Which resolution to draw at?

1UPStudios

  • Posts: 16
I want to be able to publish my game on the following devices.

- Android smartphones
- Iphones and Ipods
- Ipads, Ipad mini's,Ipad airs
- Android tablets

I'm really confused by all te documentation so please give me a clear answer.
Thank you,
Nelson

mdotedot

  • Posts: 1654
Hello 1UPStudios/Nelson,

There is no clear answer since it really depends a lot on your game. When you have a puzzle game with physics and fixed proportional tiles it is different than an autoscaling RPG.
Even between genres there is no clear answer since you could have a preference over one scaling method over the other.

In the end it boils down to "TESTING".
(It took me about a month to tweak Stencyl to work on my +8 mobile devices, but a large part was how to create certificates and Stencyl in general)

For platformer/rpg kind of game I use:
- Create new Game with 320x480 landscape/portrait
- 200 tiles width+height for a great canvas
- Settings - > Advanced  -> Antialiasing = off
- Settings -> Web / Desktop -> Scale : 4x, Max Scale 4 , Scale to Fit (Fill) (x full Screen) 
- Settings -> Mobile -> Display -> Scale Mode : Scale to Fit (Fill) [leave maximum scale to 4x]
- Make graphics based on 128x128 TileSet (4x32)
- Import graphics at 4x mode

I use 320x480 since I want most of my games to run on my iPhone 3. The create-game phase you select the MINIMUM resolution you want your game to run with.


If you have an Apple Developers account you might be able to device-test your game but you would need several devices to really test it all. If you don't have all devices but you have friends who do, you need a Stencyl Studio license to publish a file that they can download. But it could be cheaper to just invite them over.
You must have OSX to publish/test ios (and you can use mac to publish android).

Hope this is a little bit helpful.

Best regards from
M.E.
Proud member of the League of Idiotic Stencylers! Doing things in Stencyl that probably shouldn't be done.

1UPStudios

  • Posts: 16
Thank you for your answer, are your games able to run on Ipad?

mdotedot

  • Posts: 1654
All games can be ran on all devices, but if it runs properly is up to you  :D

* iPad 1 (IOS 5.1.1)
* iPad2
* iPad mini
* iPhone 5s
* iPone 3
* Android Tab 7"
* Samsung SII
* Samsung Note 4
* Note Pro Tab 12.2
* Note Tab 2014 edition

For an example on how a game runs, but is different across devices see the photo I send to Hectate :
http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,28816.0.html
Proud member of the League of Idiotic Stencylers! Doing things in Stencyl that probably shouldn't be done.