Please think about rendering your backgrounds at higher resolutions

[D3xter]

If at all possible, please think about rendering the initial background images at a larger size than the planned 2560x1440 shown so far:

 

 

to account for certain hardware available today and future-proofing the game for the decades to come, so it doesn't suffer from the same ailments that the Infinity Engine games do today while playing them at a larger resolution:

 

 

Not sure how you are rendering the backgrounds e.g. I assume they are either much larger high resolution full screen maps or bits and pieces thereof that you put together afterwards, what I am referring to is the visible screen space.

For instance, this Icewind Dale background already has a resolution of 3840x2880, but the designed standard screen space was somewhere around 640x480 (and 800x600 for IWDII):

 

 

There are immediate results from downsampling from higher resolutions to be had, by getting sharper pictures to look at, especially if it is from a multiple of the current screen resolution like 2x or 1.5x, but the real reason to do it would be to future-proof the game somewhat more from the get-go instead of possibly having to go through the painful process of having to do it for a "Remastered" or "UHD" version of it a decade from now after the possible loss of art assets, concepts or modelling data.

 

You could offer the higher resolution backgrounds as an additional download on services like Steam or GoG like other games do it with "High Resolution Textures Packs", but if you do not, at least consider doing and keeping them on archive.

 

Here's a pretty well argued point as to the advantages of High Resolution screens: http://www.pcgamer.c...makes-me-angry/

 

Basically, IBM had UHD screens ready over 10 years ago with a resolution of 3840×2400: http://www.pcworld.c...87/article.html and while they didn't take off at that time for several obvious reasons related to cost, the power of graphics processors, them exiting the hardware business among others, we are recently getting more and more high resolution screens in the short-term future, from Apples "Retina" displays at 2880×1800 with other vendors likely following.

 

In the longer-term decade-spanning future we have "Ultra High Definition Television" already standardized, finalized and being tested at 4K/8K to likely become a "thing" within the next ~10 years

Mainly it'll be two Standards: UHDTV1 (3840x2160 or 4K) and UHDTV2 (7680x4320 or 8K). (similar to 720p/1080p)

http://en.wikipedia....tion_television

The first prototype models of both 4K and 8K displays are already past us in 2008 and 2011 respectively with SHARP, Samsung and Panasonic showing off their early work:

http://www.engadget....lcd-with-16x-m/

http://www.tomshardw...uhdtv,4916.html

http://www.diginfo.t...2-0072-r-en.php

Beamers/Projectors are also already being produced: http://www.sim2.com/home/en/node/20737

 

The last Summer Olympics have already been broadcasted in UHD to test the capabilities: http://www.guardian....london-olympics and demo streams are already running on several sattelites:

http://i.imgbox.com/adtKNFeI.jpg

http://i.imgbox.com/abgCpyEZ.png

http://i.imgbox.com/abfHJtQ7.jpg

 

It is very much coming and a trend in the near to far-off future and it would be great if you could take on that concern going into development, you can always downscale an image, but can never add missing detail to it if you may need to in the future. xD

Edited October 15, 2012 by D3xter

[Hassat Hunter]

planned 2560x1440

That's... a promotional image. Just released in that resolution. And part of a bigger map.

 

So where you get "planned resolution" from?

[mstark]

You might want to have a look at this thread, and you might be happy to hear that the developers are looking at it:

 

http://forums.obsidi...han-resolution/

 

It addresses the issue here and suggests solutions for it.

Edited October 16, 2012 by mstark

[D3xter]

So where you get "planned resolution" from?

Besides being somewhat obvious, since they supplied a screenshot at that resolution, I think Feargus and some other people have mentioned it a few times that they are going to "support 2560x1440".

 

Question: Do you plan to ensure the game includes high resolution settings for those who have high end PC's? CD Projeckt did the same thing for 'The Witcher 2' by including an ubersampling mode

Feargus: We are rendering at 2560x1440 and there will be some options for higher end machines that are pure eye candy. However, like the IE games, we want as many people to play the game and play it in a form that is how it is meant to be played. So, our focus is to make it look incredible on low end machines. Now, like I said there will be some candy for the higher end machines - and only them will probably be able to run it at 2560x1440.

