One Asset to Rule Them All–UI Resolution Issues

We are two man Indie dev team. This means production time is a big deal. When creating a game that is to be released on the PC platform primarily, its pretty important that you take into account what happens when players run your game on the vast variety of monitors and resolutions available. More assets means more time. This is the eternal struggle of Men. Well, mostly just us two.

While we’d love to be able to create crisp layouts and User interfaces to accommodate every variation, its just not going to be possible at this stage. When that statement comes up it bothers me so much that I usually say to myself, ‘We’ll patch it in if the core product is successful’.

For now, the solution is one asset to rule them all. We just have to ensure the one asset looks great in 720, as well as 1080. These are the two most widely used variations of resolutions. Everything else will be something close to either of the two. Additionally we have to ensure the assets are read comfortably from the console + TV setup to the desk + monitor setup.

What we have so far seems to be working out, but I’m not completely happy. It’ll be more interesting to see how it feels in game. I also have some thoughts on how to make it feel more at home in 1080.

You haven’t seen the last of me, Inventory Screen, we will be meeting again very soon…

..Probably tomorrow