I'm confused about screen resolution

[JDevain]

I've been using RMMV for a few months now. One of the first things I did was set the resolution to 1920x1080. I then temporarily changed my computer's resolution to various lower resolutions (like 1024x768) just to see how the graphics looked in fullscreen mode, and they looked fine. And no noticeable problem with framerate.

So then, a couple days ago, I took a look at the stickied post Best Screen Resolution, and see all these people talking about how they use these REALLY LOW resolutions, like 1104x624 or 1152x648. I haven't had any problems using 1920x1080, and my computer is not a beast. I have a 2GB graphics card, an AMD 3.80 GHz processor, and 8 GB of RAM.

In case it matters: I only use parallax backgrounds created in photoshop (no tiles at all), and almost all of my maps are at least 80x44 (or 3840x2112 pixels). Just for testing purposes, I've created maps with a BUNCH of events (I think around 80) walking around and randomly bumping into each other. I've usually had about 20 to 25 plugins going, never more than 30 (and the more I learn, the less plugins I need, so now it's under 20). Also, I'm currently only interested in games for desktop, not mobile devices or web.

So... I'm confused about why people are concerned about resolution so much. I'm worried that I'm missing something, and that, once finished, my game will not play well on normal computers (even though everything seems fine on mine). Am I missing something?

 

[bgillisp]

3.8 GHZ is WAY ahead of what most people have, so that is probably why you are running just fine. Most people run still computers with 1.7 GhZ or 2.4 GhZ, and the way MV is designed, the engine runs entirely off the processor, so the faster the better. The # of cores makes no difference.

Also 80 events with that resolution is not a bunch. I've filled 640 x 480 with 80 events before. Once you fill up the map for a crowded town with that many tiles you can easily hit 200 - 300 events, and that is when you might see some slowdown.

 

[TWings]

Short answer, on a 2D game a higher resolution doesn't improve the visual quality, so you don't need it.

 

[JDevain]

@bgillisp
"3.8 GHZ is WAY ahead of what most people have"

I've been googling, but am having a surprisingly hard time confirming that 3.8 GHz is an unusually fast processor speed. It seems like average clock speeds would be readily available information, but apparently not. I'm hoping you're wrong, of course (nothing personal, haha). It's just that, considering what I paid for this rig over 5 years ago, it would seem odd that I still have an unusually fast processor. I'll do some more sniffing around and get back to you.

@TWings
"on a 2D game a higher resolution doesn't improve the visual quality"

A higher resolution should ALWAYS improve visual quality. If I create an image in photoshop that is 1104x624, and then magnify it to 1920x1080, it's not going to look as good. Scaling graphics down generally looks fine and crisp, but scaling graphics up is another story.

 

[Galenmereth]

[...] the way MV is designed, the engine runs entirely off the processor, so the faster the better.

This is not true. MV uses WebGL or Canvas2D context (depending on browser support) to render its visuals. If the end user has a compliant GPU (and most GPU's would be), the rendering of these contexts take place on the GPU using texture buffers. Game logic, like event processing, is of course done on the CPU. But the GPU the end user has will significantly increase the possible performance.

 

[bgillisp]

@Galenmereth : Sorry to ruin that, but I recall a dev confirmed it was never set up to use the GPU a while ago. Maybe that has changed somewhere on the line, but at least originally it isn't true.

@JDevain : Well considering how many people we get posting here with specs of 1.8 GhZ or low 2 GhZ range I'd say yours is high end. In fact, mine which I bought 2 years ago is 2.8 GhZ.

Just remember, some people play games on some interesting toasters. And that is true regardless of where you go. Of course, I'm also from the generation that tried to see what games we could program on a TI calculator too.

 

[JDevain]

@bgillisp

"Just remember, some people play games on some interesting toasters."

That made me literally laugh out loud.

