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[C.A. Sinner]

i almost always play gams in windowed mode because i often talk to people on msn while playing them and i can switch between the two more easily when the game is running windowed.

[C.D Buckmaster]

With all of the money AAA studios spend on graphics, they're going to take any chance they can to fill your screen in their high rez goodness.

Also generalisations.

[rivon]

Playing FPS games is hard in windowed mode...

[Manuel Magalhães]

True, and playing platformers in fullscreen mode isn't pleasant to look due to bad scaling.
(Zing! Don't take this as aggressive though, I chuckled on your post.)

[Archibald]

AAA games: 3D, built for high-resolution, high-detail, scaling ain't no thing.
Indie games: 2D, typically built for low-resolutions, most textures/sprites drawn at-resolution.

Let's face it, as much as we love them chunky pixels, you just can't scale 640x480 up to today's modern resolutions. It's like getting grandma's teeth shoved right up in your face. Big, blocky, two feet away from your eyes. Nobody wants that.

Yes... That explains it. AAA titles are 100% 3D nowadays, so scaling is irrelevant. On the other hand some indie games are pixel art and pixel art by its nature looks good only on perfect pixel screen, due to LCD technicals the perfect pixels can be achieved only in native resolution (sometimes I miss the old convenient CTR's) and native resolutions vary greatly, therefore the only reasonable option to make it look good is to use windowed mode...

Another observation, on BigFishGames there are mostly indie games and these AFAIR all start in fullscreen mode. So, I wonder, it is because:
a) they have no pixelart games and with 2D but non pixelart it is OK to scale
b) casual players (that portal is extremely casual) do not care about native resolution prettiness
c) historical reasons, the portal started in CTR era and they simply continue adding games in default fullscreen because it was always done that way and all other games there do it

Basicly, I'm trying to find an answer to a question if it is viable to use non native resolution (make it run always in 1024x768 with an option for a windowed mode) for 2D graphics that is not pixelart and if the answer differs depending on what my target audience is (casual vs hardcore).

[rivon]

If you don't use pixel art and your art can be reasonably scaled without looking bad, then locking the resolution to 1024x768 is a really dumb idea.

[Archibald]

If you don't use pixel art and your art can be reasonably scaled without looking bad, then locking the resolution to 1024x768 is a really dumb idea.

No, no, I meant scaling by the monitor (using non native resolution on LCD) not by the computer.

[Eigen]

I hate when games that use 1024x768 screen size start in windowed-mode. My screen is 1280x800 (which I guess is an average size for a laptop) and it just doesn't fit vertically.

[Richard Kain]

No, no, I meant scaling by the monitor (using non native resolution on LCD) not by the computer.

Some casual games use the Flash IDE for producing the game graphics. These graphics are usually constructed as vectors. And Vector graphics are very friendly when it comes to scaling. Any game that features all-vector graphics can be scaled to just about any resolution and still look good.

The problem is that vector graphics are a traditional part of the Flash IDE, but aren't widely used in most other places. Flash game engines like Flixel and FlashPunk are specifically designed NOT to use vector graphics. Traditional 3D rendering pipelines are designed to work with textures, and not rasterized vectors.

If you want to make a game with the Flash IDE, and performance isn't a big issue, than vectors are a possibility. Otherwise, you'll have to deal with the scaling that everyone has to deal with.

[DinofarmGames]

Indie games have a little bit more respect for the player.  They also don't have as bad a habit of making the player wait through lonnnng loading screens, cutscenes, tutorials, and all kinds.

[C]

I don't ever want to remember reading what I've read here.

[John Sandoval]

my games run default fullscreen cuz I DON'T GIVE A FUCKKKKK

[XRA]

indie games track when u go fulscreen