2.00 Screen resolution for NeoLemmix V2.00n

[namida]

Final decision: 2x resolution will be supported (except in the unlikely event that a decision is made to up both physics and display to work off a base of 3x resolution). Whether or not to change gameplay physics' resolution can be discussed in this topic, although the decision is semi-finalized as that physics will remain at 1x and only display will operate at a higher resolution (if the user chooses to do so).

Currently, all the internal rendering (except the menu screens) is done at 320x200, before being resized to fit the actual resolution in play. While I will most likely keep gameplay physics at this, I'm thinking of using something a bit higher for the actual rendering, so that the graphics can be a bit more detailed, and optionally, the skill panel can fit more stuff (I have some pretty bold plans for this in itself, too).

In regards to this, what should I aim for? In order to keep the gameplay area neatly lined up with the skill panel, the width would have to be a multiple of 320. The most obvious choice would be 640 - double the area, while still small enough that any display will be able to fit it. Although it doesn't strictly have to be so, the logical follow-on from this is that the overall screen area (before resizing to fit) would be 640x400. However, an issue that comes to mind here is that those on resolutions of 1024x768, 1366x768 or 1280x720, this can't be resized larger for the screen without distortion (due to non-integer resize factors) - the current 320x200 display can be resized to 960x600, exactly triple.

While the gameplay area would have to be an integer multiple of 320x160 (so, in this case, 640x320), the skill panel does not nessecerially have to keep its current proportions. If we use the lowest height here (1280x720), then the gameplay area alone resized would be 1280x640; leaving 80 pixels at that size - or 40 pixels once it's downsized. Whether this would be enough or not is another matter... and there would also be width issues in the case of 1024x768. If we were to keep the current proportions, this would mean a very small screen size (although, it'd be the same as Lemmini without using zoom, so maybe not too bad?) for anyone playing on a screen resolution of less than 1280px wide and/or 800px tall. It's also possible (though it may not look great, and could especially be problematic in levels where pixel precision is needed) to not strictly require integer resizing factors.

So - what kind of resolutions are people using? Especially, how many people use the three that I mentioned may be problematic? Or, are there any other solutions people think could be workable?

[607]

Hm, I don't know, really.
I've always used 1024 * 768, if it's of any good to know that.

[IchoTolot]

I play on a 1920x1080 resolution.

My opinion would be:
Let the gameplay area be at it's original size, if ANY consequences could affect the gameplay. May it be in precision (which a lot of levels have) or screen size (one of the biggest advanteges of NeoLemmix over Lemmini is that you can run it at fullscreen and not in a window of which you cannot change the size! And even I say this is painful with Lemmini.)
A little more detail with a bigger resolution ONLY if it still runs fullscreen without a black edge or distortion and precision and gameplay are not affected!

The skillpanel and Info panel can be resized though. Especially the Info pannel to fit in total IN and OUT numbers, so you can have that information ingame. Skillpannel for 1 or 2 additional skills can be nice, but not as a big must have.

[mobius]

awesome!

my monitor is 1680x1050

I wouldn't mind a windowed option [that you can resize]

[namida]

I'll definitely try to get some kind of windowed mode going. Considering that I plan to rewrite almost everything apart from the DAT code and the gameplay physics, it should be doable.

So, we know someone uses 1024x768. Most likely, there'll be people who use 1280x720 too (as that's standard 720p resolution), so I should probably try to work with something that would work with a screen size (hypothetically; since I don't know if this is actually a resoluiton that's ever used) of 1024x720. Ideally I'd like to use 640x320 for the playing area, but this doesn't have to be the case. Since the playing area can be scrolled, I guess it doesn't strictly have to be full-sized in all cases - and if the internal physics still run based on 320x160, then there are workarounds that would affect visual quality but not the ability to distinguish individual pixels.

I myself use 1920x1080 (1080p), which is a particularly easy one to work with for this...


At some point, I'll probably make some kind of mockup EXE (which displays a static image of a level, along with a skill bar, but doesn't actually implement any gameplay) and see how it looks for various people.

[ccexplore]

If you can ensure that both the original 320 graphics and the new 640 graphics are identical in terms of gameplay physics, then perhaps you can consider leaving it as a user choice, where they can chose the lower resolution graphics in order to better fill up the screen, vs higher resolution graphics that may not fill up the screen as nicely at some resolutions.

You can also potentially support non-multiples of 320 if you look into adjusting the widths and spacing of the skills panel accordingly.

The two other resolutions you mentioned (other than 1024x768) are for widescreen.  Obviously, widescreen will always be problematic even if you scale at non-integer multiples: you either end up with less room vertically than usual, or you end up not being able to make full use of the wider horizontal estate and have to basically black-bar on left and right.

[namida]

Yeah, that's true. However - aren't the majority of screens widescreen these days? I was actually quite surprised to hear that 607 was using a non-widescreen.

[Simon]

aren't the majority of screens widescreen these days?

1280x1024 and 1400x1050 >_>;;

Choose a scaling factor according to the vertical length, and support arbitrary aspect ratios horizontally. Widescreen users should benefit from the large map view. This is the deluxe solution. Designing aspect-ratio-agnostic can be hard.

About aligning the map with the panel: The minimap can be stretched if necessary, it doesn't display the zoomed-out terrain with proper aspect ratio anyway. Even L1 has spare width in the panel next to the minimap. Instead of a longer minimap, extra buttons are even better.

Windowed support will be appreciated by some, and would help in testing different aspect ratios.

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

aren't the majority of screens widescreen these days?

