Game Screen size!

The game screen size really matters – in any way – especially when it comes to cross platform or cross device development…

My winter break is over, I am already at the end of autumn in my 3rd year in Stardew Valley – what a wonderful work of art! – and I guess this small 1,5 month break was good for my creative work on The Blacksmith.

So what am I doing next to get this game fly? Since I am satisfied with my prototype I thought now it is good to do some User Interface (UI) design, see how things fit together and then start developing.

Size really matters!

I still do not know if I should do this first version for PC/Mac or Mobile Devices. But I think it does not matter – in the end you will have to scale graphics. But which is the base frame size that I need?

The people from v-play.net got a really good article about it. Long term short, you’ve basically 3 ratios 16:9, 4:3 or 3:2 on all devices. So plan your UI and Game in 3:2 and do some extra ‘art work’ for the overlapping space on larger ratios.

Balsamiq or Google Sheets?

Since I want work with a friend of mine together from time to time, I thought Google Sheets fits good for my needs. Of course – Balsamiq rocks – but I guess that is not necessary.

So I started my work with creating a master slide where I have my different frame ratios.

As you can see – that is not that hard! Now I just want to go sure to get a good picture of what is really 480 x 360, I made this slide. Since you can not define correct size of a rectangle in Google Sheets, I just did a screenshot on my mac with CMD+Shift+4 – you can size this screenshot easily  and drag it into your slides:

As soon as I’ll have a few slides and something to show, I will share it here. Until then – enjoy gaming and give Stardew Valley a try!