based on the resolution of the screen:

Resolution based scaling

As you can see, no matter what the resolution, the scaling of the graphics compared to the resolution is proportional to when the resolution is 1920x1080. In this way, everything stays the proper size no matter what the resolution.

Hmm, yes it works in window but I can't still use full screen mode?

EDIT:

Oh, I can use fullscreen AFTER I have set the correct resolution. However try to add some 1920x1080 background to your application and change resolution, there is some white area?

EDIT 2:

I turned unbounded scrolling off, set layout color to black and now I can see the whole window area. However there is only one black aspect ratio bar and it's below the image. Like this:

EDIT 3:

Here is my example. Works well but contains only one black aspect ratio bar:

http://www.voimalaitos.org/download/examples/HDRes.cap

EDIT 3:

Here is another example. I turned unbounded scrolling on and set ScrollX to 1920 / 2 and Scroll Y to 1080 / 2. I think it should work now, image is in the middle of the screen.

http://www.voimalaitos.org/download/examples/HDRes2.cap

Your HDRes2.cap displays perfectly on my 5:4 ratio 1280x1024 display. Looks nice.

There are 2 reasons why Downscaling is bad

First it can crawl or not run at all on some pc if there cards don't support textures larger then 1024

which can happen on some sprites,also there is the problem of memory on the graphics card which is again limited

In that wallpaper example it could probably crash if my graphics card didn't support 2048 textures and also the example takes whooping 16mb vram

The second problem is the downscaling itself which you can lose allot of details and can look like crap

For example if one runs 1028 768 a 1080p image could lose allot of details and produce allot of artifacts as opposed to a 720 which is closer in range and as thus better defined

my take is while it is probably best to have sprites at mutiple detail levels so you can load the lo res ones and not waste vram on large sprites at lower resolution. But its not a requirement that every 2d game run on the oldest pc's. There are precious few 2d games that take advantage of modern hardware. Some people invest in better hardware, and are happy to see games that take advantage of it