Change the scale-policy of OpenGL ES in Android?

Question

I currently develop a game for Android in OpenGL ES 1.0, use libgdx library. I target the 720x480 screen size.

For example, I design only one arts pack for 720x480. And what will happen in Android phones with screen-size smaller or bigger than it, 480x320 for instance? Could you please tell me how to change the scale-policy of OpenGL ES in Android? Or in libgdx specially?

Is there anything like "Resample Image" like photoshop?(Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic etc..) for libgdx?

Edit: I found some tutorials about texture filter in OpenGL, test it with Linear and Nearest. Linear is good for scaling but slow down the game, and Nearest is on the contrary. What should I do to get a balance between those?

Answer 1

If you make the graphics for the average sized target device, the bigger screens will clearly notice the stretching, distortion, aliasing, etc. People will know the game wasn't made for their device unless its running pixel art, which in many cases still feels good in any resolution.

Then, when stretching down the assets, you usually get less issues and less quality loss as when increasing, so this should be the optimal way to go.

Since you want only one set of graphics (to avoid huge .APK files) here's my recommendation. Use texture atlases for everything you can, and fit as much as possible in the same atlas to save space. The graphics you pack into those atlases, make sure they look good in the bigger screensizes, even target 720p or 1080p if you so desire (remember tablets). With all graphics made for big screens and packed tightly as possible, find the format that best suits size with lossless compression. I usually use .PNG. Try with different image editors and find the one that will write the most optimized PNG file for optimal size.

In android, a good size for texture atlases is 2048x2048, according to my research. It can fit images that cover a full HD screen(1080p), its a power of two size, it can fit many ui elements and graphics together in the same texture (this also improves rendering performance a lot). If you don't need this much size, just use something below it. If you think about using textures bigger than this size, please don't. Many devices won't support it and you will waste people's time installing your application. Even 2048x2048 is not fully safe to use on older hardware, but many low-end android devices support it these days.

Now that you ensured the best quality/filesize ratio that covers all screens, there is the aspect ratio issues. Try to avoid black bars if possible, as many people don't like those, especially when their screen is already small and they are covering it a bit with the touches. Whats the most adequate is usually dynamic positioned UI that fits a given pattern in the screen, working for all resolutions more or less appropriately. As for the gameplay camera, what I usually do is to choose a fixed size for either width or height, then set the other dimension to something relative to ensure aspect ratio on all screens (prevents graphics stretching non-uniformly completely).

Having a game with a nice aspect ratio, placement of UI controls and assets oriented for all screens, if you still aren't satisfied with how the assets look stretched down to lower screens, you could activate smoothing on all textures, also known as texture filtering, syntax may vary in different API's and I never used libgdx. If you still aren't satisfied from the relatively poor results with the previous solution, then you should look into some image-based antialiasing approaches or perhaps some blur to hide detail and therefore hide stretching problems, if it applies to your asset style.

Hope it helps. Sorry for the lengthy answer.

Answer 2

The best policy for something like this is to make multiple assets. One for the larger screen size and another for the smaller screen size. Alternatively choose a middle ground and compromise slightly on performance.

Then when you first start your app, before loading any of the assets, check the dimensions of the screen using

Gdx.graphics.getWidth();
Gdx.graphics.getHeight();

and chose the correct assets to load respectively.

Another helpful hint is that if you want to maintain aspect ration on Android you can use

 AndroidApplicationConfiguration cfg = new AndroidApplicationConfiguration();
 cfg.resolutionStrategy = new RatioResolutionStrategy(16, 9);
 initialize(new MyGdxGame(), cfg);

in your Android Application. On say a 4:3 tablet (like my HP Touchpad) this puts black bars around my application, making it 16:9

Hope this helps