8 replies to this topic

[Matt_Keystroke]

This is the settings to my sci-fy game, all sprites were created by KeyStroke Games. We are going to make this very professional to hopefully get it on steam! I think it is important to have alot of settings in every game so players feel in control!


Looks pretty cool huh? There are 4 options for every setting (8 for resolution) so you can really customize the game! Tell me what you think, and if anyone wants to know how to do somthing like this, let me know, i would be happy to explain.

[Merlocker]

Looks great. How can you change the resolution (while in game). I always wondered that.

[Faygris]

Well, if you want my opinion about the settings themselves: I love having many options in a game, so that's great.

If you want my opinion about the design: It doesn't look very professional to me. The sprites all look generic and bland, and there's no background. It looks like a screen from a 90s shooter or so. But.. I don't know if you actually wanted an opinion about the design, so whatever. :D

[Matt_Keystroke]

Looks great. How can you change the resolution (while in game). I always wondered that.

OF COURSE YOU ASK THE HARDEST QUESTION! lol

There are three types of resolution you can change (in GM8.1)

View Size: The amount of "game pixels" used in each view

View Port: The amount of space the view takes up on your screen.

Screen Resolution: The resolution of your monitor (ex.1920x1080)

What i do to change the "resolution" of my game during the game is this...

room_set_view(room,view_current,true,0,0,1280,960,0,0,1600,1200,0,0,0,0,0); 
room_restart()

This looks complicated, but it is really simple in theory.

I have a view for every single room in my game(thats the only reason this works).

You always want to keep the "size" of the view the same throughout your whole game. In my code, the size is the first set of numbers. You want to make these numbers the size of your game. In my case that is 1280x960 (because that is the "size" of all my views), but it could be any resolution (hopefully not lower than 640x480)

So to change how big your game is displayed on the monitor (or how many pixels the game uses on your monitor), you just have to change the view "port" and keep the view "size" the same.

In my code, the second set of numbers is the port, so in this example, the game would be scaled up from its native 1280x960 to be 1600x1200 on your screen. Gamemaker does scaling very well, but it does get slightly blurry.

By changing the second set of numbers in this code, you can make gamemaker scale your game to any resolution you want! So basically, changing the resolution!

WARNING:,alot of people will try to tell you to use display_set_size(w,h), but this is flawed in my eyes, because it changes the actual resolution of YOUR MONITOR, not the game. This can cause aspect ratio problems, as well as messing up all the icons on your desktop ocassionally, so i would not reccomend it! Besides, by using this methode, you give the user no choice but to see pixels the size of dimes on smaller resolution games.

WARNING: if you use MY METHOD , make sure that you do not set the port of the view to a resolution larger than the monitor the game is running on. You can check this by using code like this...

if display_get_height() > 1080
{
room_set_view(room,view_current,true,0,0,1280,960,0,0,1440,1080,0,0,0,0,0); 
room_restart();
}
else
{
room_set_view(room,view_current,true,0,0,1280,960,0,0,640,480,0,0,0,0,0); 
room_restart();

In this small snippet of my code (click on change button event[just a few lines]), i check the size of the users monitor using display_get_height(). If there monitor is big enough to support the next biggest resolution, it sets it to the next biggest, if not, it sets it to the lowest resolution so they can cycle through the resolutions again(this is only one of 8 code snippets).


Well, i hope this overcomplicated explanation makes it clear how you can change resolutions in gamemaker, just remember to restart the room for changes to take effect!

EDIT: Make sure that you set the scaling to "fixed scale in 100%" in the game options! Otherwise, my method will not work!

Edited by Matt_Keystroke, 09 August 2012 - 08:04 PM.

[Matt_Keystroke]

Well, if you want my opinion about the settings themselves: I love having many options in a game, so that's great.

If you want my opinion about the design: It doesn't look very professional to me. The sprites all look generic and bland, and there's no background. It looks like a screen from a 90s shooter or so. But.. I don't know if you actually wanted an opinion about the design, so whatever. :D

No, i wanted opion on everything! so....

1. All the change buttons have a flickering holographic effect and solidify when you mouse over them
2. All the blue lines you see are animated, and they pulse with energy.
3. You are right about the background, we will be adding a giant space cruiser that flys across the screen once that giant sprites is ready (960x960)

[Merlocker]

_{Thank-you for the info!}

[Lune]

What made you decide on a base resolution of 1280x960? That's taller than a lot of peoples' screens are. Almost no laptops have a screen that tall, and that's a large portion of the audience.

The overall menu layout is rather cluttered. There are a lot of different things to look at, which is a very divisive setup. Some people are going to appreciate having everything right at their fingertips, but others are going to be overwhelmed by it all.

It doesn't look very professional. The fonts are boring stock fonts. The spacing, placing and padding of text is poorly done (look, for example, at the unevenness of the negative space between text boundaries and the respective bounding boxes). The mouse sprite is ugly, and drawn at too much of an angle; mouse arrow cursors are usually drawn between 60° and 70°, not at 45°.

The theme itself is fine. It doesn't particularly thrill me, but I don't think it's a bad theme. However, the skeletal ribbing look does add to the clutter of having so many options out at once. A more streamlined theme would help to reduce the sense of clutter, as would cleaning up the text spacing.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your game!

[masterofhisowndomain]

The size of the boxes allocated for each option are evidently too large -- there's a significant gap in almost every one. The "change" button seems superfluous if you simply gave the player the option of a drop-down menu from each of the options, i.e.:

Resolution:

• 1027x1038
• 800x600

... also perhaps give each option a visual representation (an icon)?

[Grijze Pilion]

Looks great, but i think the style is a bit outdated. Maybe this or this is more 'Holographic, Nano and Vector'. But still: Nice job! I'm working on a project 'We are going to make this very professional' myself and i always like it when others have the same goal. Keep going!