 

Question: "We are rendering at 2560x1440" I hope the 16:10 master race will be taken into consideration, here.

Feargus: I think that will work fine - we just draw another 160 pixels.

 

Question: Will high DPI displays (specifically the rMBP in mind at 2880x1800, but anything else >200dpi would apply) be supported with some sort of scaling, so that assets are rendered 1:1 but text at 2x or 1.5x?

Feargus: We are going to be supporting up to 2560x1440 - you are wondering if we will then render the text even higher than that if you are on a higher resolution screen?

 

You might want to have a look at this thread, and you might be happy to hear that the developers are looking at it:

http://forums.obsidi...han-resolution/

It addresses the issue here and suggests solutions for it.

 

I saw it after writing some of this, but I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about in there. xD

 

First you are using the term "dpi" or dots-per-inch, which doesn't really apply to monitors, but is only used for print throughout instead of ppi or pixels-per-inch for displays.

 

Then you are saying it's apparently more important than "resolutions", when what I think you are asking for is simply a higher initial resolution for their assets.

 

And I'm not sure how the ppi-quotient has any importance whatsoever, since it largely differs as you change the display size with the resolution staying the same, for instance 1080p on a 15" screen has a PPI of ~147, on a 21" of ~105, on a 27" of ~82, on a 30" of 73 and if you watch the content on a 60" TV it is only a PPI of ~37.

 

Also you are repeating Apple marketing terms throughout and confusing web design with game rendering

 

What is actually important is that the resolution of the assets, most importantly the background when being rendered is at a high enough quality for future standards e.g. at least 3840x2160 for a single screen space/viewport at the size it is being designed for.

 

We wouldn't actually even need them to support high resolutions out of the box as long as the assets existed somewhere at a high enough resolution for later consideration, so the game doesn't run into the same problems as for instance Baldur's Gate down the lines, with that "Enhanced Edition" either rendering at a low resolution (and suffering from upscaling issues) or employing what is essentially blur filters to be able to keep the same screen space at higher resolutions.

 

A good late example for this would be Dark Souls, which was designed solely for consoles with a resolution of 1024x720 (which was rendered with a wrong aspect ratio, first scaled to 720p and then upscaled to whatever resolution one was using) in mind and before the PC release people would say "Oh, it doesn't matter, the assets probably don't have a higher level of detail anyway and you won't see the difference."

 

And their texture assets were indeed of much higher quality, after someone called Durante unlocked the resolution limitation

http://imgc.rauch.co.uk/957

http://imgc.rauch.co.uk/955

http://imgc.rauch.co.uk/956

 

This one for instance being produced by rendering at a much higher res (I believe somewhere around 4K) and downsampling the image to 2560x1440 (which is obviously easier, since it is real-time 3D, but wouldn't look anywhere like it does without the asset quality being top notch either):

 

It shouldn't even be that much more/additional work if they are considering this and are keeping it in mind from the get-go, it would just mainly mean higher resolution renders of the area backgrounds from their 3D assets to work on or at least for a final pass after everything in the scene has been worked out. Their character models, which should be the biggest problem with their large amount of animations are apparently already real-time 3D, so they would scale naturally and only any additional steps (if any) being done with Photoshop or other tools to the background images would have to be on high quality art assets.

Edited October 16, 2012 by D3xter

[Hassat Hunter]

I take that to mean they take that resolution as the max resolution to support (downsize to), not that maps are that size (of course, not every map is the same size either).

 

As you stated, the IWD maps are already bigger than that...

[D3xter]

I was referring to the size of the viewport/screen space of course and not the size of the entire area.

 

If you take that Icewind Dale map for instance at 3840x2880 for the entirety of an area and try to split it in single "screens", assuming the standard intended size was 640x480, you get:

6x width and 6x height = 36 screens

 

Translating that to an intended standard size of 2560x1440 per screen for Project: Eternity while keeping the aspect ratio and size of a screen segment the same for gameplay reasons, the entire map would be 15360x8640 in size.

 

Rendered at a 4K resolution or 3840x2160 per screen, the entire map would be 23040x12960

 

It's obviously a bit harder to work at those resolutions and I wouldn't know what tools or techniques they are using, but I assume they either segment the "map" into many different parts and put it together after those are finished or they are directly working on its entire size.

