@taylormccue Voted other to say: I'm currently struggling with this, and I keep ending up back at 16:9 and ideally an integer factor of 1080p. If you're doing any sort of pixel art, it's most likely to look best on most displays. 720p might be the sweet spot. TVs, Switch, most monitors will handle 16:9 well. Even for outliers like Steam Deck (16:10) you could just letterbox.
My games are usually chonky pixels, so I'm at like 640x360 (1/3 of 1080p) for crisp scaling almost everywhere.
@samf I'm starting to move out of alpha and into final so this matters a lot.
I am going to think about 16:9 as I'm going to be doing hybrid pixel art mixed with other things and I'm utterly unused to working in high res so 640 might be a better route for me.
I was thinking of focusing on switch resolution since it seemed a safe target for porting later on if I chose it.
@taylormccue Yeah, most of my pixel art games are 360p internally. They use a simple upscale filter to make the pixels look bigger on higher resolution screens.
I have also made VNs with more traditional 720p and 1080p graphics, but it's such a struggle. It takes forever to draw such detailed art, and I'm not even sure if people care that much about the extra quality. People rarely comment on the graphics really.
@LezLiz I stepped down from being the primary organizer of the queer games bundle last year due to my mental health falling apart.
Fortunately I planned my stepping down and Caroline ( @aetataureate ) has taken over as the head organizer.
I was co-organizer with her last year and it was a smooth transition. She has been working on the bundle behind the scenes and even expanded the bundle last year in dramatic ways.
Things like streamers for the bundle was her plan and implementation.
@taylormccue Ah, right! I was worried since it's April soon and I haven't heard anything from the bundle yet. Thank you for the info and sorry about bugging you about it.
@taylormccue I use 2160p these days, but 1080p is much more common as far as I know and scales neatly to it. 🙂
Are we talking pixel art? Scaling that between 1080p and 720p can basically not be done well as I understand it, but the "golden path" would be to have all the important bits inside a 720p canvas and then extend the margins with content (or a decorative border, see Undertale console ports) to 1080p. Integer multiples of those two resolutions should then cover most current displays.
I am leaning 720p and then putting a border on the sides if that is what it comes down to but I'm sort of nervous about that too so I can really see the value in 1080p.
Especially since by the time I finish who is to even say if the switch will still be around and accepting games.
@taylormccue Thank you, I appreciate that and I appreciate you! 😀
In case it helps, Mark Brown (GMTK) recently published a video where he talks about this topic for his game. Sadly his conclusion is to abandon the pixel art style, but the thoughts he expresses on the way are good for visualizing what I said about canvas size and scalability: https://youtu.be/UlzgvZqig40?t=74 (It's the part from 1:14 to 4:12.) He feels that the border/margin suggestion doesn't work for his game, but I like it the most.
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