Simon basically beat me to it, but given how PC sales have been in decline, don't be surprised that many may still be using older hardware that may not support widescreen.

Anyway, that's sort of besides the point since we do know that more recent hardware are likely to support widescreen, and it is widescreen where you can't expect to just directly scale up the layout of original Lemmings.  Simon's "deluxe solution" is worth considering especially taking widescreen into account.

[607]

Yeah, that's true. However - aren't the majority of screens widescreen these days? I was actually quite surprised to hear that 607 was using a non-widescreen.

Yes, they are. But I like this resolution, and if you don't mind, I won't be changing it any time soon (plus I don't really have money to spare on monitors at the moment).

[namida]

So I'm thinking, I'll offer a similar setup to what Windows Lemmings has - except that the underlying mechanics will always run based on low-resolution, to ensure consistency. The skill panel - which I plan to make a bit more customizable, as I've been saying - will have the option when in hi-res mode of simply enlarging everything, or using the extra space to fit more stuff (for example, displaying all 16 skill slots regardless of which ones are in the level).

The one question that remains is widescreen. Given that a majority of monitors are widescreen, I'd like to make use of it; at the same time, given that it seems a lot of people here still use 4:3 resolutions, I absolutely don't want to require widescreen. The question then is how best to do this... Most likely, I won't aim to have a full-blown "adapt to any display size", but simply offer a Widescreen mode that uses an aspect ratio more suited to widescreens. The most likely candidate here is (with low-resolution graphics) 424x200 - this is because it adapts fairly well to common sizes, with little unused area:

1024x600 = 2x zoom = 848x400
1280x720 = 3x zoom = 1272x600
1366x768 = 3x zoom = 1272x600
1680x1050 = 3x zoom = 1272x600 (4x zoom is slightly too large; this is the one resolution it doesn't work too great with - not that it will be awful, just not perfect)
1920x1080 = 4x zoom = 1696x800

It's not quite so ideal in high-res, but still manageable (and in some cases it will fit better by using non-widescreen). Basically, anything that uses 2x or 3x zoom above would instead need to use 1x (giving a game resolution of 848x400), while a resolution capable of using 4x or higher could use 2x zoom (giving 1696x800). If anyone actually uses a display resolution high enough to get a 6x zoom (2560x1440 for example; which would give a game resolution of 2544x1200), then 3x zoom could be used in hi-res.

Another factor in choosing this is that the width and height are both divisible by 8. This will allow better re-use of existing assets rather than having to make new ones; particularly important for the skill panel.


To add to that, certain combinations of settings could also be used for the skill panel and the game area:

- A standard-screen skill panel could be used together with a widescreen game area display (in which case it'd be centered), but not the inverse
- A low-res skill panel could be used together with a hi-res game area (in which case it'd just be resized to fit)
- A hi-res skill panel could be used together with a lo-res game area *ONLY* when the zoom is even (2x, 4x, 6x, etc)

[namida]

So I've been thinking about this, and am wondering one more thing...

It's safe to assume no one here uses anything lower than 640x480, right? So... the question is, is there a need to support a low-resolution skill panel, keeping in mind that it could be stretched to fit odd sizes (or, in any case other than low-res with 1x zoom, centered)? Unlike the play area, it isn't critical to have a pixel-perfect, unstretched display for the panel - as long as you can clearly make out the information on it (or in other words, it's fine to zoom it by non-integer multiples).

[namida]

It seems there's a strong preference for hi-res here.

So my next question - is there anyone who thinks they're likely to use Low-Res at 1x zoom? The reason I ask this is that, if not, the skill bar can be set to "always hi-res" which would greatly simplify implementing it. Low-Res at 2x zoom, or Hi-Res at 1x zoom, still only needs a minimum resolution of 640x400, so I doubt we'd ever run into a situation of actually not being able to handle it.

[namida]

I've been working on some experimental code (ie: not part of the actual new app, but just in a test app to look into what does / doesn't work well) for handling various zooms as well as switching to/from full screen. Few minor bugs but shouldn't be anything I can't fix fixed. I'd say there's about a 100% chance you can expect both full screen and windowed options for 2.00n.

In regards to the question about Low-Res 1x Zoom; it shouldn't be too much hassle to support it - however, if I do indeed go with a "hi-res only for skillbar" option (which would still allow the gameplay area to be low-res), this may simply mean that the skill bar may be hard to read at 1x zoom low-res. So I'd like to know if there's anyone who thinks they're likely to use 1x Zoom Low-Res (it won't be a problem with 2x Zoom or higher Low-Res, or any zoom Hi-Res), so that if there is, I can specifically look at alternative options to minimize problems that could arise in such a setup.

Still need to check it on Linux too. Cross-compiling is something I haven't been able to get set up (at least not in the Windows to Linux direction, which is what I'd be interested in, given that my main PC is the Windows one), but I should be able to simply compile it on the Linux machine and test that way.

[namida]

They say an image is worth a thousand words. This is a thousand times more true when trying to describe images.

Do note this is a mockup, not an actual gameplay image (as could be evidenced by the mixed style of skill panel icons, the lack of actual skills on them, the mismatch between the level shown on-screen and the level shown in the minimap, etc; this image has been increasingly made from cut-and-paste parts depending on what I want to test at the time); but this shows what a hi-res skill panel might look like, including at 320x200 window size (which is what low-res 1x zoom would be).

Is anyone likely to use it at that size, and if so, do they find it hard to read the skill panel?

EDIT: Updated the image to contain some actual icons, even if it's only the release rate change ones.