When designing, which screen resolution do you aim at?

[Addictman]

Hi.

I guess the subject says it all. When designing your game, what resolution or size do you aim at? Currently I am going with 1024 * 768. Do you think it is necessary to lower this to f.ex 800 * 600 ? Or are these ancient so I should aim higher?

For fullscreen exclusive mode the size defines the resolution of the monitor, while in windowed mode it defines the window size where everything is at a 1:1 scale. Of course, in windowed mode you can resize the window to be smaller or larger and scale accordingly. I want to support fullscreen and windowed mode with the same code however, and then I need to aim at some default size.

[fletchergames]

Right now, I'm using 1024 * 768 as the default resolution too.  And I also allow the user to change to different resolutions and work in both window and full-screen mode.  That's the way to go.

It can be a little bit tricky.  Maybe I'm using layouts wrong or something, but Swing components don't always seem to resize themselves the way I want them to.  I wrote my own component system to get around this, though there should be less involved ways to deal with it.

[DzzD]

hehe I knew that those kind of informations coud be helpfull :

http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/some-stats-on-the-web/19317/msg/152736/view/topicseen.html#top

1. 1024x768    26,01 % 
2. 1280x1024    22,61 % 
3. 1680x1050    12,32 % 
4. 1280x800    12,18 % 
5. 1440x900  8,78 % 
6. 1920x1200    5,19 % 
7. 1400x1050    2,52 % 
8. 1152x864    2,13 % 
9. 1600x1200    2,13 % 
10. 800x600    1,26 % 

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[princec]

320x320 Really! 800x600 otherwise.

Cas

[Addictman]

Ah, I forgot those stats! Should have looked

Seems 1024*768 is a safe bet unless you're doing something really intense then, in which 800*600 would be a good choice it seems. I'm not completely off base then. Good.

And 320*320 huh? Ouch. I guess you fancy square shapes.

[Orangy Tang]

I'm sticking with 800x600 myself - it means that I get a bit more fillrate to pull of snazzy effects even on the crappier laptop chips. Plus it means that practically everyone can run it windowed without a problem.

[fletchergames]

I'm sticking with 800x600 myself - it means that I get a bit more fillrate to pull of snazzy effects even on the crappier laptop chips. Plus it means that practically everyone can run it windowed without a problem.

You have a point about the crappier chips.  On my Mac Mini (with Intel GMA graphics), I can't go above 1024x768 without having my game slow way down.  And it's not even a graphically intensive game.

On the other hand, my actual laptop has an ATI card and can actually handle 2d graphics.

[erikd]

I guess 1024x768 makes sense as a default although things also depend on the type of game you're making and what audience you're targetting. And remember that if you're doing 2D, the higher your resolution, the more pixels you have to design 
Right now I'm working on a little retro shooter in 640x480, of which a lot is actually 320x240 scaled x2 for a nice 80's look.

[rdcarvallo]

I'm programming for cell phones so the smallest resolution I program for is 128x128...

I can scale the graphics in PC at 4x, and the game is still playable.

In PCs I always used 640x480 as my default resolution, the TVs show max this resolution and PS2 games looks great, so there is no need for more.