what's the safest resolution for PC games

[zerodevice]

Hi.

*Edited*

what's the safest resolution for PC games?

[Sol_HSA]

This is probably a wrong question, unless you aim to make games for people who make games..

Better question would be, what's the safe resolution? As windows xp defaults to 800x600, that's probably the safest resolution these days.

[zerodevice]

This is probably a wrong question, unless you aim to make games for people who make games..

Better question would be, what's the safe resolution? As windows xp defaults to 800x600, that's probably the safest resolution these days.

ah, ok.
Sorry for the wrong question, i'm going to change it now.

[oNyx]

You can use any size, if its windowed. If you want to support fullscreen mode, you have to use one of those standard modes. 640x480 and 800x600 work pretty much everywhere. A bigger mode always means more pixels (apparently), which means higher system requirements (more fillrate needed) and if it's 2D also a bigger download.

If you can get away with 640x480, use that one. Otherwise 800x600. And if you really really need to cram lots of stats etc into one screen, use 1024x768.

If it's 3D startup at 640x480 and let the user change the mode to whatever they want.

See also:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=7654

(I saw that you just edited your post, but I think that my answer is still fine.)

[ZeHa]

In many cases, e.g. if you're displaying a huge scrolling tile map, it would also be possible to let the user choose his resolution. And for 3D games, that's a general option, of course.

But with "match 3"-games, I would stick with something like 800x600, also because it can be played in a window which is usually smaller than the Windows-resolution, and it feels more "casual" to some players ;)

[zerodevice]

well, I'm going for 640x480, since its probably one of the fastest and easiert way to not use too much memory cache.

[stiill]

I've been seeing a lot more devs saying they're comfortable requiring up to 1024x768 for full-screen, but if you want to be super conservative, 800x600 is always safe. Even in the casual market, there are very few computers that can't handle 1024x768 full-screen.

[Pallav Nawani]

well, I'm going for 640x480, since its probably one of the fastest and easiert way to not use too much memory cache.
Suggest using either 800x600 or 1024x768. Now a days pc monitors tend to have better resolutions, so art at 640x480 might look pixelated. For older pc monitors this might not be the case.

[ZeHa]

One thing that bothers me is that everyone buys a flatscreen display, which means that every resolution except the native resolution looks really poor. You're lucky if the native resolution can be divided by your game resolution, but even then, often there's some kind of Anti-Aliasing turned on and it looks shitty in my opinion. But it gets really worse if it's a completely other resolution...

So that means you can't really predict anymore what the game will look like. Also, the colors often get messed up a little on cheap flatscreens. And lately, widescreen displays became popular... argh. Of course, "windowed version"-programmers won't be bothered ;) but I'm a fullscreen fanatic and so it's really a serious problem for me ;)

[zerodevice]

Argh~!!! Jesus~!!! Why don't the world stick with the same standard?
well, I'm still going for "Windowed+640x480". that makes my starting point a bit more easier.

maybe my next game will be 800x600+fullscreen

[Uhfgood]

I have an lcd monitor. I don't get all this "this looks really poor" junk. I find 640x480 easier to look at, however most of my windows and dialogs nowadays just cover too much screenspace for that. I keep my res in 1024x768 because of my tv-out (max it will do is that). I find that too high of a resolution everything looks really tiny. Then you go well let's enlarge the fonts and icons and stuff, and then it covers that much of the screen anyways. Yeah so lower res's look a bit pixelated, but it can still look good if you're anti-aliasing/feathering/whatever correctly.

[zerodevice]

I too am using a LCD.
using 1024 for my res on my screen.
don't have any problems with it.

my game is still going to remain on 640 res.

[ZeHa]

The problem with LCDs is that they need to interpolate pixels when the resolution is below the native resolution. And that looks blurry, but not regularly but more "weird", because, of course, not every pixel gets an interpolated counterpart. So it's only every 3rd pixel or something, depending on the resolutions. This is not done on CRT monitors, because they work different.

