Retina Only??

YoRooster

Hi guys,

I have had a good dig through the forums and vids for this particular issue but none I seem to find looks at it quite from my angle:

The retina display for iphone 4 and ipods are now common place and I would imagine the 3GS may not have much time left considering the rumours of the iphone 5 release and a new 4S or cheaper icloud dependent model on it’s way.

I know there is going to be a whole bunch of people that still own a 3GS but regardless I am leaning towards creating for the retina only. This is taking into account my own development time to complete my first app and that if the game file turns out to be quite large I am not short changing people by saying “hey it still works on 3GS just at only 2 fps”.

I have read about the resolution independence option which helps to optimise your images for both platforms. However I notice as a default GameSalad is only set up for the older iphone resolution. This is fine – I can see how this effects my high resolution images and optimises them when I check RI, but my problem is if I only want to develop for a retina screen I can change the play area to suit my desired size but I am told the camera must remain the same. I understand this is to avoid any damaging effect of the touch tracking and other features.

In other words:

If I develop a scene meant for retina only (and do not check the resolution independence) will the camera which is currently set to 480 x 320 double it’s viewing size when I come to publish my game and display the scene as I intend? Or will the camera just show large images as if I have zoomed into my scene by a factor of 2? By clicking preview it will display my retina resolution scene but looking only through 480 x 320 eyes. Hope this makes sense.

If I do check resolution independence I can see how GameSalad cleverly optimises my high-res images by halving them but I realise to create a game meant for retina only I have to construct the whole game while it is optimised for 480 x 320 only. Kind of a set back if I want to be able to preview the game at it’s best resolution and avoid any images being out of place when they are sized back up. By the way I understand if you was able to view the preview in the iphone 4’s native resolution the screen would be quite large due to your monitors resolution.

I know I can download the viewer to actually answer this question but I was hoping to get a lot further in development before I begin a paid membership to Apple. Damn! Stumbled at the first hurdle ☹

Anyone have any thoughts on this?? Or you can always tell me thanks for wasting 5 minutes of my life...

YoRooster

Wow...... didn't realise till I posted this....... yeah....... that's a lot to read!

StusApps

The 480 x 320 in GS is not really pixels on the device (ish). Imagine it as just a grid reference for laying out your items. If you want to use only retina graphics then that is what it will display on the device. If you don't tick the resolution independence then it will also load those hi-res graphics on the old devices (which with then have to resize them in the device to fit the screen giving really shitty performance). When you fire up the viewer it makes a half resolution version of your file for display in the viewer, things will still be in the right place though.

But currently we have no way of publishing to only retina devices. You can specify 3GS of above or which iOS version, but not just for retina.

YoRooster

So from what your saying I should probably just check resolution independence so at least if someone does download my game for the 3GS then at least it is optimised as best it could be rather than just crash on the poor guy/gal. Hey if it turns out I can keep the file size down then at least I've opened up my potential market to a wider audience.

Thanks for the advice!

YoRooster

So lets say for example I tick resolution independence and create a scene that's 1024 x 1024 and I create 4 background images to fill each corner at 1024 x 1024 which when dragged into the scene will automatically be halved to 512 x 512 which will then fill the scene perfectly. Then when I view this scene on the iphone 4 retina screen the scene will be increased to 2048 x 2048 and my 4 background images will return to their original hi resolution form of 1024 x 1024 and still fit the screen perfectly. This would make sense.

I suppose if any of these background images was an uneven pixel size then when everything is doubled for retina this may cause them to be out of place by a pixel or two. Hmmmm!