(sdl) Fullscreen behaviour at 400*240

[doublebeta]

Hey, first up, i'm really sorry if this has been mentioned somewhere - but it's really hard to search for something like '400*240' . I did do some searching but yah.


I'm writing a game in C++ and SDL, with my primary target being the Pandora (secondary being Linux x86). It will run Fullscreen and Windowed. I was originally going to write it at 800*480 so it would work at the Pandora's completely native resolution but I need to cut render times in my tiling engine down(it probably IS fast enough to run fine on the Pandora at stock clock but I want some headroom, to save on battery life and to allow, say, music to run in the background fine) and also to make window use a little bit less clunky. And well, 16*16 tiling RPGs just don't look right at such a large resolution. Aaand, the more the user sees in one go, the less content the user will take note of so the game will need huge epic maps to look big.


->So my question is - How does the Pandora handle 400*240 in fullscreen mode? Will the screen scale up to double size (in effect)? Or will it be in a box with a border around it? (LOL A la C64?). I'm really only used to analog monitor interfaces where this is done in hardware naturally, i.e. the scanlines will just last longer per pixel as the sync frequency relaxes. But I don't know with these all digital monitors. I'm pretty sure my EeePC used to scale up but I don't remember so well.


Um well, i've added a poll so you guys can vote on whether you'd rather see it at 800*480, less pixellation, more of the scene seen (zoomed out) where IMO you aren't as involved in the game, or 400*240, which is better on battery life, and you see less of the scene but it's more pixellated.


I suppose you might want some info on the game before deciding, lol - it's a Pokemon fan game (tho I have plans to make seperate, all-free game with same engine) that should eventually, as an ongoing project with the possibility of multiple authors(or creative artist like mapmakers, musicians, graphicians, etc) contain ALL. the maps from the official Pokemon games, with maybe even some from popular ROM hacks, with of course some maps of our own.


THIS IS NOT A (sneaky) RECRUITING THREAD! I do not need team members nor do I want them now because I need to do a lump of solid work myself to make sure this project has a stable base. And face it - coming in looking for team members is the same as saying "Make me a game!". I mean, I sure don't see 'sudo'please at the beginning of that sentence.


And uh, POIDH(Pics or it didn't happen) I guess, showing the game running, proving I do have at least some coding ability. It also shows part of the map so far XD. I need to make more tiles, and do more mapwork as soon as I have collisions n stuff all done efficiently. All the tiles are drawn by me - the character however, is not, it's the female character from FireRed/LeafGreen.


I need to make up a better name. I used it when I typed my first few lines of the source - and just haven't changed it :\.


I don't have a Pandora yet, obviously, or i'd just go test this. But i'm in batch 2 so, I should get it before christmas(next year lol!)!


Sorry this is so long . It got out of hand here.

 

[cosam]

In the current SDL, setting to 400x240 full screen will give you a centred, unscaled 400x240 display with a huge border. If you want this stretched to fill the screen, you can do it in software (e.g. SDL_SoftStretch). The Pandora will however support hardware scaling in SDL eventually though (there is a rough hack that does this already) meaning you could have an arbitrary surface stretched to any dimensions you like, "for free".


Supporting both 400x240 and 800x480 needn't necessarily be difficult as long as you factor it in from the start.

 

[doublebeta]

In the current SDL, setting to 400x240 full screen will give you a centred, unscaled 400x240 display with a huge border. If you want this stretched to fill the screen, you can do it in software (e.g. SDL_SoftStretch). The Pandora will however support hardware scaling in SDL eventually though (there is a rough hack that does this already) meaning you could have an arbitrary surface stretched to any dimensions you like, "for free".


Supporting both 400x240 and 800x480 needn't necessarily be difficult as long as you factor it in from the start.

Ah, damn . Good to hear that a hardware scaling setup is in the works, though, I can't use SoftStretch because that'd use up the saved CPU cycles . Thankyou VERY MUCH for the information .


I'll have to talk to a friend of mine, he was talking about doing this stuff in OpenGL, maybe this should be possible. I think he said you can map a surface on a quad and move the quad around, or something.


The main problem with 400x240 *AND* 800x480 support is text wrapping, because I plan to do that manually. OH and there's the mapper - an xoffset and a yoffset will be different on-screen locations at those resolutions due to how it works - I guess I can compensate for that somehow. For now i'll work at 400x240 because borders aren't so bad(Actually I hated using Gameboy games on the GBA because of the border but whatever) there's the option of scaling up later, and if I must (user demand) i'll add 800x480 support.


And the good thing about this resolution is that when I do scale up, it's by an integer (2) so it will both be fast and not make the game look 'fat' (or skinny).


I just knew somebody would pick the last option. Maybe I will use the hardware scaler to scale down to 16*16 and see who can play through the game .


EDIT: Oh crap, sorry, I found a thread where this has been mentioned. Well at least I got to know user preference of resolutions - your votes will not be ignored! Jut probably useless anyhow .