Resolution changes and games

[bhickenbottom]

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-8-os-builds-spotted-well-new-display-resolution

As a one-person Windows Phone game developer am I the only one who's cringing at the news of so many different resolutions?

I do a ridiculous amout of sprite work and have tons of assets drawn at 480x800. I was figuring they would pixel double. I can't imagine that any sprite-based game designed to run on a 480x800 display will look good scaled up or with black borders.

Not to mention having to support that many different resolutions in the future.

 

[Stiv]

I think the option to allow manufacturers to use a higher resolution screen on Windows Phones will be really good for the Windows Phone platform, but I was really hoping they'd only introduce 1 new res.

Like you I'm a one-man dev team and I already spend way too much time on graphics. Supporting more than 1 or 2 resolution will definitely be a massive drain on my already limited spare time. Knowing this is on the horizon means I might need to start looking at switching over to vector based graphics.

 

[bhickenbottom]

I think the option to allow manufacturers to use a higher resolution screen on Windows Phones will be really good for the Windows Phone platform, but I was really hoping they'd only introduce 1 new res.

Like you I'm a one-man dev team and I already spend way too much time on graphics. Supporting more than 1 or 2 resolution will definitely be a massive drain on my already limited spare time. Knowing this is on the horizon means I might need to start looking at switching over to vector based graphics.

I was hoping they'd pixel double like Apple did with the iPhone, then it would scale up nicely on newer phones (it would look pixelated, but at least it wouldn't look muddy, and you wouldn't need to deal with different aspect rations). What Apple did was such an elegant solution.

Since most of my games are throwbacks to old school NES and SNES games the graphics work and resolution differences are going to kill me. Vector graphics are not an option for the sharpness and detail I'm looking for.

I'll wait an see, but depending on how this pans out I may no longer have the time to create future games.

 

[rbrunner]

This just had to happen

Well, Symbian had different screen sizes almost for eons, and Android for quite some time, so when WP7 came out with strictly one screen size only I already thought back then that this story won't have a very happy ending.

Tons and tons of software would be written for this one resolution only, up to the day where the inevitable day of multi-resolution WP would come.

Why Microsoft did not design and implement WP for multiple resolutions right from the start? I think that was just too much: They were so late with everything, and they had such difficulties to get WP7 out the door within a reasonable time frame, there simply was no time to implement multiple resolutions.

 

[bhickenbottom]

Well, Symbian had different screen sizes almost for eons, and Android for quite some time, so when WP7 came out with strictly one screen size only I already thought back then that this story won't have a very happy ending.

Tons and tons of software would be written for this one resolution only, up to the day where the inevitable day of multi-resolution WP would come.

Why Microsoft did not design and implement WP for multiple resolutions right from the start? I think that was just too much: They were so late with everything, and they had such difficulties to get WP7 out the door within a reasonable time frame, there simply was no time to implement multiple resolutions.

I thought the resolution issue was something they were trying to fix with Windows Phone. I don't know how many times I heard the multitude of resolutions on Android referred to as "fragmentation" in talks.

That's one great thing about developing for the iPhone, dealing with a single resolution makes things so much easier - especially for 2D games. And when Apple had to change the resolution they pixel doubled, ensuring that older apps would run more or less the same. It was genius.

This is just aggravating.

I hope they release some details on how this will affect older games. Many developers don't have the time or resources to rework their older games. And I don't see a solution that doesn't make a lot of people upset.

 

[rbrunner]

See your problem

I feel with you, and I see your problem, but I don't see any good solution.

I don't think Apple's doubled resolution applies here: That was something like an increase in "sharpness". They still show the same "amount" of things on the screen, i.e. the same number of characters of standard font size per line, just sharper and with more detail. After all you can't make things just half the size - peoples' eyes are not that sharp

But what if you want a larger screen and see more things on that larger screen than before, let's say 5 icons in a row (of standard size, as now on the iPhone) instead of 4, or 3 tiles instead of 2 for that matter, or 50 characters per line instead of only 40, still with a readable font size of course?

You will get a pixel screen size that is not any nice multiple of the standard WP7 size now.

Hopefully Windows Phone will live for 10 years or so. Do you really think that Windows smartphones say in 2020 will still all have a resolution of 480x800 or an exact multiple of that? No chance. This very idea will be ridiculous in 2 or 3 years already, if you ask me.

The earlier you start with different resolutions, the better the devs will cope, the better the OS will improve the support for these resolutions. That Microsoft had no time to give birth to WP7 with such support right from day one is very unfortunate, IMHO.

 

[bhickenbottom]

I feel with you, and I see your problem, but I don't see any good solution.

I don't think Apple's doubled resolution applies here: That was something like an increase in "sharpness". They still show the same "amount" of things on the screen, i.e. the same number of characters of standard font size per line, just sharper and with more detail. After all you can't make things just half the size - peoples' eyes are not that sharp

But what if you want a larger screen and see more things on that larger screen than before, let's say 5 icons in a row (of standard size, as now on the iPhone) instead of 4, or 3 tiles instead of 2 for that matter, or 50 characters per line instead of only 40, still with a readable font size of course?

You will get a pixel screen size that is not any nice multiple of the standard WP7 size now.

Hopefully Windows Phone will live for 10 years or so. Do you really think that Windows smartphones say in 2020 will still all have a resolution of 480x800 or an exact multiple of that? No chance. This very idea will be ridiculous in 2 or 3 years already, if you ask me.

The earlier you start with different resolutions, the better the devs will cope, the better the OS will improve the support for these resolutions. That Microsoft had no time to give birth to WP7 with such support right from day one is very unfortunate, IMHO.

Of course Apple's solution applies here. They had the exact same problem: the resolution, the DPI, was becoming outdated. The same problem Windows Phone has now. The only difference is that their solution was much more elegant.

Phones will always be certain size and eventually the human eye can't tell the difference between increading levels of DPI. Solution: lock the aspect ratio and pixel double when the technology is available to do so. And as an added bonus you get a consistent experience across devices and a platform for which it is easy to develop.

Apple gets this.

The choice of resolutions, especially with two being so close to each other, sounds like they caved to the pressures of OEMs.

They're already fragmenting with sketchy updates and low end devices like the 610, this will only make things worse. They're adding one more item to the list of things a developer can no longer depend on.

IMHO