 

[Galenmereth]

@bgillisp I don't know who would've said that; I've been working with the engine since closed beta, and it's always used GPU rendering when available because it's built upon pixi.js and canvas. Is it possible you're confusing MV with Ace? Ace uses entirely CPU bound rendering

As the following screenshot depicts, you can see that using the chromium browser MV's desktop environment ships with, GPU raster is on:

Spoiler

It could certainly make better use of the GPU, but it's always been using it when available.

 

[bgillisp]

Maybe but all I know is mv runs slower than ace on the same computer for me so regardless of how it is set up that's a fact I can state

 

[_Shadow_]

TL;DR; On the bottom with bold.

An AMD 3.80 GHz processor? What architecture? What model?
Press spoiler for the long version.

Spoiler

Not everyone have the money to buy a new pc. Most people either are stuck with a good old pc, a crappy one they found on a "good deal" or a refurbished one at a low price but bare bone specs.
What I am trying to say is, I would't buy an Atlhon XP 3800+ with 3 GB or RAM and an old GTX graphic card today. I would personally would consider that a waste of money. But the majority of people is not me. Such a device can be used to browse to the internet decently and I bet itwill be staying for about a few more years at least at the same status. Such a device can run most of the programs an average user might need, you can watch a movie, pretty much whatever you might need to do is there. Adding an SSD can even surprise you. It can run Windows 10 (you should HAVE to tune up a bunch of things and disable a lot more to achieve decent performance but it is possible) or you can run Linux VERY well. The problem is, that CPU runs on 2000Mhz but it can perform better than faster CPUs of antagonists. That's why it is called 3800+ and that proves that CPU speed alone is not as an accurate measure of performance as most people thing. This CPU comes with a1000 MHz 16-bit HyperTransport link (2GT/s) bus speed. It has the K8 architecture and 64 bit data width.
Combine this with a GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card and you got a decent refurbished system. (PC 1)

Here is the catch!
(PC 2)
A core i-5 2500K runs at 3.3 GHz an its performance 700% better than Atlhon XP 3800+
4 GB of RAM
A GTX 1050Ti which is not the best card ever for today, is 397% better GeForce 9800 GTX.

I have seen PCs like the first one being sold for 200 Euros, while I have seen PCs like the second set being sold for 250 to 300 Euros.

I would buy neither of them by the way. Why did I told you all that? Here is why:
People that bought something like the first PC, can stick around with it for a very long time, without any problem, without paying anything.
They can't sell it for good money because of the second PC being way better and more value for money. The second system can achieve 1000% better benchmark test performance than the first one. Thus they stick with their old system for as long as they can do, thus CPUs like that, still exist around the World serving people. And such systems are more than you think. Not to mention laptops, netbooks etc etc.

Now I got a desktop PC that has an i-7 7700K loaded, with a GTX 1060 6GB, and 16GB of Ram, and an SSD and I got it running on non overclocked speeds. This will eventually run MV completely smooth. Same goes for VX Ace. The first PC was my old PC set though. I can't say the same thing for VX Ace and MV, when they run on that old system. It is not just as smooth as the new one. Well DAAAA???

TL;DR;
But we have to keep in mind, that when it comes to evaluating an engine, it is complicated. Most of the time the problem is poor optimization.
You talk about Events. 80 of them. Any Events set in parallel? Put a WAIT command on each of them, let's say a Wait(30) which is half a second because the engine runs at 60FPS. (MV)
Do you use a lot of plugins? Well make sure that you don't sacrifice a lot of CPU power to make things work. Just because YOU can play a game you make, doesn't mean it is playable elsewhere. You should actually set minimum specs by testing the game on different systems. You wanna go mobile? Things go even more complicated. You should run tests on mobile devices too. Many different devices.

Resolution? I believe that since a canvas being smaller can have lighter CPU load, this can be a thing. But that's it really. And I believe that actually bigger screen resolution can work fine on PCs while smaller resolutions can do the trick on mobile devices, mostly for aesthetic reasons.

 

[caethyril]

@JDevain: lots of reasons! Why do you need the extra screen space? Are you using a larger tile size, naturally allowing for higher-resolution sprites? Have you added extra information to all the menus etc so they don't look half-empty? How much empty space is there in your maps? Have you considered that there are players (like me!) who prefer to play in windowed mode?

