I am slowly working on a 3D casual puzzler type game for pc,mac and after some minor changes for iOS and Android as well. Considering their different aspect ratios and resolutions, what should be taken into consideration from the beginning so that I don’t run into serious problems towards the end.
For now I am solely focusing on the PC version and that alone has enough variety of aspect ratios and resolutions. Once that is done I am planning on converting it for other platforms.
Is aspect ratio/resolution something to consider from the beginning, or is it something that can be set up towards the end of the development through scripting, by scaling etc.
Even at this moment when I change the aspect ratio in my Game viewport in Unity, some of the objects go off screen. I’m not sure if I can just focus on developing in one aspect ratio for now and then tweak things later or if I should develop the game with all the aspect ratios in mind from the very beginning.
I would incorporate correct handling of different aspect ratios from the outset. (Even if it’s not that hard to fix it after the fact, it’ll probably be easier to build those features in from the start.)
You generally design your UI to work on the smallest/lowest resolution but design “liquid” regions that will grow as the screen grows.
When designed HUDs or GUIs for console games we typically design for 4:3 SD and pin stuff to the screen edges so that in HD it isn’t still sitting in the middle. Some of the games I’ve worked on have had quite a lot of conditionals for positing stuff even between SD/HD resolutions. Although a lot of that is due to the rules and release qualifications respective console platforms enforce but I don’t think I can get into specifics about that here.
I’m not sure what I’d do for a cross platform iOS and PC game though, such radically different forms of input there. I’d probably want to split things up and focus on releasing for one platform first (mobile or desktop) then do a 2nd gameplay/IQ/Input/Interface pass for the other platform later, or have separate teams working on refining the experience for each set of platforms. It’s not like all display targets need to meet the same set of standards so you have a bit more freedom to let each team make smart compromises.
Either way you’ll defiantly want a layer to two of abstraction in your builds. Compiler directives are your best friend here, no point building android or iOS GUIs for PC.