What's the best way to make a game in other resolutions?
Wonder Maru
Member, PRO Posts: 98
Hello,
not sure this is the right place, please move if not.
I'm almost done with my first game in GS, I used the iPhone 5 portrait, so I don't have problems stretching it to iPhone 6.
But I'd like to release a version for iPad and maybe Android.
What's the best/effortless way to do that?
Thanks!
Wonder Maru: casual games for casual people. www.wondermaru.com
Comments
Mysterious !
Can you offer any more details about the resolution of your artwork ? I'm guessing you worked with x2 resolution image assets ?
Sorry
Yes everything should be retina size, 640x1136 originally, I set resolution independent in my project settings.
I have just a background during the game, other screens use a plain color.
Do you need more info?
Thank you!
Wonder Maru: casual games for casual people. www.wondermaru.com
Resolution independence simply produces a set of additional low resolution assets for older/slower lower resolution devices, it has no effect on the quality of your game.
Not sure what this means, you have a game that is only background images and 'plain colour' (actors with no images) ?
If the background images are 640 x 1136 then this will suffer somewhat on an iPad as this is - give or take - only pre-Retina iPad 1/2 resolution . . . if you are able to maybe you could remake the images at a higher resolution ? Or maybe the images are all illustrations of soft focus clouds or they are scrolling across the screen, in which case you should be ok.
The background should be fine on iPad if it's just a solid colour.
You must have images as well??
I'm sorry I didn't explain myself properly.
I do have other images, and everything is based on the 640x1136 size. The source files are vectors, so I could export everything bigger. I was just wondering what's the best way to remake the game for ipad, if there are tricks or tips at least, to save time/work.
Sorry for the confusion
Wonder Maru: casual games for casual people. www.wondermaru.com
The best way is to always start with an iPad project and work down to smaller devices. Every project I do is done as iPad and then all I have to do is adjust for the aspect ratio of the targeted devices. There are many different methods to do the adjustments. It all depends on the game but that should be taken into account when you start building a game.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
The most common way is making app in iPad setting.
The annoying part is playing in creator and top of screen is cut off in iPad setting.
That only really effects low resolution laptop screens, but even here you can create a custom resolution to see the whole screen.
Not sure what you mean by custom resolutions??
I thought options were limited to pull down menu? iPhone 6,iPad etc etc When viewing running project in creator.
But yes I'm on lap top but have external monitor.
Thanks
You should have 'edit custom resolution' at the bottom of that pulldown.
You just need to make up a smaller custom resolution (make sure it's 4:3), so something like 800/600 - or whatever size works with your screen.
yea, start from the bigger size was definitelly a good idea I didn't have at the time
Thanks for the tip
Wonder Maru: casual games for casual people. www.wondermaru.com
Never took notice. Thank you.
Just tried it. Works.
Nice but of course GS doesn't remember or save that setting so I have to click and redo every run.
Click,scroll,change, Change project. Click scroll, change. Change project. Click scroll, change .........
Getting really frustrated with GS UI!
Well, the GS UI doesn't really remember anything, move from a window and it resets itself, open a bunch of layer drop down triangles and then switch focus and they all reset themselves, scroll through a thousand images to the one you want, and then look elsewhere and then come back and . . . . yes . . . the window has reset itself, so you need to scroll through all those images again, basically GS forces you to redo everything like this, scroll to the upper righthand corner of your massive 50,000 x 50,000px scene, where you are working on constructing a boss character, double click one of the bosses legs to make it green and return to the scene and . . . . yep, you guessed it, the window has been reset, so you need to navigate back to where you previously where . . .
. . . so yep, I feel you pain !
When using GS most of my time is spent retracing steps like this.
The custom resolution function is pretty damn great, on a standard 27" iMac you can view pretty much all of a Retina iPad project, by that I mean you can set a custom resolution to 2048 x 1536px to preview your game, so you can see your whole game at a much higher resolution than the standard half resolution preview, which is great for checking how sharp your images actually are and so on . . . the 27" iMac is 2560 x 1440px so a bit is cropped off the height but it's still great for checking image quality - or if you need the whole scene with no cropping I'll often go for a custom resolution of 1600 x 1200, which is still a way higher resolution than 1024 x 768.
. . . . . but, like you say, the fact that you can set up your X and Y values, name your new custom setting but GS doesn't save it (apparently you should be able to save it, but this was an oversight that never got addressed) means the functionality is pain to use if you have to keep entering your settings every time you want to preview.
I have to take a few days off GS. You start a small project and its very productive and then a few days and your actors are adding up and attributes and scene gets bigger. By the end of the week there is a hundred actors and attributes and you want to smash your computer and your screaming "why god why"? Click scroll. click scroll.....
Its like my four year old flushed my phone in the toilet. You love the little guy but drives you nuts. GS is the same way. I love it but drives me nuts.
So Im taking a few days off from GS before I snap.
. . . to grid.
I put in a request long ago for the custom screen size preview to be saved.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
It would be great to see it fixed - at the moment the function is rendered almost unusable by having to set it all up each and every time you hit preview.
Heres a old video I made on universal Builds starting with iPhone5 this is in landscape but the principle is the same. I've also included a link to a iPhone5 demo in portrait to help.
It may not be perfect for all games but for most should work just fine, you could even use the landscape type build to make a portrait game fit without loosing height, just gain some width and offset camera.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58782733/Universal-iPhone5portrait.zip