Increasing the game window resolution could easily have a notable impact on rendering time, for obvious reasons. I think the other two big factors are render mode and integrated graphics. WebGL is the preferred, GPU-based render mode; the fallback canvas mode is about 5 times slower, at least for the tilemap. I'm not sure exactly how integrated graphics work, but I think it basically all goes through the CPU; I imagine WebGL on capable integrated graphics is still notably faster than canvas mode, but I don't have any numbers to prove it.

For those curious: you can check which rendering mode is being used in-game by pressing F2 to show the framerate widget. It'll be labelled either "WebGL" or "Canvas mode".

As for relative gamer system specs, you might find the results of the latest Steam hardware survey illuminating. A couple of points to note, remembering that this survey represents a gaming community with typically higher-end systems: while 1920 x 1080 is most popular, ~12.5% of those surveyed had a primary display resolution of 1366 x 768; also, only ~6.25% had a base CPU speed over 3.7 GHz.

 

[Andar]

REALLY LOW resolutions, like 1104x624 or 1152x648. I haven't had any problems using 1920x1080,

There is another point with this, one that hasn't been mentioned here.

If a game is designed for a lower screen size, there is no problem using it with fullscreen on a higher screen size.
If a game is designed for a high screen size, then all computers that don't have that size will have problems. Either the game won't work at all or the screens will get cut of or distorted when trying to place the same info on smaller screens.

and especially in the laptop area, hi-res screens are rare - especially for portable ones that don't have an 18" display like mine.

So if you make your screen size too big then a lot of people will not be able to play your game.

 

[Aesica]

Most people run still computers with 1.7 GhZ or 2.4 GhZ

Where are you getting this statistic from? According to Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

3.3-3.69 Ghz is the most common range. 2.4 Ghz is pretty much the starting point of the "popular range."

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@Aesica - but that is steam, maybe it has an effect to the results? Like most people who take those surveys or use steam a lot are more likely to use at least a mid range setup maybe? and given that the most popular is still just 22% overall, I dont think it amounts to much.

Anyway, Im with Andar here, its better to use a lower resolution because it will work on more screen sizes than a higher resolution one. IDK in the US or anywhere but here in my country, a lot of the more common and affordable laptops still max out at 1366x768 resolution (with integrated graphics cards and around 2.X GHz processor and 4GB RAM)

Plus as others said, for a 2D game with fixed resource sizes and so on, having a higher resolution doesn't always make things better.. It can even make the end result worse, like having more blank spaces per map etc.

Remember, your target audience for a typical RM game most likely isnt those who have setups similar or even higher than yours (because most of those would prefer playing 3D games with realistic graphics on their beast machines anyway).

Your game probably works fine on your PC even if you set the resolution of the PC to a lower one since your PC can still do 1080p by default. But dont expect your game to work nicely on a PC that cant do 1080p.

 

[Aesica]

@Aesica - but that is steam, maybe it has an effect to the results? Like most people who take those surveys or use steam a lot are more likely to use at least a mid range setup maybe? and given that the most popular is still just 22% overall, I dont think it amounts to much.

It's possible, as no poll is 100% accurate unless it samples 100% of a given population. Still, it's a pretty good benchmark since it draws on a large sample size. It's worth noting that the vast majority starts at around 2.3 Ghz (the upper end of what was mentioned) and goes through 3.69 Ghz.

Anyway, Im with Andar here, its better to use a lower resolution because it will work on more screen sizes than a higher resolution one. IDK in the US or anywhere but here in my country, a lot of the more common and affordable laptops still max out at 1366x768 resolution (with integrated graphics cards and around 2.X GHz processor and 4GB RAM)

Oh I agree completely there. I myself use 1104x624 due to how well it plays with 48x48 tiles. 1366x768 is actually the second most common resolution according to that same hardware survey. I use that same resolution due to using a past-generation HDTV as my monitor.

