Why is the GS platform resolution only a quarter of its real resolution?
3absh
Member Posts: 601
When I choose iPhone 6 or 5 its merely 1/4 of its actual resolution (half the width and half the height)
I chose iPhone 5 landscape and honestly the end result looks very pixelated on bigger screens.
What's the deal with this low resolution?
Comments
You build your games based on points rather than rendered pixels, if you make your artwork at the correct resolution (generally x2) then you will be addressing every pixel on the device's screen.
An iPhone 5 (1136 x 640 pixels) project is never going to scale that well to - for example - a Retina iPad (2048 x 1536) or an iPhone 6 plus (1920 x 1080), that's simply a limitation of the resolution of an iPhone 5 project.
http://www.paintcodeapp.com/news/ultimate-guide-to-iphone-resolutions
If that were the case then how come we have a 720p option that's actually 720p? If what you you saying were true 720p should appear as a small 360p scene
The iPhone 6 isn't that far from the 5 when you take into consideration the reduction to 25% of its actual resolution.
I think the reduction is probably done to increase performance/frame-rate of the final result, and to require less PC resources to run the GS software, since I've tried in the past developing a 720p game with my tiny 4GB RAM and faced some serious lag issues.
720p is a broadcast standard / format and not based on touch points.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "the reduction to 25% of its actual resolution" ?
Again, I'm not 100% sure what you are saying here . . . but there is no reduction in resolution with GameSalad projects, GameSalad produces projects at the resolution of the target device, whether that device is an iPad, iPhone 6 plus or iPhone 5.
For example, a Retina iPad is 2048 x 1536 pixels, a GameSalad iPad project is set up to produce a 2048 x 1536 pixel result.
An iPhone 5 is 1136 x 640 pixels, a GameSalad iPhone 5 project is set up to produce a 1136 x 640 pixel result.
. . . etc etc . . . nothing is being reduced or scaled down.
IPhone 5 and up have the same aspect ratios. Make your game images look good on iphone 6 plus. And it will look good on 5 and up devices.
All ipads have same aspect ratio. Make your game images look good on ipad pro and they will look good on all the other ipads.
thats how I approach it. I could be wrong.
I think he's talking about the display size in the editor window for iPhone devices, not the actual resolution outputted onto the devices...
I think he's just wondering why its set up as half the size, in the editor window.
Yeah, I thought that's what he meant at first too, but he does refer to 'the final result' . . . . but . . . hmmmmm . . . I'm not sure now !
I was referring to the actual resolution in the final result. I think the problem is I used resolutions for my images that are similar to the size of the actors in the editor window. Gamesalad should notify it's users that the output is actually 4 times the size of the actors in the scene of the editor or else how is one supposed to know? I wish I would've known this earlier it could've saved me a lot of time.
I will post an update after I have increased the image sizes and tell you if the image quality of the game has in fact changed
BTW I don't consider stretching a legitimate resolution if that's what you guys meant, 480p stretched to 720p will remain 480p
Yes, I think you're right, that's probably the issue.
They do !
They repeatedly point that out, everyone repeatedly makes this point, that's why you make your art assets x2 the resolution of your actors, this is common knowledge, GameSalad is not the only SDK that works like this, a lot of this approach is driven by how Apple handles resolutions.
If you re-author your assets at twice the resolution (so a 200x200 pixel image for a 100x100 pixel actor) you should be just fine.
A couple of other related things worth pointing out:
Try and make your images divisible by 4, this is not essential, but for non-moving graphic elements it will give you optimal image fidelity.
Try and stick to powers-of-2 sizes (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 . . etc) with your images, again not a set rule, your game will work just fine with non-Po2 sizes, it's just that sticking to Po2 sizes will make optimal use of memory.
Search for both these terms for more details (divisible by 4 / powers of 2).
That's becuase you don't understand how a retina display works. The reason the images must be double the size is because of how a retina display works. Since Apple displays go by the PPI so apple crams double the Pixels in an inch. So for a 1024x768 screen apple doubles the pixels so the resolution is actually 2048x1536. If you check resolution independence gamesalad will take that 2048x1536 image and scale it down to 1024x768 and when ported to an apple device with a retina screen those extra pixels will be added to the extra PPI Apple adds to their displays. Gamesalad scales it down so that the images can be used on devices without retina displays as we also port to android et... Read up on retina displays.
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@Lost_Oasis_Games Retina display is just a marketing term - don't let that fruit speak confuse you
I used numbers that divide by 4
I try to use powers of 2 but sometimes I need a resolution like for example 60x56 ,so I make sure both height and width are divisible by 4
Maybe I can use powers of 2 when I actually start using 4 times the current resolution
I don't know why you guys are insisting that it's double the resolution because it isn't, it's quad.
Double the width and double the height equals four times the area.
. . . which is double the resolution in a 2D space, and resolution in the context we are talking about is measured in a 2D space . . . for example we say 100ppi rather than 100ppi/pi (one hundred pixels per inch rather than one hundred pixels per inch / per inch).
'Area' is not the same as 'resolution', to quadruple the area of a 2D space you would double the resolution.
Exactly I was talking about pixels per axis inch, not square inch.
As to Retina display, I'll say any device that displays more than 300ppi
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That should be fine depending on your game, like I say none of these are unbreakable rules, just recommendations for the best quality and best memory usage, but of course if you have a game with just one actor it's not going to make any difference whether the actor uses the powers of 2 rule or not . . . but if you have a game with 120 actors attacking the hero then it might be worth keeping to the rule.
Your example is fine, both values (60x56) stay within 64 . . .
A 64x64 pixel actor uses a 64x64 pixel chunk of memory.
A 65x65 pixel actor uses a 128x128 pixel chunk of memory. (!!)
Your 60x56 pixel actor uses a 64x64 pixel chunk of memory.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There is no need to use 4 times the actor's resolution, this will only use up more memory than is necessary, makes your games slower to load, place more of a strain on the device's processor and reduce image quality, stick to doubling the resolution (expect for iPhone6+ which is x3).
Yep ! Exactly.
A 10 inch x 10 inch area @ 100ppi (the resolution) = 1,000,000 (1m) pixels.
If we double the resolution (so change 100ppi to 200ppi) we get . . .
4,000,000 pixels, rather than 2,000,000 pixels.
ppi is not a square inch measurement. But are we done measuring d***s now..lol
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Ok excellent, glad we got that figured out, I don't know why but I always assumed resolution was the number of pixels not the ppi.
Well . . . it is the number of pixels, but only along one axis !
You can replace the first 'p' in 'ppi' with 'number of pixels'.