 

To realize the sizes of images we are talking about, here for instance is an 8000x8000 image of earth: http://www.flickr.co...in/photostream/

 

And here's a image at 14331×8061: http://www.velopelot...2--high-res.jpg

 

Also a Mars Panorama at 23123×7034: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA10230.jpg

Edited October 16, 2012 by D3xter

[AwesomeOcelot]

With background resource loading the game engine wouldn't need to load the entire map. Obviously they'd need a lot of RAM to create such maps, even if they were to segment the process. It's a good job RAM is so cheap, even modest developers could afford 32GB systems.

Edited October 16, 2012 by AwesomeOcelot

[GarfunkeL]

A very good point indeed. Hopefully OE can do this.

[Karkarov]

I think you are throwing some people off because you are being needlessly technical.

 

To make a long story short what you are saying is make the actual maps much much larger than they actually "need" to be for current resolutions and simply downscale them to fit. That way in 10 years when people want to play this game on the theoretical monitor of the day they can just play it at the resolution the games maps was created at without having to upscale them which results in a blurry image.

 

That said as any graphics artist can tell you it is always easier to create an image at a very large size them down scale it for the size you actually need. So odds are they are doing this anyway. The question is whether it will be viable to include these images at their original resolutions. Personally I think they should do whatever is easier and will fit on the physical discs. Modders playing the game at a theoretical uber resolution 10 years from now are not the people who will decide if the game is profitable or not. It will be the people playing it in 2014 on the very real resolutions of 1080+.

[AwesomeOcelot]

That said as any graphics artist can tell you it is always easier to create an image at a very large size them down scale it for the size you actually need. So odds are they are doing this anyway. The question is whether it will be viable to include these images at their original resolutions. Personally I think they should do whatever is easier and will fit on the physical discs. Modders playing the game at a theoretical uber resolution 10 years from now are not the people who will decide if the game is profitable or not. It will be the people playing it in 2014 on the very real resolutions of 1080+.

 

The higher resolution assets are not necessarily production quality, so if they were to create higher resolution backgrounds for the game they may start out with even higher resolution backgrounds Also it's not just the backgrounds that will need to be higher resolutions or fidelity.

[Karkarov]

The higher resolution assets are not necessarily production quality, so if they were to create higher resolution backgrounds for the game they may start out with even higher resolution backgrounds Also it's not just the backgrounds that will need to be higher resolutions or fidelity.

Fair enough but the point stands. In fact backgrounds are by far the most intense of the things this thread asks for. It is fairly simple to do this for a one off avatar pic or ui elements. In fact they have to do it for ui elements anyway so they will accurately scale at the multiple resolutions we will have today. Anyway it is a fine idea and more power to Obsidian to try, but they should focus on making the game good today first before worrying about how it will look on a new monitor in 10 years.

[VixRaine]

It's also worth noting that this was also covered and in the thread, that mstart linked, and that the Devs themselves have stated that they are keeping the advances in display technology and new high-resolution devices in mind when developing this game. So please be at ease, the future-proofing will occur. We are not the only ones with these thoughts in the forefront of our minds.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61474-dpi-scaling-for-pe-much-more-important-than-resolution/page__st__40#entry1241308

[mstark]

Anyway it is a fine idea and more power to Obsidian to try, but they should focus on making the game good today first before worrying about how it will look on a new monitor in 10 years.

The issue here isn't that it will take 10 years. It's already happened, and by 2014 screens entering the market will commonly be 2x the DPI of today's screens.

 

Today you have the Retina 15" MBP, the 13" counterpart just about to be revealed next month. By 2014, Apple won't be likely to sell a single screen with less than 220 DPI. Desktop screens today are normally around 100-120DPI, which is what all games and applications are scaled to look good at. Sony's got a few 170+DPI laptops on the market, as do ASUS, and there are a number of WQHD and 1080p 11-13" screens (180-220dpi) being released next week, together with Windows 8 (an OS that is made to be much more resolution independent, with better DPI scaling (like OSX), than previous iterations).

