   What is a good screen rez
  I'm working on a pet project of mine but one question that I've been wondering about is.  If I'm going to stick with a single screen resolution for my game what would be Ideal for the most people to be capable of playing it?  I'm building the game with C# and Xna and I only plan on having it work for computers though I might someday try to get it to work with my Xbox.   
  Do you think it would be best to provide a limited selection of resolutions, if you're not going to auto-detect capabilities etc?   ;  800x600 is within the reach of everyone these days....   ;  I am looking for a standard (most monitors could handle) resolution/screensize.  I don't see thing becoming a complete game in any respect so I'm not going to bother with auto detect/ multiple resolutions.  all I want is for most people to be able to play my game in a pop up window.   ;  Ok. Thank you Brian.   ;  Taken from Steam Hardware Survey: Primary Display Resolution1024 x 768(-1.61%)  10.47%1152 x 864(-0.35%)  1.81%1280 x 720(-0.08%)  0.67%1280 x 768(-0.05%)  0.76%1280 x 800(+2.59%)  8.61%1280 x 960(-0.24%)  1.34%1280 x 1024(-1.94%)  16.86%1360 x 768(-0.10%)  1.12%1366 x 768(+0.21%)  5.06%1440 x 900(+1.21%)  11.68%1600 x 900(-0.10%)  2.52%1600 x 1200(-0.07%)  0.89%1680 x 1050(-0.95%)  17.07%1920 x 1080(-0.21%)  10.37%1920 x 1200(+0.45%)  6.21%Other(+1.23%)  4.55%;  Thanks for the Link Karwost. That was very helpful.  I think I know what I'm going to do now.   ;  An 800x600 window is an awfully small space to play a game on many screens. Generally speaking I suggest you allow ANY resolution, but use a fixed render resolution. Then do an aspect-preserving stretch blit to the screen. (The mechanics of this step depend on your exact rendering method.)Let's say that your internal resolution is 800x600. If the window is 1600 x 1200, then that's easy -- scale to double. If the window is 1920x1200, then you have to create a black-bar padding space on each side of 160px and center your 1600x1200 rendered image. If the window is 1280x1024, then you'll end up with a 1280x960 render and 32px of padding on top and bottom.Depending on your game, you may wish to select a generic aspect ratio that offers a better compromise in the padding ranges, eg 14:10.   ;  As with Promit's suggestion, the best resolution is the one your user specifies.The user might want to pick the native resolution of their screen.  They might want some custom resolution.  Or they might want to scale it to something that fits their aspect ratio but is some ratio smaller than their hardware.Best bet is to design your elements work with aspect ratios. Game UI look like garbage when designed for 4:3 screen (800x600) but then get stretched to a 16:9 screen (1920x1080, aka 1080p).We hit 4:3, 3:2, 16:10, and 16:9.  Most of these are accomplished by simple scaling and repositioning based on resolution.  You'll also note that this matches the Steam hardware profile's resolutions.If you have to pick only one resolution, I'd pick 16:10 since it looks fairly good when scaled either way.  See the wikipedia article on resolutions to pick something in the middle:;  Games can be a big hit even when they only run at 800x600. Take World of Goo for instance. As long as your graphics are very well anti-aliased etc then it can work great.For games made now, I would not even consider targeting anything less than 1024x768, unless you were writing a RTRT engine or something like that.We're now being told by customers that it's fine to expect a resolution greater than 1024x768 (not the games industry though sorry).That image from wikipedia is pretty awesome. [cool]   