First, thanks everyone for the feedbacks
Before commenting on each reply I need to clarify some points. Perhaps I should have provided more details in my initial post but indeed the question is more focused in the pixel size shown in the screen during the gameplay than other things like the aspect ratio or the exact proportion, in which doesn't matter too much because these are things that can be granularly adjusted through the level sprites or in the video.txt.
About the enemy amount I'm already following the classics, where SOR2/SOR3 are limited to around 4-5 enemies at once in most parts and SOR1 is accumulative to around 10, same as the original games. So, even if I reduce the space in the screen using a width of 396, it is still bigger than the original width of 320.
Compared with SOR4, the SORX using 396x224 is similar in many aspects, including the character's size on the screen.
Side by side comparison of SORX using 396x224 and SOR4 original resolution.
SORX current 480x272
In my first video the camera cuts upper/lower parts but if any changes were made certainly I would edit all level sprites to fit correctly on the screen. During the game development most panels were created with a height of 276 (272 + 4 for quake), I ripped all level sprites directly from the original games and in fact the original height is 224, not 272. The current visual may look original after countless refiniments, but indeed it was totally edited to fit the 272 and in case I change it to 224 I'm just backing to the original.
But I think it might be better if you make it a separate version of the game, maybe have a second exe to launch because it will change the entire gameplay completely
Unfortunately it's not possible to have two exe using the same pak file because all the assets would be edited, not only the resolution. However, maybe making the opposite could solve the problem, having two pak versions with the same exe, but at the cost of doubling all the work at every update too.
One thing I really struggle with is which resolution to use,Original widescreen will play faster and harder because you have less reaction time and space to maneuver and plot strategy, things will happen on screen quicker too because there's less space to see it coming, little things like that change the gameplay.
Yeah, certainly it changes a lot in the gameplay, I totally agree.
everything will become more crowded and chaotic on the field
A valid point for 3-4 players, even with the current resolution sometimes I have chaotic playthroughs with my friends. However, for 1-2 players it's better than the original due to the extra widescreen size.
New 224-lines widescreen do not return to the original vanilla pixels
But it's certainly closer than the 272, giving a more original feeling too.
3. Nowadays, most games are played on 2k, 4k resolution, at least 1920x1080.and large-size screens. Reducing the vertical resolution will increase the magnification of the image, resulting the characters to scale magnify more on the screen,but the pixels of the current character are not enough, sometimes we have to use the third-party shaders to conceal blemishes (such as reshade). Lower vertical resolution of bor means greater magnification on the screen. Will cause more detailed defects to be magnified. This leads to a decline in the overall visual experience.
Another valid point too that has two sides. In smaller screens the experience is worse than the classics due to everything small on the screen, but in bigger screens it's better than the classics due to many more details on the screen, plus more info through texts too.
hell , if you can you can have both versions, but it is kind of a pain to adjust add and subtract to convert the spawns, so i guess updating some of your lots of custom scripts would be also another pain
Yeah, it's a hard decision. Maybe having two versions may be the best solution even if all the work becomes doubled.
Unless the characters are large like Kof, a small resolution is suitable for games with characters that are small compared to the resolution. And the background and objects will match accordingly, making production easy.
A valid point, KOF/SF characters are usually bigger and looks better even with smaller resolutions. On the other hand, SOR characters usually already are smaller like @oldys said.
We had a long private conversation about it and I confess I'm still torn about what would be best.
I'm still torn haha, the pros/cons are very close but your points helped me to see more clearly.
It's easy to check this: just put the game in full screen and don't use the "stretch to fit" option. You will notice two small black bars at the edges of the image to compensate for the difference in size.
Another thing I've learned during the tests that I didn't know before, we can control the black borders with granular adjustments in the video.txt instead of using the predefined options from 1-6. As an example, if I define the resolution to 400x224 the black borders will disappear but the stretch option will make it exceed the screen size.
Enlarging images on larger screens when using a lower resolution will degrade the visual experience.
A valid point, I would need to rescale many images like the ones used in the select screen, losing some quality due to the bigger pixels
Maintaining compatibility with SOR2X's resolution ensures seamless integration of assets from the previous game into the new one.
This is a "plus" point that is discretely intentional haha, in fact I want to break the compatibility with the SOR2X to turn harder the usage of SORX content into it.
