Cross Device Screen Resolution

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

This is going to be one of those awkward questions looking for an answer that probably doesn’t exist, but here goes.

I’ve been developing some simple games using Corona and whilst the functionality seems to work pretty well across most of the physical devices I have tested on, the one main issue is the layout. I know you can’t really build for every single device perfectly, but I’m wondering if there is a common method to make an app look good across as many screens as possible. I have access to these devices

iPad 1 & 2: 4:3 (1.33)
iPhone 960 × 640 3:2 (1.5)
iPhone 480x320 3:2 (1.5)
Galaxy Nexus 16:9 (1.77)

From what I have seen, people aim to use 320x480 as a scaled resolution and then let Corona upscale to the correct device resolution (with any @2x images as required) but this leads to letterboxing or cropping depending on the config.lua scale setting. Whilst it does scale correctly, having a letterbox isn’t great.

So would I be best to not specify a width&height in the config file, but instead to use some sort of screen check at first to look for 1.33 / 1.5 / 1.77 aspect ratios? Surely with the whole point of Corona SDK, there would be some sort of ‘typical’ setup that developers use for the start of any new project?

Thank you [import]uid: 87911 topic_id: 23548 reply_id: 323548[/import]

#2

We use letterbox in our projects and in my opinion it is the best you can do. With letterbox you can have all your screen filled no matter what resolution you’re on, and you can adapt to different screen sizes easily making use of variables such as display.screenOriginY.

I’ve made a post a few days ago explaining some of the concepts behind letterbox and how it can be used to create universal apps for any device available.

http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2012/03/12/understanding-letterbox-scalling

Hope it helps.

Manuel [import]uid: 61899 topic_id: 23548 reply_id: 94499[/import]

#3

Thank you - this is excellent. I hope the Ansca staff post your other reply somewhere as it will help a lot of people. [import]uid: 87911 topic_id: 23548 reply_id: 94733[/import]