 

So while there's currently a minority of people with 4x that which would count as a "normal" high resolution (or 2x today's "normal" DPI), the shift will be very real by 2014. While it'll be even more extreme in 10 years, they will need to consider rendering their assets at least 4x higher in order to keep the game playable on native resolutions of monitors being released today.

 

(for the sake of this post, DPI = PPI. Dots = Pixels.)

[Kuroneko]

To make a long story short what you are saying is make the actual maps much much larger than they actually "need" to be for current resolutions and simply downscale them to fit. That way in 10 years when people want to play this game on the theoretical monitor of the day they can just play it at the resolution the games maps was created at without having to upscale them which results in a blurry image.

As mstark explains, they're not theoretical for 10 years from now. The ball is already in motion, and it has a very good chance of passing us before the game is released, and if not then definitely soon after.

 

Intel was already targeting 3840x2160 in 2013, which Sharp has done half a year ago through its IGZO LCD panels. So you have hardware industry giants like Intel pushing for upscaling of single-display resolutions and use of multiple monitors, already present in Ivy Bridge with intent to upscale for later processors. Not the realm of ultra-high-end graphics cards like the NVIDIA Quadro, or even middle-range ones, but on-CPU embedded graphics, and display makers like Sharp have already jumped on the bandwagon.

 

It's easy to see why Intel would care: they want a piece of the tablet/MacBook market, and naturally so does Microsoft in the Windows 8/Metro, and that means stepping up their game in meeting or exceeding Apple's "Retina". That isn't Apple fanboyism; it's just the way the market is going.

 

Whatever you think of it, Ultrabooks are already expected to have 3840x2160 using Sharp's LCDs and Intel's Haswell sometime in 2013, as Sharp was already making 13.5" panel demonstrations at that resolution a month ago, and physically larger ones before earlier in the year.

 

And PCs are not going to be lag that far behind. The expectation of reasonably affordable 3840x2160 monitors around the time this game is released is not unreasonable at all, because such panels exist already--they're just not affordable for non-professionals right now.

 

Making the target display resolution higher than 1440p is simply sensible at this point.

[Karkarov]

You guys really don't understand how the real world market works. The average consumer is not replacing his pc monitor but maybe once every 4-5 years if even that often. HD tv's have been available since the early 2000's but now near 2013 they just within the last year maybe two got to the point where the average consumer can actually afford a decent one. More telling there is still a good percentage of tv owners in america who even now don't own an HDTV even though they literally don't make SD ones anymore.

 

The average consumer will not have a retina monitor in 2014, you are kidding yourself if you think they will. It will be a bare minimum of 2016 before even 40% of computer users actually have one. Windows 8 is not a trend in monitor design, it is a trend in that people are using their phone and their tablet more than their pc because it is designed for tablets first. PE isn't going to be played on a cell phone, and maybe not on tablets either. We are in an economic slump, people are not going to be diving in on new tech unless they are rich or enthusiasts. The other 90% will wait as long as humanly possible and avoid spending anything until they absolutely have to or the price comes way down.

 

They want to put in a DPI switch, sure whatever floats your boat. But that should be a bottom of the barrel priority at absolute best. Meanwhile this thread is about resolution, not DPI, and D3xter already wrote a great response on what the difference is and why resolution is still more important for the foreseeable near future.

[AwesomeOcelot]

You guys really don't understand how the real world market works. The average consumer is not replacing his pc monitor but maybe once every 4-5 years if even that often. HD tv's have been available since the early 2000's but now near 2013 they just within the last year maybe two got to the point where the average consumer can actually afford a decent one. More telling there is still a good percentage of tv owners in america who even now don't own an HDTV even though they literally don't make SD ones anymore.

 

The average consumer will not have a retina monitor in 2014, you are kidding yourself if you think they will. It will be a bare minimum of 2016 before even 40% of computer users actually have one. Windows 8 is not a trend in monitor design, it is a trend in that people are using their phone and their tablet more than their pc because it is designed for tablets first. PE isn't going to be played on a cell phone, and maybe not on tablets either. We are in an economic slump, people are not going to be diving in on new tech unless they are rich or enthusiasts. The other 90% will wait as long as humanly possible and avoid spending anything until they absolutely have to or the price comes way down.

