What resolution is best to use right now for 2D games? Is 640x480 still the best choice or is 800x600 catching on?

I think you are okay with 800x600 these days. My web stats indicate that almost nobody uses 640x480 as their Windows resolution anymore.

Cool, thanks.

Mike, are you using 16-bit for your games? I'm currently targeting 640 x 480 x 16 with all the graphics stored in palettized 8-bit, but I've been waivering, thinking you may be right about moving to 800 x 600. Even 800 x 600 x 16 would take less than a meg, and if a PC user doesn't have that much then what could they run? Nothing in 16-bit, anyhow. The only tangible benefit I'm left holding onto is the 36% decrease in the size of graphics files.

Provided that average Joe uses 800x600 as his working resolution, aiming at 800x600x16 would be fine. But if Joe likes to have his favorite 2D games running in window mode then there's no much space to display 800x600 game screen inside a window on 800x600 desktop. Thus the games designed for 640x480 have an advantage. But how much is it really? Does anybody have an idea?

@Elund: Did you consider using JPEG and/or PNG to store 16bpp graphics?

I'm using PNG. Using 8-bit for the graphics files is a trick Dexterity mentioned in another thread. It keeps the filesize down and has little impact on most images.

That was a trick I picked up at the GDC many years ago. By giving each sprite its own 256-color palette, you get the appearance of 16-bit with half the file size for the sprites. The palette ends up costing you an extra 768 bytes, but this fits nicely in the CPU cache, so when you have to do the palette lookup to render each pixel to a 16-bit surface, it's actually really fast. In fact, the sprite data caches better too because it's half the size. You might think there would be a huge speed hit, but there just isn't. What you chew up in extra CPU cycles, you gain in memory bandwidth.

Also, you can do some nice palette-rotating effects w/o changing the sprite data at all -- just pass in a modified palette each frame to the sprite renderer. Dweep uses this technique to make objects glow red when they get hit by a laser beam. Cutting all the sprites down from 16-bit to 8-bit is one reason Dweep is only 1.4 MB.

As far as screen resolution is concerned, 800x600 is fine.

So in your experience there is no hindrance as far as markets are concerned if a developer makes their game run in 800x600 mode as opposed to 640x480?

Originally posted by KNau
So in your experience there is no hindrance as far as markets are concerned if a developer makes their game run in 800x600 mode as opposed to 640x480?

I would stick with 640x480, why risk loosing 1% of your customers when 1% could translate into lost $.

I am sure any pc worth its salt that was made in the last 5 years can support 800x600, but you will be suprised how many people like to size their desktop to 640x480. Resizing to 800x600 from 640x480 sometimes modifies icon placement on the desktop, it may also scare the user a little. I think shareware games should stick to a default of 640x480 and offer higher resolutions as options rather.

Originally posted by Nick Bischoff
Resizing to 800x600 from 640x480 sometimes modifies icon placement on the desktop, it may also scare the user a little.

Actually, sizing the screen to a LOWER resolutions modifies
the icon placement

Using DirectX a game should be able to switch resolutions and then back again when the game exits or loses the focus (i.e. alt-tab). So there's no problem with icon placement.

The added resolution of 800x600 vs. 640x480 has a noticeable positive effect on quality. If I had the time/resources I'd probably update Dweep Gold to 800x600 from 640x480, but that would require redoing much of the art.

800x600 is fine- and it is nearly 2x the pixels as 640x480. Pocket Tanks runs in 800x600. It's very popular and a huge success.

I default Bugatron to 800x600 too. For Best Friends, I actually run a small test to determine if the user's video card can run 800x600 smoothly, otherwise I drop to 640x480. Of course with 3D, that's a lot easier than 2D, where you are targeting your graphics for a different resolution :)

Steve's 256 color palette idea works well. You can even implement some old-school palette effects with it!

What about a game that is 800 x 600 running in a window? My Game Rocknor's Bad Day is 640 x 480 and runs in either full-screen or in a window. I'd like to have that option for my next game as well; I alot of my users like to play the game in a window if they're playing the game at lunch, or IMing people, etc.

I've been thinking about 800 x 600 but to run that in a window on the desktop (like some people like to do) requires your desktop be larger that that, in order to support the taskbar, and the window drag bar, etc. so I guess users would need their desktop set to 1024 x 768 or larger in order to do that.

So, what is everyone's thoughts on this? I don't think I'm overrating people's desires to run the game in a window, but I wonder how many people out there have 1024x768 desktops?

Regards,

~Hanford

Arstechnica (http://www.arstechnica.com/) has been running a screen resolution poll recently. Before it gets replaced with another one here's the results:

640x480 : 0%
800x600 : 3%
1024x768 : 29%
1152x864 : 12%
1280x768/960 : 6%
1280x1024 : 31%
1600x1200 : 16%
>1600x1200 : 3%

That's with 23,640 votes so far. Which is a lot.

Although these are a nerdier group reading Ars than general everyday users, which might skew the results downwards by one resolution, it would appear that 640x480 is dead. I suspect this is largely because Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP is actually almost unusable at 640x480. The OK button of the screen resolution dialog box is actually invisible at 640x480 making it somewhat difficult to adjust as well...! But that gives you an idea of how unusable 640x480 is, even (and especially) for Gran.

Cas :)

Whether you support 640x480 depends on your target audience. If your target audience is young people who play many hard core games, I'm sure that you are safe in ignoring 640x480. Those users will be at the cutting edge.

However, if your target audience is older people, especially senior citizens, then 640x480 support is crucial. Many senior citizens use 640x480 because it makes everything very large so they can see it. If you want to sell to these people, you need to support 640x480.

I still have many users at 640x480.

I usually design user interfaces to work in 640x480, and easily expandable to the higher resolutions.

The first time the program runs, it checks to see what the desktop resolution is. Then it sizes itself to best fit that. The user/player can adjust from there if they want, larger or smaller, and it remembers.

This is a shame because using 640x480 actually decreases usability for senior citizens. Higher resolutions with larger fonts and icons is what they need. Higher resolution used to mean smaller details; these days it really does mean higher resolution, i.e. better visual acuity.

It would be nice to see some other developer's stats gathered from their games audience to compare with the Ars results.

Cas :)

Why cant Dexterity run a survey asking what screen reso the person uses and if they use window or fullscreen or both?

Actually steve could just check his web log of traffic on this site, that would give a great idea about the screen resolutions people are using.