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[Dave_C]

Hey guys, I hope this is the best place to put this topic.. I feel it is a design issue/struggle I'm having.

Personally when I play a retro game, I like the screen to be square. Consider something really boxy, like a game like Anodyne, I think if that were displayed with 50% more width, it would lose part of it's charm.

I'm having the same issue with my game, I personally prefer my aspect ratio to be closer to 4:3 than 16:9, and now I see 21:9 is becoming a thing (looks amazing for dev, bad for my kind of gaming)

So currently I have a game resolution of 384x216 that is scaled up to full screen to 1920x1080 - it looks nice and all.. but when I change the resolution to 256x224 and scale up (with black borders on the sides) I actually much prefer the "feel" of the game, like less is visible on screen.. it just feels and looks better to me.

I plan on selling this game on Steam.. I see there's no real consistent standards on Steam, do you think in this day and age I would receive much backlash if I released a (retro pixel art) 4:3 game?

[Polly]

256x224

Got to love that NES / SNES resolution

Do you think in this day and age I would receive much backlash if I released a (retro pixel art) 4:3 game?

I doubt it, especially if you also provide windowed ( 1x / 2x / 3x etc. ) modes. However, 256x224 isn't 4:3 .. it's more narrow. Here's the 256x224 ratio mapped to the resolutions from Steam's Hardware & Software Survey ( April 2016 ).

[Dave_C]

nice! 256x224 is just an example, I'll probably settle on something different.. but still fairly boxy rather than  full width.. at least that's the hope.. I guess it depends how offended people are by black borders.

I have a windowed mode where the user can select sizes x1 x2 x3 x4 and then a full screen mode where it fills the screen as much as possible while maintaining the aspect ratio.. so I might even go with a low number for the height like 256x192 or something, to give it a bit more size on the wide displays.

Was there a tool you used to generate those images? thanks again!

[voidSkipper]

Why does it have to be black borders? You can easily put some kind of arcade-cabinet stills around the "screen", or a subtle pattern, the frame of an old CRT TV with godrays coming from the outermost pixels - there are tons of ways to make your letterboxing unoffensive.

[s0]

couldn't you just have options to play in multiple aspect ratios?

personally, i don't mind borders around the screen but would prefer to use the full width of my display if possible.

[Zorg]

Shovel Knight http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidDAngelo/20140625/219383/Breaking_the_NES_for_Shovel_Knight.php used a resolution of 400x240 to match the vertical resolution of an NES. Virtual pixels are anti-aliased to fill a 1920x1080 screen. And it looks great, imho.

Leilani's Island https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=46289.0 uses 400x240,
Cyber Shadow https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=52597.0 uses 400x224.

Edit: You will automatically use the additional space to the left and right to design enemies which are faster, so 'less visible' does not apply to those anymore, only the stage. You could buff the horizontal moving speed of the player's character. I'd loved to have some more foresight in old Sonic games.

P.S.: I dislike black borders, too.

[bittwyst]

I'm happy to play a game in a narrower aspect ratio if that's what it was designed for, but I agree that a deliberately designed border art/pattern/effect could be preferable to blank borders. Could always make it an option tho.

[s0]

another thing to consider: for people playing on laptops, reducing their already small screen real estate even further could be annoying. especially when they have poor eyesight or other visual impairments.

[Dave_C]

nice input, I guess it comes down to taste on the borders, but for me, black borders are preferable to a "proper" border - because black quickly recedes into the background and you don't notice it after a while of playing, but having an actual border like in games like YS always turned me off them.



I'll have to look into the Shovel Knight approach, but to be honest I don't quite understand how it works.. wouldn't anti-aliasing ruin the pixel art aesthetic?

My game is a top down zelda-like perspective, so design wise I can't speed up speed on the x axis alone, I do feel like the wider screen changes the gameplay and exploration/claustrophobia compared to a more square view of the action.

I'll experiment with the resolutions you guys mentioned, it might in the end be possible I just make an option to toggle 4:3 and widescreen modes.

[Zorg]

In your case, the game already has a black border, so additional black borders do not break the aesthetic, probably.

I'll have to look into the Shovel Knight approach, but to be honest I don't quite understand how it works.. wouldn't anti-aliasing ruin the pixel art aesthetic?

If your virtual pixels are already scaled 4x4, scaling and anti-aliasing to 4.5x4.5 does not ruin it, in my eyes. Of course it's just a matter of taste. Pixels on an old TV never were sharp either. The blur is only too apparent with a small zoom factor, like 1.5, 2.5, for example.

[voidSkipper]

nice input, I guess it comes down to taste on the borders, but for me, black borders are preferable to a "proper" border - because black quickly recedes into the background and you don't notice it after a while of playing, but having an actual border like in games like YS always turned me off them.



I'll have to look into the Shovel Knight approach, but to be honest I don't quite understand how it works.. wouldn't anti-aliasing ruin the pixel art aesthetic?

Well, those borders are quite garish. Anti aliased art in borders wouldn't ruin the aesthetic if done right.

When I suggested arcade cabinet stills, I meant like the "box art" you see on the sides of a game at the arcade. This could of course be heavily faded.

Suggesting the "god rays" effect, where the outermost pixels bloom over the border art, would enhance the "this is the game and that's the outside world" idea.

[Schoq]

I'll have to look into the Shovel Knight approach, but to be honest I don't quite understand how it works.. wouldn't anti-aliasing ruin the pixel art aesthetic?

Maybe it would break some people's expectations of modern pixel art standards, but as zorg implies too, there's nothing "retro" about completely square or sharp pixels; most old systems had neither. The NES and SNES for example had a 8:7 image stretched to ~4:3 (or even wider on PAL but let's not talk about that!).
I think if you're going for a genuine retro feel, then a slightly blurry, subtly off-square pixel ratio would actually put you ahead of most people attempting it.

[Ishi]

Thanks zorg for mentioning Leilani's Island already! In this post I have some more details about how I handle my screen scaling:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=46289.msg1209529#msg1209529

I actually have three options in the game now, and this is how they work on a 1920x1080 monitor:

- Pixel-perfect scaling: scales up to the highest integer it can. This will be a 1600x960 viewport (4x scale from original resolution) in the middle of the screen, with black borders on all 4 sides.
- Fit-to-screen: stretches the screen to reduce borders while maintaining aspect ratio. This will be a 1800x1080 viewport with black borders on the left and right.
- Stretch-to-screen: ignores aspect ratio and fills the screen completely with no borders.

My advice is to choose whatever starting resolution you feel is best suited to your game, and then offer players as many options as possible about how they want it to appear on their monitor. Some people will care way more about eliminating borders than whether the game looks a bit stretched.

[Dave_C]

Ishi, I see how it works now, makes sense! I'll implement that option if I can.

I realise pixel art used to look very different, I have a nice wood finished CRT TV on my desk next to me, straight out of the early 80's.. but the CRT has it's own unique kind of effect, so I was afraid to stretch pixels on a modern HD monitor/TV.

I'm definitely feeling better about the whole situation now though.. I'll go with whatever aspect ratio feels best and then give the user as many options to stretch/crop the screen as possible.