I really don't like that look, but if you don't bother, that's okay too ;)

[MrQ]

We are currently supporting 1024x768 and 800x600 for our casual game.

[Pogacha]

My first game used 640x480 and have the hability of running in almost any machine but I found that no one who bought it, and less than the 1% of who have pressed the buy now button, have less than 64mb of vram. Actually I'm thinking of using 800x600 instead for having better graphics and a better CR instead of more hardware coverage.

[zerodevice]

hmm.... well is your 640 res a full screen mode?
coz i would imagine that 640 full screen is going to be very very blur or pixelate.
my game is going to stay 640 windowed.

[Nexic]

Almost everyone can do 1024x768 these days, but the main consideration isn't whether they can do it, but whether the game will run at a decent speed at that res.

If your game is action orientated with lots of sprites and alpha blending or if you're using something slow like Flash then go for 800x600. If it's a puzzle game/strategy game then you should safely be able to manage 1024x768. 640x480 looks crappy these days so I would just forget about that.

Those are just rough guidlines. The question is, with your tech how fast do you estimate the game will run on a 800mhz machine with 32mb graphics, and is that going to be enough for the kind of game you're making?

Also remember that new budget PCs (casual gamer machines) are being sold with junk on board graphics cards at the moment. My old 750mhz PC with Geforce440 graphics wipes the floor with my brothers brand new laptop in gaming terms.

[Spanky Ham]

I ran across this article over at Onestat (http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox43-screen-resolutions.html). The figures are for the web, but I assume that is what people are using for the desktop as well. It looks like over half the world is using 1024x768.

[MrQ]

Surely 640x480 has gotta be dead. I think of win95 when I see 640x480 and I don't know anyone that runs that res anymore. I think 800x600 should be the minimum these days with 1024x768 supported.

[PsySal]

I think 640x480 or 800x600 is a good minimum resolution to support. However I will tell you one important fact I didn't really grok when I made Venture the Void. That is, your GUIs etc. should actually not scale with the window size, instead they should be smaller in higher resolutions. In other words, if a button is 40 pixels wide in 640x480, it should be 40 pixels wide in 800x600. Why? People with larger monitors run higher resolutions. The button will be the same physical size for roughly everyone, then. Everybody's pixels are something like the same size. Wierd, but I think it makes sense once you realize it.

[Pogacha]

A thing I want to clarify.
One thing is a resolution for a game, and a very different thing is a desktop resolution. Oldest 1mb cards support 1024x768x16bits. However when you are saying safest resolution for a game you should have in mind fillrate power of the machine as well.
An old 8mb daytona card works nice enough at 640x480 (if you fix the clipping problem) but you kill it at 800x600.

[Mark Fassett]

I think 640x480 or 800x600 is a good minimum resolution to support. However I will tell you one important fact I didn't really grok when I made Venture the Void. That is, your GUIs etc. should actually not scale with the window size, instead they should be smaller in higher resolutions. In other words, if a button is 40 pixels wide in 640x480, it should be 40 pixels wide in 800x600. Why? People with larger monitors run higher resolutions. The button will be the same physical size for roughly everyone, then. Everybody's pixels are something like the same size. Wierd, but I think it makes sense once you realize it.

That's only true to a point. CRT monitors can run nicely at many different resolutions as their pixels get smaller as the resolutions get larger. LCD pixel sizes are not uniform across all LCD monitors. They don't shrink when resolutions change, however. The biggest reason to keep your interface the same size when you go to higher resolutions is to avoid stretching artifacts.

[Polycount Productions]

Hi.

*Edited*

what's the safest resolution for PC games?

800x600 should do fine. There was a thread about this in the indiegamer... make a search regarding "screen resolution" and I'm sure you'll find it.

[Jesse Hopkins]

I actually LIKE low res games, still. I mean, they seem more like a real video game and less like a flash ad to me. Then again, a game can have a lot going on if you do high res. I also like the art of pixel placement, which is an art reserved for low res 2D. But I have seen some great things coming out lately in Hi Res.

-Jesse