Re: [pygame] How many display modes to support?

[ben@learntotype.com]

Dave,

To answer question 1...
I had major problems with display modes. Let me explain:

Initially, I assumed that:
    modes = pygame.display.list_modes()
    modes.sort()
    #print modes
would reveal what the display capabilities are. Wrong. On several PCs it gave a max resolution 
which was beyond the capabilities of one or other of the display card or monitor. I guess that if 
the monitor doesn't support the display card's highest resolution and you switch to that 
resolution, the user won't see a lot.

Here are the comments I put in the program at the time:
    # List_Modes can give modes higher than the current resolution!
    # That's a really difficult one to get around. 
    # Using the  FULLSCREEN param will actually
    # change mode to the highest resolution available. That's one
    # way. I tried all sorts of other things, like a 
    # non-fullscreen after a fullscreen but that didn't work. 
    # Also its no good to ask the size of the resulting 
    # surface because the surface is always the size you asked for.
    # I don't want to force a low resolution (like assume 800x600)
    # because the graphic quality suffers.

I recently found out how to detect the current resolution, and it's a safe bet that the current 
resolution works. The beast is:  
    # 2 constants which could be imported from somewhere I guess:
    SM_CXSCREEN = 0
    SM_CYSCREEN = 1
    x = win32api.GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN)
    y = win32api.GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN)

    # that gives the dimensions of the display. Now, for my own window, I'm using something a 
little smaller.
    width = x -50
    height = y -80

    screen = pygame.display.set_mode((width,height),0,16)

> Is it reasonable to assume that most PC users can support
> 1024x768x8?

Most, yes. But why not support all?

Personally, I scale everything according to my window size. Most applications don't do that and 
I'm more familiar with training apps than games. I guess it depends on the nature of the game, 
whether everything is scaled or whether you have a lot of open space when playing at high 
resolution.

> A few questions to those that have (or are planning to) distribute
> Pygame games:
> 
> 1) How many display modes does your game support?
> 
> 2) Is it reasonable to assume that most PC users can support
> 1024x768x8?
> 
> 3) Do you use different sized sprites for each supported res?
> 
> Thanks...
> 


Regards
Ben Friman

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