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AppGameKit Classic Chat / True full screen mode in Windows possible at all?

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n00bstar
20
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Joined: 9th Feb 2004
Location: Montreal, Canada.
Posted: 30th Dec 2020 14:40
I understand that by it's multiplatform nature, AppGameKit is much more suited to working with virtual resolution, and in most cases it's super helpful...but... Is there any way to actually open a screen at a given resolution? It seems that no matter what I try, AppGameKit simply won't open a true 1280x720 (16:9) screen, it always just stretches it to fit my 1920x1200 (16:10) display.

My choices seem to be:
1) Open a 1280x720 window. But that's not full screen.
2) Open a 1280x720 window, set it to full screen, and get blurry pixels because the display gets stretched.
3) Open a 1280x720 window, set mag/min filters to 0, and get crisp pixels but they're all of different sizes because it's still getting stretched.
4) Open a window at my desktop resolution and put a 1280x720 "canvas" smack dab in the middle. I get pixel perfect display, but it looks ridiculous because of the unused borders.

Isn't there any way to open a 1280x720 screen and have the monitor switch to that resolution?
SFSW
21
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Joined: 9th Oct 2002
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Posted: 30th Dec 2020 19:27 Edited at: 30th Dec 2020 19:27
The option is not available that I know of and it seems API's as well as the industry as a whole are moving away from legacy full screen exclusive modes as an option, opting instead for full borderless window modes. It's also generally best practice to render at the native resolution of whatever display is being used to provide maximum image quality at a 1:1 pixel ratio, which AppGameKit does a good job of handling by default.

The options you listed are basically what you can do. To add to that, you can also include a custom render target on a full screen quad at whatever resolution you want to render to, but you have to go with a pixelated or blurry look as well, so there's not much of an advantage to doing it that way either. It can give you a little more control over final output though by being able to apply some filtering/shader effects on a full screen quad. Using that or 2/3 on your list will still get fairly close to what a legacy full screen exclusive mode would look like on a higher resolution monitor running at a lower resolution.
n00bstar
20
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Joined: 9th Feb 2004
Location: Montreal, Canada.
Posted: 30th Dec 2020 21:28
Well damn. I'm gonna have to break some old habits then....
nz0
AGK Developer
16
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Joined: 13th Jun 2007
Location: Cheshire,UK
Posted: 30th Dec 2020 21:44
Nice to see you around again n00bstar!

I think if you are going for arcade/pixel style games, then you could add optional border art or something if you detect blank borders exist.
Depends if you are developing something for release (to people on different native resolutions) or just something for yourself.

One other possibility is to render your 2D game to an image which you could manipulate "in post" with shaders (e.g. a pixilation pass or any number of other cool things).
n00bstar
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 9th Feb 2004
Location: Montreal, Canada.
Posted: 30th Dec 2020 23:44
Hola mister!

I'm back for my yearly month of coding. Wonder why my projects never get finished

I indeed though of rendering to a texture/image/sprite/whatever and then resizing that as I need....but that's sort of the same problem in the end. I think AppGameKit natively resizes things as best as it can be done so there's no real need to add a ton of boilerplate code. The only advantage would be, as you say, post processing of the whole shebang in one pass but my ambitions, and talent, are of a fairly humble nature so straight-up 2D it is

I was expecting to be able to run a pixel-perfect screen at any resolution and just deal with the placement of the GUI myself, but it's going to have to be the other way around I guess.

I think I'm just going to develop the game at 1920x1080 which is as standard as it gets. AppGameKit just adds black borders if my monitor is at a different aspect ratio, which is quite okay with me. Some stretching will happen at higher and lower resolutions but yknow... good enough I guess.

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