   resolution question
  I'm writing a 2d opengl isometric rpg. I like how the game looks and feels best in a screen resolution of 800x600(with the virtual resolution the same). A number of people have told me that I should disregard actual screen resolutions and strive for resolution independence- I am, however, having a difficult time seeing how this would be possible considering the tile-based game I'm working on. Yes I can set the opengl virtual resolution to fullscreen and render the appropriate amount of my game world to it. The problem with this is that the greater the actual screen resolution, the smaller the graphics appear(this really affects the feel of the game). And whenever I've attempted to use glScale() my tiles experience tearing and the don't line up properly. Would it be such a bad thing to strongly suggest that the user let my program switch his resolution to 800x600?   
  Deja vu? I swear I've already replied to this very same issue before.Whatever, looked back for that topic and quoted my post. It was the only reply in that topic after all >_>Quote:Original post by Sik_the_hedgehogYou should make your game support any resolution available in the system, period.You're using OpenGL, so things are simpler: make a virtual resolution of 800x600 (set it up with glOrtho() or whatever you're using) and it'll scale with whatever resolution the game is working at. Plain simple. Though beware of different resolution ratios - any resolution different than 4:3 will make things look bad. Your game will have to take that into account (adapting the virtual resolution to the ratio is a good start - also remember that you can specify negative values for the limits!), but I guess that's where the "vertical bars" idea kicks in.;  thats one waya better? way is to keep the tiles the same size but show more of the playing field (this requires a bit more work obviously, + can run slower)also avoid glScale(..) if u want to change somethings size change it yourself manually;  sik, while I do appreciate your previous attempt to address my issue, I think you misunderstood(or perhaps I communicated poorly), the essence of my problem. I understand exactly how to use opengl virtual resolution independent of the machine's resolution, that is not my issue. And I also understand, as zedz reffered to, how to "keep the tiles the same size but show more of the playing field".If I have opengl virtual resolution set to 800x600 and I set my lcd's resolution to 1680x1050, my game's sprites will appear tiny. if I keep the 800x600 virtual resolution and then switch my lcd's resolution to 800x600 everything appears large and somewhat pixelated). This large pixelated look is what I am aiming for. I want my normally small tiles to appear large and pixelated.   ;  What if you render everything to an 800*600 render target and then after all rendering is done draw that buffer to a screen-aligned quad with point filtering. I've done this before and it works.   ;  That does sound quite reasonable. But let me just ask you this, what advantage does that method offer over manually changing the users actual screen resolution?   ;Quote:Original post by zedzthats one waya better? way is to keep the tiles the same size but show more of the playing field (this requires a bit more work obviously, + can run slower)The vertical bars idea is one of the things he asked in his original post and I suggested it for the transition until he had it all set up to expand on it.Quote:Original post by ari556655If I have opengl virtual resolution set to 800x600 and I set my lcd's resolution to 1680x1050, my game's sprites will appear tiny. if I keep the 800x600 virtual resolution and then switch my lcd's resolution to 800x600 everything appears large and somewhat pixelated). This large pixelated look is what I am aiming for. I want my normally small tiles to appear large and pixelated.If the sprites look small then you're doing something wrong. I think you're confusing the virtual resolution with the actual resolution. The virtual resolution would be what you set with glOrtho(), while the actual resolution is the game window size. The whole point of having a virtual resolution is that it stretches the graphics to fit the actual window resolution.What size is your OpenGL window?   ;  800x600   ;  Having it 800x600 via opengl and stretching to your screen of 1680x1050 shouldent make anything smaller. Its just stretching the images, 1 pixel becomes 4.etc   ;  Only way to get best quality is to make tiles for all different resolutions.Only then 1 texel (pixel in source image tile) == 1 pixel in screen.But most of the time you can rescale screen image before/after draw.Just draw all you want into texture first, and then draw one big polygon toscreen./ Tyrian