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It's one day late, but here's Screenshot Saturday number twenty-one for my OddBall game! This week I've been tweaking some graphics, working on new levels, and working on yet another new aspect ratio to support.
On Friday evening my new iPhone 5 finally arrived and of course one of the first things I did (after restoring the settings from my previous device) was to get a development build of OddBall on there for testing. My first problem was that I needed to update XCode, then update my version of Unity3D. Eventually I needed to add the iPhone5 to my Apple device developer profile and re-upload that as well. After a few hours of installing and configuration fun I finally got OddBall on my new phone. The first thing I noticed was that my game play area was not designed for this stretched aspect ratio of 16:9.
OddBall already supports the aspect ratios of the old iPhones (3:2) and iPads (4:3). Those are close enough that a few differences in my GUI and camera placement can allow the gameplay area to fit perfectly in the view. However, the new iPhone5's aspect ratio is much wider with the same height. I can't just make the levels wider as they are specifically designed with a size in mind. At first I thought that adding additional 3D wall sidings to pad the sides would look nice, but this would require remodelling my border walls and redoing all the UV mapping which is a pain in the butt! I tried a few variations of this but the result did not look very good and would require a lot of work to update all of my world border walls. So after numerous hours of trying things on Friday night, I went to bed dejected and grumpy.
Saturday I woke up revigorated and determined to find an easy solution to my new problem. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the extra space on the sides would not add anything extra to the game because the levels were designed with a specific aspect ratio in mind. So I might as well just find the easiest way to hide the extra space. The simple fix was to add black "bars" to the sides. This would hide the extra space without disrupting the currently designed game area. So yesterday I spent most of my day implementing my new fix, which resulted in this week's Screenshot Saturday update coming on day late. OddBall once again supports all iOS devices with the 3 different aspect ratios, and now I am back to working on new levels. Let's hope the rumoured new iPad Mini does not introduce yet another aspect ratio later this month :)
OddBall #screenshotsaturday #21
On Friday evening my new iPhone 5 finally arrived and of course one of the first things I did (after restoring the settings from my previous device) was to get a development build of OddBall on there for testing. My first problem was that I needed to update XCode, then update my version of Unity3D. Eventually I needed to add the iPhone5 to my Apple device developer profile and re-upload that as well. After a few hours of installing and configuration fun I finally got OddBall on my new phone. The first thing I noticed was that my game play area was not designed for this stretched aspect ratio of 16:9.
OddBall already supports the aspect ratios of the old iPhones (3:2) and iPads (4:3). Those are close enough that a few differences in my GUI and camera placement can allow the gameplay area to fit perfectly in the view. However, the new iPhone5's aspect ratio is much wider with the same height. I can't just make the levels wider as they are specifically designed with a size in mind. At first I thought that adding additional 3D wall sidings to pad the sides would look nice, but this would require remodelling my border walls and redoing all the UV mapping which is a pain in the butt! I tried a few variations of this but the result did not look very good and would require a lot of work to update all of my world border walls. So after numerous hours of trying things on Friday night, I went to bed dejected and grumpy.
Saturday I woke up revigorated and determined to find an easy solution to my new problem. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the extra space on the sides would not add anything extra to the game because the levels were designed with a specific aspect ratio in mind. So I might as well just find the easiest way to hide the extra space. The simple fix was to add black "bars" to the sides. This would hide the extra space without disrupting the currently designed game area. So yesterday I spent most of my day implementing my new fix, which resulted in this week's Screenshot Saturday update coming on day late. OddBall once again supports all iOS devices with the 3 different aspect ratios, and now I am back to working on new levels. Let's hope the rumoured new iPad Mini does not introduce yet another aspect ratio later this month :)
OddBall #screenshotsaturday #21
This entry posted by Graham
in Velvety Couch Games
Tags: Game Development, OddBalls, ScreenshotSaturday
The new iphone has a different aspect ratio? Odd I thought the reason they kept a smaller screen was because of aspect ratio considerations.
Good call on the bars. I would prefer those over a stretched game. Maybe you can put the characters of the game on the bars too :)