 

They want to put in a DPI switch, sure whatever floats your boat. But that should be a bottom of the barrel priority at absolute best. Meanwhile this thread is about resolution, not DPI, and D3xter already wrote a great response on what the difference is and why resolution is still more important for the foreseeable near future.

 

PC gamers aren't average consumers, HDTV's aren't PC monitors, the average consumer has been able to afford one for a longer than last year if you're talking about US, France, Germany, and the UK.

[Kuroneko]

You guys really don't understand how the real world market works. The average consumer is not replacing his pc monitor but maybe once every 4-5 years if even that often. HD tv's have been available since the early 2000's but now near 2013 they just within the last year maybe two got to the point where the average consumer can actually afford a decent one. More telling there is still a good percentage of tv owners in america who even now don't own an HDTV even though they literally don't make SD ones anymore.

That's about right for the time-scale these things develop in. It's been over a decade since 4K resolution monitors have been available to professionals or those with deep pockets, so it's actually more than the time lag as you're complaining about here. Frankly it's about time.

 

More importantly, Sharp has 3840x2160 displays that already entered production half a year ago and is fully intending to introduce them into the PC and laptop market and is betting that there will be demand for them, which will also come in smaller sizes. I think we can both agree that they're in a better position to evaluate the situation than we are.

 

Tablets aren't themselves important. I'm simply saying that where they go, PC companies like Intel are going to want their Ultrabooks to be competetive, and hence laptops will have the same technologies. And where laptops go, PCs will not be far behind. The fact of it is that Intel is pushing for this resolution on laptops in 2013, so even if that's too optimistic, it still looks like Sharp will make make it happen at around this game's release.

 

The average consumer will not have a retina monitor in 2014, you are kidding yourself if you think they will. It will be a bare minimum of 2016 before even 40% of computer users actually have one.

Well, that's quite a conscession from 10 years, at least. But I think you're seriously underestimating the situation if you think 2160p is a large jump for two years from now.

 

To that end, I will make it really simple:

• Right now, MacBook Pro supports 2880x1800 resolution, and is not so expensive as to be prohibitive.
  
• Some people actually do game on those things, e.g., Skyrim and whatever else. This game is supposed to support Macs.
  
• Therefore, if this game were released today and aims for 2560x1440 display resolution, it would actually fall short of not-too-uncommon displays some people would play it on. Today.
  

Put in that perspective, aiming for 2160p not a pie-in-the-sky "10 years from now" target. It will simply ensure that the game looks the best it can in 2014, exactly when it's supposed to make the best impression.

[D3xter]

PC gamers aren't average consumers, HDTV's aren't PC monitors, the average consumer has been able to afford one for a longer than last year if you're talking about US, France, Germany, and the UK.

You guys really don't understand how the real world market works. The average consumer is not replacing his pc monitor but maybe once every 4-5 years if even that often. HD tv's have been available since the early 2000's but now near 2013 they just within the last year maybe two got to the point where the average consumer can actually afford a decent one. More telling there is still a good percentage of tv owners in america who even now don't own an HDTV even though they literally don't make SD ones anymore.

 

The average consumer will not have a retina monitor in 2014, you are kidding yourself if you think they will. It will be a bare minimum of 2016 before even 40% of computer users actually have one. Windows 8 is not a trend in monitor design, it is a trend in that people are using their phone and their tablet more than their pc because it is designed for tablets first. PE isn't going to be played on a cell phone, and maybe not on tablets either. We are in an economic slump, people are not going to be diving in on new tech unless they are rich or enthusiasts. The other 90% will wait as long as humanly possible and avoid spending anything until they absolutely have to or the price comes way down.

Was just about to say the same thing, you're not targeting the "basic consumer" like console games do, but PC gamers, and specifically ones that also read things like Gaming News or participate in enthusiast Websites regarding RPGs and/or PC Gaming and would take part in KickStarter. There's enough Xbox games targeting "the average consumer", this project wasn't meant for them.

 

Also, it's for that reason that I added future-proofing of the game (and this WILL be a problem, just as it is now with the likes of Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, I think we even saw hilarity ensue when Adam Brennecke tried playing Icewind Dale), since while it is true that even by 2015 not many will have anything that they could play this one, 4K resolution devices, monitors and TVs ARE coming, even though some of them are still as expensive as a car.

