08-31-2005, 06:51 AM
Assume an OpenGL application running full-screen, rendering a simple GUI of buttons, pictures and labels. Given a range of acceptable resolutions from 800x600 to 1600x1200, and acknowledging that screen sizes do not increase linearly with screen resolution, it's clear that a texture/raster-based GUI that looks good at 800x600 will not be appropiate for running at 1600x1200.
Some thoughts:
Putting borders around the GUI fixes relative positioning, but controls still look small and the GUI looks cramped. Stretching an asset set developed for 800x600 fixes relative positioning and control size, but everything appears pixellated. Providing a different asset set for every possible screen resolution is costly in both artist time and distribution size. And anyway, you can never predict every resolution people want to use. An aspect-ratio of 4:3 isn't guaranteed, not even among the most popular resolutions.
Does anyone have any sagely advice for overcoming this problem?
Some thoughts:
Putting borders around the GUI fixes relative positioning, but controls still look small and the GUI looks cramped. Stretching an asset set developed for 800x600 fixes relative positioning and control size, but everything appears pixellated. Providing a different asset set for every possible screen resolution is costly in both artist time and distribution size. And anyway, you can never predict every resolution people want to use. An aspect-ratio of 4:3 isn't guaranteed, not even among the most popular resolutions.
Does anyone have any sagely advice for overcoming this problem?