Has anyone got any opinions on what the most common screen resolutions are that people use? I have a hunch that 800x600 is still the most common for ordinary users, but 1024x768 is catching up. However I reckon anything above that is currently only a minority of power users.
I'm talking about Windows resolution, not DirectX resolutions. I ask because I am wondering how to best size my graphics without having to resize them to different resolutions (it's a Windows GUI app).

20thCB

I *always* make my windows apps run in 640x480 as that's the lowest common denominator.

If I can't be arsed to allow them to resize to anything, I usually offer a couple more screen-size options in a menu or something.

Me too. I start up in 640x480 windowed and then let the user go fullscreen or change resolutions via the Options dialog.

I wouldn't care much about 640x480. I haven an old monitor lying around here it's back from those days were doom was the newest thing (and a 486 dx100 seriously kicked ass). Even that thing can do 800x600 very well.

So 800x600 is imo a sure bet (whereas everything above isn't).

I default to 640x480 but my graphics are all stored in a vector file format (SWF, actually, but without using the Flash player), so the user is free to change resolutions at will from within my options screen.

See Here (http://www.mischief.com/zblocks/)

Ah yea, I forgot - vector graphics are of course really neat.

<ot>
There's a little glitch on one of those screenshots.

"Direct Screengrab (Actual Size!), game running at 640x480"

The headline there:
<cut off>t a profile or make a new one by choosing an unas<cut off>
</ot>

I plan to use svg at some point in the future. I really like that format and there are also some pretty neat libs.

Just deviating slightly on the subjectof vector graphics.. I wonder if Snowy uses such a format.. it really has smooth sprites.. almost as if they were cell-shaded boned/skinned models!

>I wonder if Snowy uses such a format..
>it really has smooth sprites.. almost as if
>they were cell-shaded boned/skinned
>models!

Just took a look. It's really impressive.

It's highly unlikely that they used a vector format. The sprites are cel shaded pre rendered 3d models... converting that data into a vector format would be alot of work and it would also look a bit less clean (or perfect).

Not a glitch -- the text is scrolling in that little window up there.

Of course, it is impossible to see this in a sceenshot... but I swear its true. :)

There are some stats on screen resolutions to be found here . Possibly they are a little out of date.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=341264

From The Counter.com


Main Stats
Sat May 1 00:05:02 2004 - Mon May 31 23:55:04 2004 31.0 Days

236871498 Visitors


Resolution Stats
Sat May 1 00:05:02 2004 - Mon May 31 23:55:04 2004 31.0 Days

1024x768 108934569 (48%)
800x600 85415625 (38%)
1280x1024 14273046 (6%)
1152x864 6559547 (2%)
Unknown 3412209 (1%)
640x480 2836809 (1%)
1600x1200 1457872 (0%)


ColorDepth Stats
Sat May 1 00:05:02 2004 - Mon May 31 23:55:04 2004 31.0 Days

(32bit) 130423455 (58%)
65K (16bit) 72045278 (32%)
16M (24bit) 15538937 (6%)
256 (8bit) 4385292 (1%)
Unknown 450911 (0%)
16 (4bit) 45804 (0%)


HTH,
David

I'm intending to use vector graphics and convert them to bitmaps at runtime. I thought I'd come up with a cheap way of getting them in the game. I store my graphics as Enhanced Windows Metafiles, and use GDI to load and render them to a x8 size buffer which I would then supersample for anti-aliasing.

Unfortunately, metafiles seem to be broken since hackers have been exploiting them with buffer overruns, and the security in Windows has been stepped up. Now, any metafile created in most applications, including Illustrator, don't work in Windows.

I don't suppose anyone else is working with metafiles?

Screen Resolution: Higher than 1024x768 – 10% 1024x768 – 47% 800x600 – 37% 640x480 – 1% Lower – 5%
Colour Depth: 16M – 65% 65K – 31% Lower – 4%
I believe these statistics came from Macromedia flash users and they're about 2 months old.

I played around with EMFs (enhanced metafiles) in GDI+ for a while. In my experience, they are just too flakey to use. Also, not particularly portable (unless you want to write your own parser/renderer for other systems).

In the end I've found the SWF format much easier to deal with. And there are so many existing tools you can use to create content. Not only Flash itself, but also Maya, Poser, SwishMax, Swift3d, WildFx, etc, etc. (Currently I'm using SwishMax to create most of my content).

Also my gameswf-based SWF reading/rendering code is completely portable (supporting Windows and MacOS X right now).

When you're talking about .swf files being used in games, do you mean animations aswell? Cause the animations are sooo small when they're made in vector! So it would be nice to use, if you need a lot of animations in a game.. Or would it be a big load on the computer, since it needs to calculate the graphics instead of just showing pixels?? Anyone used vector-animations in their game?