 

Here's an Overview of already existing or upcoming hardware that will support 4K resolutions: http://en.wikipedia...._and_projectors

 

Also, please stop calling it "Retina". xD

 

Here are numbers for HDTV spread in the US btw.: http://www.broadcast..._Have_HDTVs.php

The number of HDTV in U.S. households continues to rise, hitting 69% according to new consumer research from Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG), up from 17% in 2006. That means 52% of U.S. homes have adopted it in the last five year.

 

And let's hope that Windows 8 sets no other trends than people migrating to Linux or them just not upgrading and Microsoft failing.

 

The issue here isn't that it will take 10 years. It's already happened, and by 2014 screens entering the market will commonly be 2x the DPI of today's screens.

 

Today you have the Retina 15" MBP, the 13" counterpart just about to be revealed next month. By 2014, Apple won't be likely to sell a single screen with less than 220 DPI. Desktop screens today are normally around 100-120DPI, which is what all games and applications are scaled to look good at. Sony's got a few 170+DPI laptops on the market, as do ASUS, and there are a number of WQHD and 1080p 11-13" screens (180-220dpi) being released next week, together with Windows 8 (an OS that is made to be much more resolution independent, with better DPI scaling (like OSX), than previous iterations).

 

So while there's currently a minority of people with 4x that which would count as a "normal" high resolution (or 2x today's "normal" DPI), the shift will be very real by 2014. While it'll be even more extreme in 10 years, they will need to consider rendering their assets at least 4x higher in order to keep the game playable on native resolutions of monitors being released today.

 

(for the sake of this post, DPI = PPI. Dots = Pixels.)

Will you stop obsessing about whatever you are calling "DPI-scaling", this is almost entirely a non-issue with any type of games (it isn't web design and doesn't have anything to do with rendering webpages and readable text, games are rendered to specific resolutions) and Project: Eternity isn't meant to be played on tablet or mobile phone devices, and even if it would a 1080p resolution on a 9" display is already ~245 PPI. If the resolution stays constant, the smaller the display is, the more pixels you are going to have per inch, and the larger a screen gets, the larger the pixels become.

 

Assuming Project: Eternity is neither going to be played on tablet screens, nor TVs, the likely range will be somewhere between 15" and 30".

On a 15" display with a resolution of 3840x2160 (4K) you'd already have ~295 PPI, at 30" with the same resolution it's only ~145 PPI.

 

They'd just need to make sure to do their assets at the highest quality required or feasible and be able to scale them down correctly independently of any "PPI-quotient" based on resolutions, so that they play in a very similar screen "segment" (e.g. the ratio doesn't change from seeing only small parts of the environment on small screens and seeing 4x that on larger ones), depending on what resolution people use. They will need to solve this problem anyway one way or another, in the times of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale almost everyone was using 640x480 or 800x600, but times have changed and customary resolutions range from 1024x768 (5% according to Steam) to 2560x1440 (only around 1%) with most people sticking at 1920x1080 (28%), 1366 x 768 (19%) and 1680 x 1050 (10%).

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

Also as Kuroneko said, Intel is already planning a push for 2013 and beyond:

http://www.techpower...ve-in-2013.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Higher-Resolution-Displays-Coming,15329.html

 

 

Edited October 27, 2012 by D3xter

[Karkarov]

... you're not targeting the "basic consumer" like console games do, but PC gamers, and specifically ones that also read things like Gaming News or participate in enthusiast Websites regarding RPGs and/or PC Gaming and would take part in KickStarter. There's enough Xbox games targeting "the average consumer", this project wasn't meant for them.

 

Also, it's for that reason that I added future-proofing of the game (and this WILL be a problem, just as it is now with the likes of Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, I think we even saw hilarity ensue when Adam Brennecke tried playing Icewind Dale), since while it is true that even by 2015 not many will have anything that they could play this one, 4K resolution devices, monitors and TVs ARE coming, even though most of them are still as expensive as a car.

