Good resolution for a shooter?

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:13 am

What would be a good standard to go with? I want to select something early on so I don't get stuck having to redo a lot of graphics later (shooter I'm working on).

It will be a hi-res 2d game for the PC. If I can, it will have TATE available. I want it to look perfect in that mode, and not awful in the the standard mode. Basically what I am asking is what resolution do most of you have your computer displaying at, I guess.

Right now it is 480x640 but that is probably too small. I would like most people to be able to display it full screen in it's native resolution.

(I am posting this here because I'd like input from the players, not just the handful of developers)

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:20 am

Many people use 1024x768 at home, or 800x600, those who got better machines use 1600x1200.. and serious shmuppers rotate their monitor for Tate anyway so you just go on with those..
I wouldn't personally advise using any high resolutions.. in my mind lower res is better for number of reasons.. it is easier and faster to make consistent looking graphics.. and it will run 60fps in slower PC's.. but you can do what you will, your 480x640 sounds just perfect to me

raiden · Post by **raiden** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:43 am

I´d also prefer lo-res. 480x640 is a good choice because lower than that, most PC monitors can´t display anymore. It´s still much sharper than the arcade standard, so you get bullet patterns which are nice to look at and easy to figure out.
Considering the design side, lo-res art needs to be pixellated to look good, which is hard work and not common nowadays, so you might have a hard time finding people to do that. Abstract forms will do for gameplay testing, though, and a good gameplay can enthuse a few artists to take part in your project. Higher resolutions are easier to work with on the design side of things, but become a problem in terms of memory consumption (download size, memory usage) especially when you start animating them. One way around this problem is the polygon approach, but of course that means imposing a certain look on your game, limiting your design choices. Another big advantage of polygons when making a PC game is easy scalability. People with high-end rigs can switch to high resolutions, those with slower machines can use the lowest setting to get good performance.
On the other hand, really high resolutions don´t make that much sense for shmups anyway, I think. In 1600x1200, you can have SO many bullets on screen, in SO complex patterns, nobody will be able to figure them out anymore (and few will have a hardware to display such a game in acceptable speed). But if you don´t want that many bullets, you don´t really need the hi-res.

qatmix · Post by **qatmix** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:56 am

640 X 480 is fine.

For timehunter on the dreamcast this is the resolution we are using. It does take longer to work in this resolution but it looks good. Most 2D shooters are in Low-res (320X240) so moving to this resolution is a step up.. Im drawign the sprites by hand in my limited free time. If you are doing a shooter with rendered sprites then its not really an issue as you can just render them out to any resolution.. Infact if its a PC only shooter you might be better to render them at 1280 960.. Again it depends on the pixel aspect ratio you want to maintain..

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 12:02 pm

Just to add some more info- I am drawing all the art myself and also doing the bullet patterns/level and game design etc. It will be hand drawn then scanned in. I've recently teamed up with someone to solve a lot of the programming issue I've been having.

When I play it full screen now it's blurry since I have a higher resolution, and I'd like to avoid that since most people will be in a similar situation I think.

A Dreamcast port or something would be neat, but I'm doing this in GameMaker so I don't think that is possible. Or is it?

qatmix · Post by **qatmix** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:19 pm

Nah, gamemaker cannot port to the dreamcast..

When writing your shooter for the PC you should open a 640 * 480 window. If you do this then it will not be blurred. It sounds to me like you are stretching the game over teh viewport.. Thats Evil

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:41 pm

Yeah, currently it opens a window. The final will need to have a fullscreen option, hence the needed resolution bump.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:23 pm

640x480 @ 60hz is what Atomiswave, Naomi, and Type-X render at in their "hires" modes. I know PC gamers will scoff at simple VGA resolution, but if you render to a full screen (not window) at this resolution, everything will look fine.

qatmix, whats the status of your homebrew dreamcast project? What % complete?

shiftace · Post by **shiftace** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:54 pm

640x480 is great for fullscreen, as long as you don't try to play on an LCD monitor. LCD + gaming = lose.

sammaza · Post by **sammaza** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:54 pm

Shikigami II pc release is the ideal template for a vertical shooter. they offer 640x480, 800, 1024 and then the option to TATE right,left, and flip. Please examine this and use it as your guide.

oNyx · Post by **oNyx** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:04 pm

Well, in shikigami2 everything is made out of polygons. With sprites its different. There can be only one resolution with crystal clear 1:1 pixels. Everything else needs to be scaled (with filtering of course).

