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[Mir@k]

What resolution comes first to mind?

I've been meaning to create a few concept games for mobile devices, as it is a world i haven't tapped into, but i don't know where to start resolution-wise. In pixels, i mean. I've been getting tons of messages suggesting different phones as resolutions but since i've got no access to such brands i have no idea what resolution to use.

Isn't there some sort of universal resolution? Or do i really need to choose just a certain phone's resolution and bear the fact it won't look the same in all mobile media? What do you think?

[oahda]

No, you'll have to make games that work on any resolution. If you want hi-res graphics for some and lo-res for some, both the iOS and Android toolkits help you out with that by use of different suffixes or folders, and of course you can emulate several resolutions and aspect ratios using different devices in the free simulator. You don't need any actual phones.

But the code itself must assume inconsistencies, and for example put a healthbar at screen width minus bar width minus margin to get it on the right side, rather than 500px to the right, and that's preferred practice even if you know the resolution, so it's not too much work. Find out the smallest aspect ratio you will have to work with and make sure everything that has to be seen goes in there and on larger screens you make sure nothing that's never supposed to be seen goes in the margins. You can also write specific code for some special cases (like checking if you're on a tablet or on a phone).

[Mir@k]

Sounds pretty complicated. It's going to take me an ungodly amount of time to understand all of this.

[gimymblert]

http://stats.unity3d.com/mobile/display.html

[Sik]

No, you'll have to make games that work on any resolution.

I think the problem is more "what's the best resolutions to optimize the assets for". Too high and you waste memory, too low and things look ugly when scaled up. Sadly, when it comes to mobile it's even more all over the place than for PC so huh yeah good luck (and you can't get away with an excessively high resolution because the phones with lower resolutions also happen to have lower amounts of memory)

Probably the best is to go with vector artwork and textures at a reasonable resolution for them (textures getting deformed around non-rectangular shapes will help with making less obvious the issues at the highest resolutions).

[oahda]

Yeah, but like I said both iOS and Android toolkits actually let you provide different size assets for different size resolutions (only two options, HD or not, on iOS, and a couple more specific options on Android). But of course vector graphics are a great solution too.

[Sik]

That still won't help you when you don't know what resolutions you're ideally expected to support in the first place =P (especially on Android)

[oahda]

You're supposed to look that up before you get to work.

[Sik]

Which is the whole point of this thread...

You could argue "search it", but in practice you can still end up missing some important ones or may find outdated information, and you may also want people already experienced with the topic to give their opinion.

[gimymblert]

http://stats.unity3d.com/mobile/display.html

[InfiniteStateMachine]

The following advice is for pixel art games for mobile which is what i tend to do the most when I work on mobile. : I author it at a resolution I like (usually 640x480 or 800x600) and then set it to scale upwards in 2x increments until 1 step before it goes out of the screen. IMO if you are doing a pixel-art game you have to do non-destructive scaling (doubling the resolution).

Otherwise I've done very little app work. Mainly just a restaurant selecting app and some small tests but I tried out CoronaSDK and that system solved most of the problems I had in regards to resolution. They have a remarkably reliable simulator that let me test a few different res layouts. If I was doing a 2D application I would go with Corona.

[oahda]

Which is the whole point of this thread...

I didn't say it wasn't, nor that this thread isn't part of looking it up.

I've made one iOS only game and one iOS/Android game for both phones and tablets, and I simply used the non-retina iPhone resolution as a basis for the size of the sprites and then I coded stuff relative to the corners and sides of the screen and it seemed to work out everywhere I saw and heard about in the end. I think the whole thing might have been scaled down at a certain lower limit too.

[Sik]

The following advice is for pixel art games for mobile which is what i tend to do the most when I work on mobile. : I author it at a resolution I like (usually 640x480 or 800x600) and then set it to scale upwards in 2x increments until 1 step before it goes out of the screen. IMO if you are doing a pixel-art game you have to do non-destructive scaling (doubling the resolution).

That can backfire in some situations, e.g. 384×240 (the 16:10 counterpart to the old 320×240) is exactly 1/5 of 1920×1200, yet with your method it'd scale up to only 1536×960 instead (because the next step after 4 is 8 instead of 5). The correct thing is to scale up in integer amounts compared to the original, rather than doubling in each step.

Yes, I know 1920×1200 isn't a common mobile resolution, but the point applies to any platform.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

The following advice is for pixel art games for mobile which is what i tend to do the most when I work on mobile. : I author it at a resolution I like (usually 640x480 or 800x600) and then set it to scale upwards in 2x increments until 1 step before it goes out of the screen. IMO if you are doing a pixel-art game you have to do non-destructive scaling (doubling the resolution).

That can backfire in some situations, e.g. 384×240 (the 16:10 counterpart to the old 320×240) is exactly 1/5 of 1920×1200, yet with your method it'd scale up to only 1536×960 instead (because the next step after 4 is 8 instead of 5). The correct thing is to scale up in integer amounts compared to the original, rather than doubling in each step.

Yes, I know 1920×1200 isn't a common mobile resolution, but the point applies to any platform.

As long as the image isn't compromised I"m fine with integer values. I seem to recall going 3x and starting to see issues but my memory may be failing me and from that point I went up in 2x increements. I will have to do some tests this weekend to remember why.
 

[Sik]

Integer values should be perfect, only issue I can think on is if you prescaled the image, which on platforms with weak GPUs would require you to stick to powers of two. That's a performance problem though, and honestly you're better off having unscaled textures and relying on having filtering disabled instead (which will also help performance due to reduced memory usage and more cache friendliness).