/ Jacob *wants to know*

Just an estimate, but I would say probably 1024x768.... but there is a large enough number of people still sitting at 800x600 to warrent your game needing to support it...

Originally posted by Holmqvist
When you're talking about .swf files being used in games, do you mean animations aswell? Cause the animations are sooo small when they're made in vector! So it would be nice to use, if you need a lot of animations in a game.. Or would it be a big load on the computer, since it needs to calculate the graphics instead of just showing pixels?? Anyone used vector-animations in their game?

/ Jacob *wants to know*

My vector based game/engine is using animations, yes.

Basically, what I do is use a simple bitmap caching system, and whenever I rasterize a new vector graphic or frame of a vector animation, I throw the result into the bitmap cache:

for(each frame)
{
if(bitmapCached(movie, frame))
{
blitBitmap();
}
else
{
rasterizeVectorToBitmap();
cacheBitmap();
blitBitmap();
}
}

So once I rasterize a graphic/frame once, I just use the bitmap version next time, which keeps the CPU from calculating the vector information constantly.

If the sprite is resized by calling its SetSize method, I flush all of its related bitmaps from the cache so that they will be recalculated and recached at the new size next time they will be displayed.

I use a simple, fast RLE compression on the in-memory bitmaps so the memory usage doesn't go through the roof from precaching all the vectors as bitmaps. With a decent dirty rect blitting system and semi-intelligent MRU bitmap decompression system the performance is quite good on any P-II and higher system.

Don't forget about the TV!

When WebTV and similar set-top boxes were more common (there are still quite a few out there), you could tell that 98% of major websites forgot about TVs, because those sites looked awful on the TV screen. You don't want any website visitor to have to scroll horizontally.

These days, a lot of people are building media center-type PCs to hook to their televisions. If you are making games or media utilities (music/image/video/etc.), there is certainly a significant and growing population of people who want to use your software on TVs. Mostly HDTVs at this point, I would think.

One big consideration for the television is text. Even on HDTVs, most text is much harder to read than on a PC monitor, and most fonts look lousy, especially serif fonts, or red letters (most TVs ship with heavy red push, and most people don't adjust that, which is why red stuff smears so badly). On my Sony HDTV, the black-on-yellow text that many sports broadcasts use (the "Fox Box") is basically unreadable.

If you have a TV with S-video or DVI inputs, and a video card with those outputs, try hooking your PC up to your TV and checking out what your application looks like. It might look surprisingly bad. Also try feeding the signal thru coax or RCA cables for even lower quality.

this is the data for the visitors to my website(www.guoly.com):
(http://www.onestat.com/aspx/reports.aspx?p=19&dstart=2003/01/01&dend=2003/12/31&d=2003/07/04&m=m&period=lastyear)
1. 1024x768 52,988 51.63%
2. 800x600 45,329 44.17%
3. 1280x1024 1,285 1.25%
4. 1152x864 1,270 1.24%
5. 0x0 524 0.51%
6. 640x480 499 0.49%
7. 1600x1200 295 0.29%
8. 156 0.15%
9. 240x320 57 0.06%
10. 1024x600 38 0.04%
11. 720x480 34 0.03%
12. 1280x768 24 0.02%
13. 1280x800 21 0.02%
14. 1280x854 18 0.02%
15. 848x480 18 0.02%
16. 1280x720 14 0.01%
17. 1280x600 11 0.01%
18. 1024x480 8 0.01%
19. 1600x1024 6 0.01%
20. 1680x1050 5 0.00%
21. 864x480 4 0.00%
22. 1920x1200 3 0.00%
23. 1600x600 3 0.00%
24. 768x1024 3 0.00%
25. 1344x840 2 0.00%
26. 1152x900 2 0.00%
27. 1200x1600 2 0.00%
28. 1152x870 1 0.00%
29. 832x624 1 0.00%
Total 102,621 100.00%

5. 0x0 524 0.51%

Interesting! :eek:

@ gfm

Thanks! That sounds interesting.. I like vector graphics so I'm glad. :)

/Jacob *resumes learning to actually make games..*

Be careful with vector graphics! If your rendering a 3D models or Quads with wireframe there can be problems. Generally speaking, video card drivers tend not do be total tested with vector graphics (very few games). So it can be hit and miss; it basically depends on your setup.

That said, you wouldn't have a problam if you are doing a bitmap conversion similar to Wayward.

Be careful with 800x600 and fullscreen/windowed combinations. Its a little weird for the player if you create an 800x600 window (with title bar, border etc) and their desktop resolution is 800x600, so you get a game window that goes off the side of the screen until they go to fullscreen mode. I guess this goes for any resolution though.

640x480 is still great for windowed mode games. I appreciate puzzle games that run in a 640x480 window even though my desktop is 1280x1024.