Screen Sizes... Still confused

I've read the tutorial on this topic and multiple threads, but still find this area tricky.

From what I gather it's best to create your game in 16.9 and use scale mode. What I'm still unclear about is how this deals with the issue of smart phones, tablets etc... They have a vast range of resolutions. Should I be creating a game in the highest possible resolution supported by mobile devices and make sure it's in a 16.9 aspect ratio? Or have I completely missed the point :P.

Searching the forums though, it seems clear to me that the supporting multiple screen sizes is still a grey area. Maybe we can thrash this issue out once and for all and eventually sticky this?

Thanks for reading :)

Edit: Said I got a reply but there is no reply O.o

Apologies for the necro, but I'd like this exact question answered too, if possible. Should we be running the game at the highest resolution possible and scaling down, or running at the lowest resolution and scaling up?

Since phones are all somewhat similar in scale, I'm assuming the quality difference won't be too noticeable whether you're scaling up or down, but I'm curious to know if it's recommended to use one option over the other - perhaps to avoid known issues, improve performance, etc.

Thanks for reading <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

You are likely to experience quality loss by scaling up. Imo, it's better to develop for a large 16:9 aspect ratio and then have C2 scale down.

You should also know that new smartphones like the Xperia Z got a resolution from 1920 * 1024 (or 800 not sure). So its definetly better to scale down

Thanks for the replies! And if I scale down from 1920x1080 (for example) to 1280x720, would that be more expensive performance-wise than delivering natively at 1280x720? Or does the original resolution not make any difference to performance at all?

It needs much more performance, cause picture are much bigger. There are many possibilities like Tiled backgrounds to keep the performance well. But I think other user can you tell more there.

It's a way better to scale down. By scaling down, you'll not notice quality loss. If you scale up too much, everything will be blured and look ugly.

So yes, if you want to preserve the graphic quality, pick a high 16:9 resolution and use the scale mode so the game will be scaled down to fit others resolutions.

But, dont forget it will make your game bigger on disk, and in the RAM. And it's possible that the game dont run on some mobile devices because of that.

Okay, thanks! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> So a good balance might be to go for a mid-range resolution? Scaling down slightly for older phones with lower resolutions, and scaling up slightly for newer phones with larger resolutions. I'm assuming the upscaling won't be very noticeable, and it will help with performance on older phones.

I just tried running my game (natively runs at 1280x720) on three different devices: On my PC I got a solid 60fps, on my iPad 3 with retina display enabled it ran at 35-45 fps, and on my Windows 8 phone (Lumia 920) it ran at a solid 60fps. I'm surprised my Windows phone is more powerful than my iPad <img src="smileys/smiley3.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> Unless retina display is a major performance killer.

I'm facing the same problem with the iPad 3. Solid 60 fps on PC, on iPhone 4S, on Galaxy tab 2 but performance drop on the galaxy ace (it's a low end phone so it's normal) and performance drop on iPad 3.

Strange because I tried with a low resolution and high resolution version of the game but the same performance drop for the 2 versions. So I dont think it's a resolution problem

Hmm. Well, I just tried without retina display enabled, and the frame rate improved to 40-60fps. Still not as strong as my Lumia 920's performance, but then that phone is one and a half years newer than the iPad 3, so maybe that's to be expected.

I think all iOS releases from this point on HAVE to support retina display though, so I guess this means I need to optimize the game further for mobile and tablet devices. Thanks for all the feedback about the importance of downscaling though! It's been very useful <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Wow forgot about this thread completely!

I guess I could give my 2 cents, for what it's worth. Reading - scirra.com/tutorials/73/supporting-multiple-screen-sizes over a few times was definitely helpful :).

Building your games in a bigger aspect ratio like 16:9 seems to be the way to go.

It helps to stretch your background past the layout size in-case a phone does have a different aspect ratio from 16:9.

If I want a sprite with a size of 100x100 I usually make draw it 200x200 and shrink it in construct, this allows it to be up-scaled if necessary.

It's difficult to do a once size fits all, especially for tablets with a HD display. However, when publishing to Google Play I believe they ask if your app is suitable for tablets.

Not a complete list of solutions by any stretch and supporting the vast range of screen sizes is a difficult task. I guess you could draw a non-HD version of the game and a HD version and maybe have construct check the resolution of the device and use the correct sprites accordingly.