Should I support 320x480 Res?

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I built an app in corona back in 2010 when the default res was 320x480 and I also made @2x assets for the  new iPhone 4 at the time.

http://www.josephmauke.com/flickem

I have not updated since then, and I’m thinking of updating it now.  But a lot has changed including device screen sizes.  Im wondering with the latest announcement that we have to submit in 64 bit that maybe apple might be squeezing the ancient iPhone4s out of the market by not updating iOS8 for it. 

So my question since I totally need to revamp all my dated art, should I just drop 320x480 asset support and just build for the 640x1136 iPhone and 6?  

also, I made a standard phone and iPad version just calling it myappname HD  (that seemed to be a popular way to go at that time).  Would it just be better to ditch the HD version and make an all-in-one for both phone and tablet?

any advice would be helpful since my time and money is rather limited.

#2

Unless your app is extremely complex, just use the high res assets and let OpenGL scale it down for older devices. OpenGL is fast for these kinds of tasks.

Check out my game Bombaroo: it only has one set of graphics, the high res assets for the iPad Retina (at 2048x1536), but it also runs supersmooth on an iPhone 3 at 320 x 480. This whole @2x, @4x issues is completely overblown in most projects in my opinion.

Cheers,

Thomas

#3

Apple has made it pretty clear they want developers to think in “points” which is 320x480 as the base.   You of course can use whatever content area you want, but keep in mind, in particular when targeting Apple devices, targeting these sizes and using @2x resources allow you to have pixel perfect displays.  Also if you use Corona’s widget.* API’s they are based on 320x content area.

Rob

#4

I regret using 320x480 in my game. One thing is that you lose super fine placement and size control. 

I think it’s also possible that when dragging objects in 320x480 (like a slideview) it can never be as smooth as a higher res since you are moving the object on the touch event.x and event.y which are between 0 and 320 (on the width) instead of 0 and 640 for example. Disclaimer: I have never actually compared this, the difference may not be noticeable :slight_smile:

#5

I agree with Thomas that the whole 1x 2x 3x 4x is being taken too far. At the same time I think it depends on the game. My game is turn based and users are opening multiple times per day, sometimes per hour. So I think its important to keep the game as slim as possible so the system is less inclined to release it from memory.

#6

BTW, I have an iPhone 4S and it runs iOS 8. I also have a 4+ year old iPad2 that Apple is still supporting with updates.

I think the change is to support both 64 and 32 bit, not 64 bit only. So these older devices should have some more life left.

#7

From everything I have read thats not the intent.  Its to phase it out, just like they did with the first iPad and the iPhone 4.  Im considering making my next app ARM7 only anyway and that right there should kill legacy screen support.  As for widgets, I wouldn’t let that be a determining factor.  My original app was made with the old director lib, and the old ui.lua.  So I have to totally revamp everything anyway. I just don’t have the time to make multiple assets for a myriad of differing screen aspect ratios unnecesarily. 

#8

Unless your app is extremely complex, just use the high res assets and let OpenGL scale it down for older devices. OpenGL is fast for these kinds of tasks.

Check out my game Bombaroo: it only has one set of graphics, the high res assets for the iPad Retina (at 2048x1536), but it also runs supersmooth on an iPhone 3 at 320 x 480. This whole @2x, @4x issues is completely overblown in most projects in my opinion.

Cheers,

Thomas

#9

Apple has made it pretty clear they want developers to think in “points” which is 320x480 as the base.   You of course can use whatever content area you want, but keep in mind, in particular when targeting Apple devices, targeting these sizes and using @2x resources allow you to have pixel perfect displays.  Also if you use Corona’s widget.* API’s they are based on 320x content area.

Rob

#10

I regret using 320x480 in my game. One thing is that you lose super fine placement and size control. 

I think it’s also possible that when dragging objects in 320x480 (like a slideview) it can never be as smooth as a higher res since you are moving the object on the touch event.x and event.y which are between 0 and 320 (on the width) instead of 0 and 640 for example. Disclaimer: I have never actually compared this, the difference may not be noticeable :slight_smile:

#11

I agree with Thomas that the whole 1x 2x 3x 4x is being taken too far. At the same time I think it depends on the game. My game is turn based and users are opening multiple times per day, sometimes per hour. So I think its important to keep the game as slim as possible so the system is less inclined to release it from memory.

#12

BTW, I have an iPhone 4S and it runs iOS 8. I also have a 4+ year old iPad2 that Apple is still supporting with updates.

I think the change is to support both 64 and 32 bit, not 64 bit only. So these older devices should have some more life left.

#13

From everything I have read thats not the intent.  Its to phase it out, just like they did with the first iPad and the iPhone 4.  Im considering making my next app ARM7 only anyway and that right there should kill legacy screen support.  As for widgets, I wouldn’t let that be a determining factor.  My original app was made with the old director lib, and the old ui.lua.  So I have to totally revamp everything anyway. I just don’t have the time to make multiple assets for a myriad of differing screen aspect ratios unnecesarily.