Say you use 640x480 tate as real (1:1) resolution... then 800x600 yoko would be scaled down a bit and the same with 1024x768 would be scaled up.

With tv-out it doesnt really matter if it was scaled or not. The image quality of tv screens is so bad that you just cant tell if there was some scaling.

I'm not really sure what I should pick myself. Well, trilinear filtering does look pretty good (especially with prerendered sprites+mipmaps).

And uhm... since upscaling looks pretty ugly its eventually nicer to use some bigger resolution as base... *shrug*

One thing I would like to see in those 640x480@60hz games is some switch for doubling the refresh rate (in opengl you could then just use swapinterval 2), because PC monitors filcker a lot at 60hz.

sammaza · Post by **sammaza** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:08 pm

640x480 at 60 is fine on a ArcadeVGA with J-pac and I think you want to code for the biggest user base. using 640x480 + all 3 tate modes as your native will be the best\most universal canvas for your creation.

Tate` youself foo!

Post by **Shatterhand** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 1:32 am

Cigs, in Gamemaker, if you run the game in a window, and switch it to full screen, the graphics will look blurred because they will be scaled to fit the screen.

You can change the resolution of the screen when switching to full screen, so the game don't have to scale the graphics, but I think this is only doable in the registered version of Gamemaker.

My shmup made in Gamemaker, Space Disorder, runs only in full screen, and it switches the screen resolution yto 640x480x16bpp

kemical · Post by **kemical** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:47 am

i'm working in game maker also, I prefer to go with 320x240 though (or 240x320 in a window).. then the user can scale or maximize the window and it will resize based on the graphics card settings.. but it will blur a bit. you can also disable blurring from what i remember.

also if you're window or view of the game is 240 pixels wide, a good level width is 320 pixels if you're going to have the view panning.

not sure about built in tate though :\

qatmix · Post by **qatmix** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:37 am

qatmix, whats the status of your homebrew dreamcast project? What % complete?[/quote]

Well, we have the first level up and running. We are chucking loads of sprites (900 or so bullets) its all in a frame and moving along in a rock solid 60fps in 640 480

It needs some more polish but weve both been busy with our real lives to do much on this at the moment. But we will get onto it soon. It will happen though so be patient.

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 12:02 am

So it seems like 640x480 is the way to go. Thanks for all the input everyone.

Shatterhand wrote:Cigs, in Gamemaker, if you run the game in a window, and switch it to full screen, the graphics will look blurred because they will be scaled to fit the screen.

You can change the resolution of the screen when switching to full screen, so the game don't have to scale the graphics, but I think this is only doable in the registered version of Gamemaker.

My shmup made in Gamemaker, Space Disorder, runs only in full screen, and it switches the screen resolution yto 640x480x16bpp

I'm registered now (go go sprite rotation). I've tried the resolution change thing, but it still ends up either blurred or squashed in fullscreen mode. The aspect ratio of the game is 480x640 (rotated 4:3). Was your game a wide vert like Gigawing or traditional Shatterhand? If you could PM me with some more info about this. I'd like to get a non-scaled fullscreen mode going.

If any of this sounds totally off, it's because I'm getting confused myself here.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 12:14 am

Space Disorder is 640x480 , vertical scrolling but horizontal oriented (like, say Compile shmups

).

If I remember correctly, all I did was change the screen resolution to 640x480, put the game in fullscreen mode (And it doesn't have an option to be played on a windows), and choose no scale, so the game never tries to scale the graphics.

It was made with Gamemaker 4 (That version was completely freeware, all the features were available), but I've worked with GM6 , and I don't remember the resolution change making anything blurry.

the2bears · Post by **the2bears** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 12:22 am

I'd go with either 640x480 or 800x600. Any more is overkill IMO. I'm using the latter for my arena shooter.

Bill

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 4:43 pm

I go for 800x600 @120HZ stretched to fit the whole screen using MAME.

the2bears · Post by **the2bears** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 6:01 pm

ST Dragon wrote:I go for 800x600 @120HZ stretched to fit the whole screen using MAME.

I think 120 HZ is too much, curious, why such a high framerate? I go with 60 HZ myself.

Bill

oNyx · Post by **oNyx** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 6:07 pm

>why such a high framerate?

Refreshrate

Its just easier for the eyes (every frame is shown twice).

the2bears · Post by **the2bears** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 7:56 pm

Ah... makes sense. Thanks.

Bill

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 8:42 pm

Any refersh rate that is multiple of 60, is ideal for the eyes & with no tearing (jerky scrolling) effects.

So 120HZ is perfect.