 

Also, please stop calling it "Retina". xD

This game is not targeting PC Enthusiasts. PC Enthusiasts are too busy playing Battlefield 3, Crysis, and whatever the next Call of Duty is at 80+ (oh wait my eye is physically unabled to tell the difference) FPS and running folding home at the same time. They are not playing isometric top down view CRPG's with graphics an I5 could probably handle without an actual GPU.

 

This game is targeting a niche audience called "People who like Classic Computer Role Playing Games". Which are games you have never needed a top of the line system to play. That and "enthusiasts" make up a very small part of the people who actually own or game on a desktop. I would say less than 10%. Maybe even less than 5%.

 

I said it before, saying it again, you want to bother with DPI switches and options go ahead. Whatever floats your boat. But it should be a very low priority. As far as the resolution thing this thread goes on about... I already said it is a good idea and really won't even take much more work. It is just a question of disc space. Future proofing a game is a first world problem if there ever was one though.

 

I called it a Retina monitor simply because that's what all the market idiot's at Apple are calling them and I knew everyone would know what I meant if I said it. So there

 

Also I fixed one of your sentences. See if you can find it.

[Kuroneko]

You're misunderstand again--this has little to do with extreme hardware enthusiasts, because we have mid-price-range systems today that outdo 1440p resolution. The gap is already exists; all we're saying that it will widen further by the time the game is released. That's not at all controversial, since there are several giants that say that they intend to do just that.

 

I like classic RPGs (and with the only exceptions of the Fallout and XCOM reboots due to their classic appeal, I've not bought a game that was published in the last eight years). But IE games always had richly detailed area art, and that's one envelope I'd like to see actually pushed into the future, rather than going retro as with the rest. If it doesn't happen, well, I'll live with that too. But if it comes down to it, higher-detail art would be something I'd even be willing to pay premiums as a DLC (or whatever) if it stresses the online distributors to have really humongous games.

[Karkarov]

You're misunderstand again--this has little to do with extreme hardware enthusiasts, because we have mid-price-range systems today that outdo 1440p resolution. The gap is already exists; all we're saying that it will widen further by the time the game is released. That's not at all controversial, since there are several giants that say that they intend to do just that.

 

No, you misunderstand. I have already said multiple times now that making the game available at multiple and much higher resolutions than most people play at today is a good idea. In one post I even explained why doing it isn't even that hard or expensive. But if you think a Macbook Pro means anything in today's gamer market you are just plain wrong. I also think you need to take a look at games of today if you think anything in Baldur's Gate is even close to being "artistically detailed". Truthfully they shouldn't have much trouble fitting the game on a single DVD unless they really go overboard. Or maybe they will do what Skyrim and Sleeping Dogs did and just make the "Hi Res" texture packs available only as a download and not on disc.

 

All of that aside, the reality is still this. No matter what any company does, and it doesn't matter what their name is or how hard they try, 1920x1080 will still be the most common resolution for gaming. Will that be true in 2016? Maybe not. In 2018? I certainly hope not. But in 2014, it most definitely will be.

[Chrząszczyrzewoszyczanin]

In my times isometric RPGs were coming on 6 optical discs and nobody complained.

[AndreaColombo]

In my times isometric RPGs were coming on 6 optical discs and nobody complained.

 

I complain now. I bought Baldur's Gate again from GoG.com solely because installing it from 6 CDs everytime I wanted to play it was downright appalling

[AwesomeOcelot]

I can't think of an isometric RPG that has come on 6 CDs, Baldur's Gate comes on 5 CDs, Baldur's Gate II 4CDs, Diablo II 4CDs, Icewind Dale 2CDs, Icewind Dale II 2CDs, Arcanum 2CDs, Planescape: Torment 1CD, Diablo 1CD.

[Karkarov]

I can't think of an isometric RPG that has come on 6 CDs, Baldur's Gate comes on 5 CDs, Baldur's Gate II 4CDs, Diablo II 4CDs, Icewind Dale 2CDs, Icewind Dale II 2CDs, Arcanum 2CDs, Planescape: Torment 1CD, Diablo 1CD.

I think all he is saying is he doesn't care if it takes more than 1 dvd ;p. With todays compression technology and the already mentioned "addon download" gag I don't see why they couldn't swing it.