121 replies to this topic

[GearGOD]

If you force a high resolution display into low resolution, game maker will resize and reposition all non-fullscreen windows to fit into the lower resolution. This is intrusive and annoying.
If you force a low resolution display into a higher resolution, there's a good chance the user will just see a black screen.
Further, if a GM game crashes after making changes to the display resolution, these changes will persist!
If you force any kind of resolution change on a multi-monitor setup, all monitors will be forced into that resolution if the user is running windows XP. This is very annoying.
There are all sorts of different aspect ratios out in the wild. If you don't account for all of them and provide an option to select the right one, your game will look bad.
Which brings me to the solution:
Please, start your game in windowed mode and provide an option to change into full screen with res change. Never ever have your game change the resolution by default[

[paul23]

While I agree games should start in windowed mode, I disagree that setting the resolution is a bad thing..

Using scaling -especially when interpolation is turned on- really put high stress on your computer (at least mine). Of course the difference depends on the game, but it's mostly around a 1/8-1/4rd drop in frame rate from even the windowed mode...

While going in full-screen from a windowed mode - and even if the resolution would be the same as the original resolution increases performance a bit!

[Nehacoo]

Another reason would be that lower than native resolutions look like crap on LCD monitors, but I suspect (hope, at least) everyone already knows this.

It seems really low resolutions like 320x240 aren't supported anymore on newer graphics cards, not on Nvidia cards anyway. I don't know about ATI.

[9_6]

Yes.
That res change should be taken out of gm since some people insist on using it all the time *coughcactuscough*
There are other methods to prevent the upscaling blur, however a less intrusive way of changing the resolution and/or a non-interpolated upscaling so you don't need to change the resolution would solve the prtoblem.

Using scaling -especially when interpolation is turned on- really put high stress on your computer (at least mine). Of course the difference depends on the game, but it's mostly around a 1/8-1/4rd drop in frame rate from even the windowed mode...

This is false.

[Rusky]

How is it false? "at least on my computer" so it's obviously happened to him. It's happened to me as well.
But in general, keep the resolution changes optional and not default so as not to screw up people's windows.

[makerofthegames]

I've never had this problem, because all my windows are usually in tabs, and even if they're not, its always in fullscreen.

[paul23]

Yes.
That res change should be taken out of gm since some people insist on using it all the time *coughcactuscough*
There are other methods to prevent the upscaling blur, however a less intrusive way of changing the resolution and/or a non-interpolated upscaling so you don't need to change the resolution would solve the prtoblem.

Using scaling -especially when interpolation is turned on- really put high stress on your computer (at least mine). Of course the difference depends on the game, but it's mostly around a 1/8-1/4rd drop in frame rate from even the windowed mode...

This is false.

*starts any of his (useless) test-gamemaker-documents
*enables "switch screen modes when pressing F4" as well as "keep aspect ratio"
*presses F6
*watches f/s be around 55-60
*presses F4
*watches f/s drop to 30 followed by a stable 45-50 again
*presses F4 again
*another drop in f/s to 20, followed by a stable f/s of 55-58

I'm crazy?

[Hach-Que]

For any of my full screen games, I automatically detect the user's resolution and change room sizes/views based on the user's resolution.

[edmunn]

The standard screen resolutions on Game Maker make Widescreen monitors look vulgur.
I agree, I hate resolution changing without a warning or an option.

For any of my full screen games, I automatically detect the user's resolution and change room sizes/views based on the user's resolution.

This is a good idea, I once created an application in Game Maker which used this theory, and it does work very well.

Edited by edmunn, 28 March 2009 - 09:49 AM.

[d.man]

i agree. actually most of low resolution games could be stretched to 640x480 windowed and look as if 320x240 full screen (that's the way i do it). it's really annoying when something changes my resolution and resizes all my windows (from which most of them are not maximized).

[ckv]

In Game Maker 5 there use to be option to use "exclusive graphics mode" which pretty much solves all the problems described in first post.

What happened to that option. Why was exclusive graphics mode removed?

[Phantom107]

Stretching low-resolution games to my 1440x900 resolution looks horrible and it's annoying. So please don't do it. You could make it an option, but don't ever force it.

[Tepi]

If there's listed "Changes resolution: yes" in some interesting game, I'm least likely to ever download it. When there's not said that, and it still changes the resolution, I'm least likely to ever play that game (again so to say).

So please people, making the resolution change optional, making it optional whether to go fullscreen with it or not, is not really that difficult. It may make the game run faster or look a bit better than simply stretching to fullscreen, but 640x480 resolution is just pretty ridiculous resolution for the today's standards. Atleast ask the player whether to proceed before changing the resolution: "if show_question('resolution change?') display_... etc." now how hard was that?

[NakedPaulToast]

Why was exclusive graphics mode removed?

Exclusive mode had it's problems. Any time you went into exclusive mode any time the resolution changed, all open windows that were larger than the screen resolution were resized, it was particularly annoying. There were also many functions that were no longer available in exclusive mode.

[ckv]

Exclusive mode had it's problems. Any time you went into exclusive mode any time the resolution changed, all open windows that were larger than the screen resolution were resized, it was particularly annoying. There were also many functions that were no longer available in exclusive mode.

I don't recall exclusive mode having that window resize problem.

I do know that exclusive mode had it's limitations like not been able to show other windows e.g. messages, highscore list, or game information also debuging in exclusive mode was not possible, but in my opinion the all those limitations were small amount to pay for proper full screen mode.

[makerofthegames]

Stretching low-resolution games to my 1440x900 resolution looks horrible and it's annoying. So please don't do it. You could make it an option, but don't ever force it.

..Yeah, we're not talking about that, or atleast the first post wasn't. Full screen doesn't count as resolution change.

[Pie Person!]

Indeed GearGOD. It annoys me when I play Game Maker content which changes my screen resolution or gamma. But you can find that most PC games do that; except these games will still restore your resolution if the application unexpectedly stops. That is why I recommend that you don't mess with resolution or gamma in Game Maker.

[Potnop]

It's not so bad to start full screen mode though. The game scales itself up but doesn't change resolution. It even maintains the proper aspect ratio if the resolution is widescreen and your game is using 4:3.

It's just a bit annoying for instant play I guess and they advise against it, but if you don't plan on using instantplay starting in full screen mode should be no problem.

[CompanionCube]

Hmm, I have to agree here. The amount of times a crappy WIP has crashed and left me with an unusable resolution... there is no reason why we should be forced to take on an unsuitable resolution.

[Wombat]

That's why the rules in Creations (I don't know about WIP) say to state if your game changes the screen resolution.