 

[caethyril]

I feel it's worth noting that many of those with higher-end systems are likely using those systems primarily to play games that require such a powerful system. They may also be streamers who need the extra power for real-time video encoding. I imagine a typical indie/RM game's target market will be heavily-skewed to those with lower-end systems.

If a game is designed for a high screen size, then all computers that don't have that size will have problems. Either the game won't work at all or the screens will get cut of or distorted when trying to place the same info on smaller screens.

I thought this at first too, but when I tested with the Community_Basic plugin, setting the game resolution higher than that of my monitor, the game automatically scaled down to fit on-screen, even in windowed mode. I don't think it's worth it and would still opt for a lower game resolution, but it does seem to work.

 

[Andar]

the game automatically scaled down to fit on-screen, even in windowed mode

It only works because the screens were designed to fit the lower screen size.
If you make the screens use the higher screen size by putting more data on it, some of that data would become lost or unreadable on shrinking.

 

[caethyril]

@Andar oh yes, I see what you mean now, agreed.

 

[bgillisp]

@Aesica : My source is from the specs people report to us when we ask for specs to diagnose issues. And you can't go by the Steam survey for anything as that is voluntary response sampling, which is a VERY poor way to sample, as anyone who has studies statistics would tell you.

Remember large sample size means squat too if they are gotten via the wrong method, as the Literary Digest study of 1936 shows. They had 2.5 million responses in their poll on who would win the 1936 election, and got (and published) the completely wrong result of Alf Landon was going to win in a landslide. Reality was FDR won in a landslide. And the issue was they used the wrong sampling method to get those 2.5 million people, which skewed the results in a biased way.

 

[JDevain]

@caethyril

Hey, caethyril, nice to see you again (or read you again, I guess). Don't know if you recall, but you helped me out with something a couple of months ago.

Anyhoo... I'm really not sure what you mean by any of your questions.

"Why do you need the extra screen space?" I don't know what you mean by "extra screen space".

"Are you using a larger tile size, naturally allowing for higher-resolution sprites?" If you're asking if I'm using a plugin to change the tile size, then no. I create parallax maps in photoshop using the default 48x48 grid. If that's not what you're asking, then I'm at a loss.

"Have you added extra information to all the menus etc so they don't look half-empty?" Er...

"How much empty space is there in your maps?" I'm starting to feel like an idiot, but again, I don't understand the question. Graphically, there aren't any empty spaces.

"Have you considered that there are players (like me!) who prefer to play in windowed mode?" Not sure what the concern is there. I don't see anything about having a 1920x1080 resolution that would prevent someone from playing in windowed mode, just press F4.

Let me explain it with screenshots:

image #1: Community Basics is set to 1920x1080, as is my computer's screen resolution. This is ultimately what I want the user to see.

image #2: Community Basics is set to 1920x1080, but my computer's screen resolution is set to 1280x720. While the overall image is smaller, it otherwise looks exactly the same as #1, so no problem there.

image #3: Community Basics is set to 1104x624, and my computer's screen resolution is set to 1920x1080. As you can see, the graphics aren't nearly as crisp, and you can't see nearly as much of the map. There could be a monster just a few yards away and I wouldn't even see it.

image #4: Same as #1, but this is the menu you see when you hit ESC. I only include it because you asked about menus being empty looking. This isn't something I'm concerned with, though, as I plan to pretty much bypass as many of the default menus as I can.

image #5: Same as #1, but in windowed mode, with the window reduced in size. If I grab the edges of the window, I can make it take up most of the window, and you still see basically the same thing (in terms of map real estate), but overall larger.

To me, #3 is unacceptable. I guess the bottom line is: I want my game to look and feel like a normal 2D game. Think Stardew Valley, to use a popular example. The maps aren't huge, but they give you plenty of "walking around" room, without having to constantly shift from one map to another. And you can be zoomed out enough to actually see what's going on around you. I believe you could run that game on a calculator if you had to.

EDIT: looks like I doubled up on the image uploads. Oops.