Monitor resolutions

[Phil Steinmeyer]

OK, I'm thinking about this issue again, but not for a casual game.

Specifically, I'm working with someone on early planning stages for a public-policy game, to be distributed primarily over the 'net, targeting both North AND South America, probably to be released ~2008.

(Yes, I'm still making my casual game - just putting a little time into this other project at the moment)

The proposed game would be a strategy/simulation, with a lot of detail, icons, text, etc. So I'd like to go at the highest realistic resolution, and, for simplicity reasons, I'd like to avoid supporting multiple resolutions, if possible.

It had always been my impression that 800 x 600 or lower was only around 1-3% of the market, and that you could still reach ~97% of the market at 1024 x 768. But two (http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm#res) articles (http://www.onevision.co.uk/default.asp?id=789) I found claim that 800 x 600 is still the case for 14/29% percent of web browsers (depending on which article you believe).

Some users with desktop rez of 800 x 600 could probably still run at 1024 x 768, as long as the game switched to full screen mode (i.e. their hardware supports higher rez than they've actually set it to). But I don't know what percentage this is.

Way back in 1998, we released Railroad Tycoon 2, which ONLY ran at 1024 x 768, and by and large, that didn't cause many probs at the time. Now I'm looking 10 years forward from that, but I have some doubts about 1024 x 768, especially considering some of the target market is in Latin America (though probably the more economically elite segment of that market).

Any thoughts/data?

[PeterM]

I suspect most casual gamers (Mums etc) who run at 800x600 only do so because that's Windows' default and they don't know that it's possible to change it.

[Genimo]

FYI - from the data gathered by Google Analitics for my web site in 2006 screen resolution of 800x600 was used by 13.39% of the visitors and
1024x768 by 59.81%.

However most of the visitors where from US, canada and europe.

[Tom Gilleland]

Here's another "techie demographic" data set of resolutions via the web.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

They're saying 74% (Jan 2006) at 1024 or greater, and it is steadily increasing. So be sure increase the figures for when you think your product will be released. It also sounds like your target audience might be on the higher end of the spectrum, as opposed to the casual audience.

Why don't you make it support two resolutions?

Tom

[Phil Steinmeyer]

Two resolutions is an option, but to do it well creates both more programming work and more art work.

[Robert Cummings]

Not more art work.

My game rescales graphics and saves them in a cache folder for those horrible situations where it cannot be.
More work, yes. You want to succeed, you put the work in. Thats my philosophy.

However... that said, I must say there's a very real limit on when "enough is enough". You can go too far with this stuff...

[Phil Steinmeyer]

You can certainly do multi-resolution UI by simple in-game scaling, supplemented with caching systems, but my definition of 'do it well' is a bit beyond that. In the past (Tropico, Railroad Tycoon 3), we've designed all the UI stuff at a super hi rez (3200 x 2400 for Tropico, plain old 1600 x 1200 for RT3), then pre-scaled it down with a utility that's good at filtering, then tweaked certain mission critical stuff (mainly fonts, but occasionally other elements).

Then, there's more programmatic tweaking of positions and thin lines and stuff. If you design 1 and 2 pixel thick lines in at 1600 x 1200, that creates problems at lower rezes.

Yes, these issues can be addressed - either by a lot of hand-work at the different rezes, or just by ignoring it and letting the non-native, scaled rezes look somewhat inferior. But neither of those is a great solution, especially when working on a tight time schedule and with tight download size.

[Anthony Flack]

Yep, but then it's also not a great solution to run at a lower-than-preferred resolution for the majority of users, in order to cover the bottom end. I suppose.

Damn this trying-to-please-everyone business...

[undersan]

What about LCD monitor users? They should be a much bigger concern to you than the tiny fraction of users who can't run 1024x768.

If you fix your app at ANY particular resolution, then a big chunk of your LCD monitor users will get ugly, scaled UI elements, because they're forced into a non-native resolution.

You can certainly do multi-resolution UI by simple in-game scaling, supplemented with caching systems, but my definition of 'do it well' is a bit beyond that.

As a consumer with an LCD monitor, I think "doing it well" means matching my LCD's native resolution (particularly for a strategy game with lots of details).

[Jay_Kyburz]

And don't forget wide aspect ratios. You don't want your 3:4 graphics stretched to 16:9

[Phil Steinmeyer]

For non-4:3 aspect ratios, it's fairly universal that the UI simply stretches. And I'd guess that most of the time, the game world stretches too.

[Jay_Kyburz]

I don't thinks thats true, perhaps in the indie world.

Most retail games these days will deal with it without stretching.

[hine62]

The 3 resolutions I use are 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. My engine supports these at 16 and 32bit. I can see that I'll need to re-write to enumerate the current adapter and see which resolutions are avalible and also re-write so that graphics are scaled accordingly.

You could also see what the newest and most used graphics cards are targeting currently to get a better idea where things are going.

Hine62