Do high resolutions cause problems?

[tor.brandt]

I'm planning on starting up my first serious AGS game project, and I'd like to get the technicalities right in my project setup from the start, to avoid annoying set backs.

I'd like to set a relatively high resolution, like 1920*1080, but I'm not sure if that will cause trouble for players with smaller resolution monitors...
So: if I set the game resolution to 1920*1080, will players with smaller resolution monitors be unable to run the game?
And if so, what do you think is the highest reasonable resolution to set? 1024*768, or can I go higher than that?

Thanks!

[Crimson Wizard]

It should be noted that AGS, being pretty old program, is still not very well optimized for high resolutions.

Large walkable areas can sometimes cause slowdowns because of the pathfinding method they use.
There is still a limit of 2 GB sprites file, which may run out pretty fast if your game has lots of content and features many rooms and smooth animations. This problem may be eased by enabling sprite compression in the project settings (I think that's a must for hi-res projects, or your game size will explode quickly).

Regarding players who cannot run your game in native res, this version of AGS support automatic downscaling if game does not fit to screen. I recall playing a 1920*1080 game on my PC which only supported 1680*1050, and that was pretty much okay. But honestly, when downscaled like 1.5 times or more sprites, and especially text, start to look awful.


1280x720 is a pretty reasonable resolution, and it has wide ratio which has became a standard today.

[tor.brandt]

@Crimson Wizard:

Thanks for your reply!
It's really useful that you draw attention to the speed and sprite limit issues, I did not know about those.

I think I will take your advice and set the resolution to 1280*720, thank you!

[Stapper]

Speaking of which, is there a way to see the current size of the sprites in use?

The biggest files in the directory are these two: acsprset.spr & backup_acsprset.spr

Are these files limited to 2GB? Each or together?

[Cassiebsg]

acsprset.spr <-- This one
The other one is just a backup of it, meaning it's a copy of your previous acsprset.spr before you added the last sprites (or last saved?).

[LameNick]

I just wanted to ask, what are the odds of removing the 2GB limit sometime in the future? Does that fulfill some function or are there some problems associated with removing it?
I'm sorry if the question is annoying or sounds like a rant, i was just curious if its somewhere on the radar of possible future AGS features or not. And sorry if this is not the appropriate thread to ask this, since the 2GB limit was mentioned here in relation to the topic, I thought to post here.

[Crimson Wizard]

I just wanted to ask, what are the odds of removing the 2GB limit sometime in the future? Does that fulfill some function or are there some problems associated with removing it?
I'm sorry if the question is annoying or sounds like a rant, i was just curious if its somewhere on the radar of possible future AGS features or not. And sorry if this is not the appropriate thread to ask this, since the 2GB limit was mentioned here in relation to the topic, I thought to post here.

I cannot answer any of those questions right away, but one can overcome 2GB sprite limit, as well as 30k sprites number limit, by loading sprites from disk at runtime (and disposing them when they are not needed anymore). An option is to write plugin that would load them from ZIP archive, if compact storing of resources is preferred.

[LameNick]

Thanks for your reply CW, its good to know there are some workarounds.