dMZX Forums: [Req. file] Variable sized gameplay resolution -> MegaZeux Feature Requests -> Tracker

Essentially, the char resolution of gameplay would be configurable, causing either the game window to resize or for the game to stretch/shrink to the current window size as-needed.

This is probably one of the most hardcoded constants in MZX. I like the idea, but feasibility is another thing entirely.

Right; if this happened it wouldn't be any time soon. I think it's worth considering for the future though.

Worth noting is it pretty much ties in with this request for a variable sized board editor.

You know, with layer rendering, this doesn't actually seem too infeasible. Might not even require a major version (definitely no earlier than 3.xx though). Thoughts:


HARD LIMITS:

• Internal char size will always be 8x14. This is too annoying to change.
  
• Char width is always 8. This is too annoying to change.

CHAR SIZE LIMITS:

• Char height is never smaller than 8 for normal MZX mode. There's not much point to smaller non-square chars.
  
• Char height options should probably be fixed to a low number of choices, e.g.: 8x8, 8x10, 8x12, 8x14. This isn't totally necessary but one of MZX's strengths is its limited choices, odd heights don't seem very useful, and this reduces the number of modified default charsets we have to produce and package.

SCREEN SIZE LIMITS:

• Screen size is defined in terms of the selected char size by the user.
  
• My opinion is gameplay resolution shouldn't go over 640x480 pixels (80 by 34+ chars). Above that we start to lose compatibility with some platforms and abandon MZX's low-res tiled nature, which seems against the spirit of MZX.
  
• A good lower-end for gameplay resolution seems like 256x192 pixels (32 by 14+ chars). This is 4:3, allows NES/SNES-like screen sizes, and 192 is divisible by several target heights (8px->24 chars, 12px->16 chars)! Smaller is possible, but the smaller we go, the more built-in UI elements like the robot message box become a concern.
  
• The editor should not have a size limit. Instead, we should draw our regular window and UI and use layer scaling (3.xx feature) to allow the user to scale the editing area.
  
• The char editor and robot editor would also strongly benefit from layer scaling.
  
• Confirm dialog, robot message box, scroll display, input string, settings, file manager, game menu, main menu, char select would all require smaller versions since we won't be using layer scaling in-game and we at least want the gameplay part of this to support consoles where scaling isn't feasible. I feel like for simplicity this would just be a set of 32-width compatible versions that we switch to when the screen shrinks too small for the normal version to fit.

EDIT: cleaned up, removed a couple of things that didn't really add much.