What's wrong with 800x600?

[Carlos Camacho]

I recall talk some time back that this rez of 800x600 isn't ideal for games since some Macs don't support it. I want to release some background images for use in games and need to decide the rez size. What is the "best" size? I know I could go for the highest and let people scale down, but I want to conserve space.

Cheers

[OneSadCookie]

Go for the highest and let people scale down.

Certainly don't go below 1024x768.

[Carlos Camacho]

Ok, I will shoot for 1024x768

Cheers

[Zachary]

Most macs support 640,480

[w_reade]

OS X won't let me use 640x480 or 256 colours unless I trick it. The only way I can play Prince of Persia is by starting Monkey Island and then going back to try to make my way through the ink-smeared mess of the Finder to open PoP.

I think it's a fairly simple matter to programmatically switch to 640x480 and/or 256 colours, but it's not a "standard" option anymore.

I remember 256 colours being pretty damn cool, and now it's too outdated to feature. Hey ho.

[OneSadCookie]

Can't you uncheck "show recommended modes" in the Displays control panel, switch to 256 colors and go from there? I seem to recall that worked for me with PoP...

[Carlos Camacho]

I think 640x480 WAS interesting, but seeing a fullscreen game at that rez (say using OpenGL) on a big monitor, and you get huge ugly sprites/assets... So I think I won't there...

[Joseph Duchesne]

640*480 looks mighty funny on a 23 inch screen. Take my word for it.:D

[skyhawk]

when finding the prime factors of 640 and 480 you get:
640=2*2*2*2*2*2*2*5
480=2*2*2*2*2*3*5
you have 6 common prime factors. compare that with 800x600:
800=2*2*2*2*2*5*5
600=2*2*2*3*5*5
you only have 5 common prime factors.
I'm not ENTIRELY certain how this relates to screen compatibility, but it is very useful to have lots of posibilities when designing tiles for games.