Which screen resolution should i use?

Question

I'm planning on making my first game in xna (simple 2d game) and i wonder which screen resolution that would be appropriate to target the game against.

Answer 1

Resolution for a 2D game is a difficult issue.

Some people ignore it. World of Goo (for PC), for one very famous example, simply always runs at 800x600 on the PC, no matter what. And look how successful it was.

It helps to think about what kind of device you will be targeting. Here are some common resolutions and the devices they apply to:

• 1280x720 (720p, Xbox 360 "safe" resolution - free hardware scaling, works everywhere)
• 1920x1080 (1080p, Xbox 360 maximum resolution - can't auto-scale to all resolutions)
• 800x480 (Windows Phone 7)
• 1024x768 (iPad)
• 480x320 (iPhone 3GS and earlier)
• 960x640 (iPhone 4 retina display)
• Android devices also have similar resolutions to WP7 and iOS devices.

(Note that consoles require you to render important elements inside a "title-safe" area or "action-safe" area. Typically 80% and 90% of the full resolution.)

Here is the Valve Hardware Survey, which you can see lists the common PC resolutions (under "Primary Display Resolution").

Targeting 800x480 for a mobile game, or 1280x720 for a desktop/console game, is a good place to start.

If you do want to support multiple resolutions, it is important to think about aspect ratio. Here is an excellent question that lists off some options. Basically your options are letter/pillar-boxing or bleeding (allowing for extra rendering outside "standard" screen bounds - like a title-safe area), or some combination of the two.

If your graphics need to be "pixel perfect" and simply scaling them won't work, then I would recommend targeting a series of base resolutions, and then boxing/bleeding to cover any excess screen on a particular device. When I do this, I usually provide assets for these target screen heights: 320, 480, 640, 720, 1080. Note that providing 5 versions of each asset is a huge amount of work - so try to use scaling wherever possible.

Many choices about resolution handling will depend on what style of game you are making. For example: whether you try to match a horizontal or vertical screen size will depend largely on what direction your game will mostly scroll in.