We are currently developing a puzzle game and plan to make it universal apps. The game is developed using Opengl. May I know what are the best option in creating the graphics. (1) Create separate spritesheet - 1024x768 for ipad - 960x640 for retina - 480x320 for normal display (2) Create one spritesheet and rescale accordingly for each device accordingly. Currently, we are using option (1). Just wonder if anyone have better idea or method. Thank you.
I think #1 is the general accepted best case. I'm not sure about your game's specifics but maybe dropping the iPad spritesheet (to save space) can be an option and just play with the interface by adding more spacing between elements to fill in the iPad resolution -- some backgrounds or other 1024x768px graphics might still have to be kept, though. For simple, non graphical intensive games, #2 could also be an option (for further game size reduction) if you bundle the HD assets and just scale them down in OpenGL for SD devices. I'm not aware of other options. HTH, -flod
Seems like there are lots issue with 1024 rescaling. Then, we are using the same retina image (960x640) on iPad. This method left a black frame around the game background due to the small image size. This is how it looks like in iphone and ipad iPhone 3Gs iPad Wonder if apple will approve the apps on ipad if we just utilize 960x640 of the screen instead of 1024x768.
They should, look at donut games universal builds.. But customer may be a bit upset if you offer them a black border.. Cant you youst make the bg image bigger for the ipad and leave the rest the same?
Or you know... Make some kind of "walls" instead of the black places... Walls that stay there whatever you do in the app.. It wouldn't look that bad..
Personally I've used iPhone 4 retina graphics and scaled down for iPhone 3's and up for iPads... It's not perfect but you can't tell the difference on the iPhone 3 screens nor on the iPad. The only thing you would need to do is have iPad sized (i.e. aspect ratio) backgrounds, most other things you should get away with just fine. This way you've only got one set of sprite sheets in a single build that supports all devices.
You certainly should not deliver the iPad build with the black frame. As I've said (and mr. Ugly and Luke seem to confirm) you probably should still provide iPad sized backgrounds and possibly other elements for filling in the blanks. I'm thinking at least the menu screen bg, and the sandy background in game should be 1024x768. For the other elements you probably could just fiddle with the elements' padding (eg. increase by 5-10px the spacing between the puzzle pieces on the board). It'll take a bit of work, but you would save probably 30% of the total build size by dropping the iPad spritesheets. If build size is not a concern (ie. you're below 20MB with everything), you could also stick to the 3 separate spritesheet versions and save some of this work.
