New iPhone 5 and resolution

[Wampus]

My only problem is a self problem, I can´t afford.

One idea would be to get an iPod Touch 4th gen. They are much cheaper than a new iPhone and are currently discounted in many places because the 5th gen iPod Touch is soon to be released. The 4th gen can be upgraded to iOS6. Also, because the iPhone 5 is the new thing that Apple fans want the iPhone 4 is currently much cheaper. You might be able to get one for less than an iPod Touch.

[erico]

Bur wouldn´t that mean that it will get older soon? I mean, buying a 2nd gen cheaper hardware, it could get discontinued in 1 or 2 years?
Maybe buying a first gen every 2 generations or 3 could be better?

[Wampus]

Bur wouldn´t that mean that it will get older soon? I mean, buying a 2nd gen cheaper hardware, it could get discontinued in 1 or 2 years?
Maybe buying a first gen every 2 generations or 3 could be better?

Good point. Its just that a new gen device is very expensive for what it is. For example, the cost of the cheapest new gen iPod Touch in Canada would also cover buying a Nexus 7 with $40 left over to spend on apps. That's crazy. Personally, if I was planning on buying a new device mainly for testing and support I would look for a 4th gen device with iOS6. Actually I'd get an iPhone 4S since they're so cheap with contracts now the iPhone 5 is here.

[spacefractal]

It's might been cheap with contract, but you property paid around same in the end (but often easier, I did that with 4s). You could also get the iPod version rather than iPhone 5.

I did not test for 5 in my game, but seen and hope its was pretty easy to upgrade Xcode 4.5 and let its create a launch image (black one). Then it's should been supported just like iPad 3 retina worked out of the box.

My game is still on waiting. I personally perfer newer generation support than old generation. The first two is quite very old and you can still support iPad 1, dispute not support iOS 6.

It's worse on android actually if you ask me.

[erico]

On another hand, such forced discontinuity of older hardware could have an impact on the flooded appstore.
A lot of people won´t renew for many reasons and I suspect a bit of the flood will evaporate.

[Ian Price]

This is the beginning of the end for the casual dev for iOS. The number of games will being produced from here-on-in will reduce and prices will go up to cover the extra development costs/time. Apple has gone over the top of the mountain - it's downhill from now on.

[erico]

Ian, I do suspect that too. But am not sure it is a downhill, they will probably be watching the store closely, and should it start weakening, they will sure make tough changes to fix it up.

[Ian Price]

How can they change the fact that the res will be too high for the majority of devs and that the cost for professional work will increase?

The res of the iPad is already higher than most desktop pcs can actually support. Apple can't afford to make it any higher on their next devices, so that leave basically improving CPU, camera and battery (and other insignificant things). Anything else tech-wise and you've already pushed way past normal indie devs. Users won't notice any significant difference in future apps to what they are seeing now, so there will be little need to update their next iOS devices. Apple cannot possibly continue with the momentum they have shown in recent years.

Apple can watch the shopfloor as closely as they like, but they are nearing saturation point for their current ranges of hardware. They'll have to come up with some different tech to bring in the cash in the near-future. There's plenty of scope for innovation though, so I don't see Apple falling off the mountain just yet.

[erico]

How can they change the fact that the res will be too high for the majority of devs and that the cost for professional work will increase?

Altough I agree with the statment on the post, I don´t on this fact. Let me argue...

The cost for professional work (artwise) is already too high for the majority of devs.
No wonder the majority of indie games uses alternatives into visuals, hardly an indie attempts photorealistic 3d on a prod.

Pixel art is dominat on indies and is resolution independent. Vector art is resolution independent and is almost a trademark on Flash games.
You can also use clay, paper, photographies, etc.

Now here comes the strange part, back before year 2k, most of the image processing/art tools were made to deal things on a pixel level. This way, resolution adds to the work on a fashion we are used, more resolution, a lot more work. But after 2k, most tools became especialized into dealing chunks of image, in such a way, that today is more expensive for me to output grafics on low resolution then the opposite.

A good example could be Greedy Mouse, from spacefractal.
The original clay art is actually res independent.
By being able to use high resolution pictures, things will look more realistic (finger prints and all that), but actual post processing of those photos are a lot easier and faster. Photoshop can make this work really fast, easier to mask and select, easier to path around things should you need it and etc.

Now if you scale that down to 320x240, everything will bust, it will be a mess of pixels that won´t ressemble much the original, you will end up having to do a lot more work post processing these and you will end up having to retouch things on a pixel level. (ie, back to dpaint). No auto masks, no paths will actually work out of the box.

Low resolutions (below 800x600) also suffers from typo arts, as the majority of fonts won´t scale cool to a 5 pixel tall font, you will have to design your font for that size and it will have to be a manual labor too if you want it readable.

I´m not sure I was clear on the above statements but I don´t see, in anyway, resolution raising prices of art dev.
It could hold true to the big studios, the ones that have the cash to buy this art in the first place.
But then again, they already work with outputs way above the ipad3 resolution and part of their work, is to accomodate the assets to the final machine.
So, if resolution is higher and processors are faster, they have less work doing this convertion, so more resolution, less work to do.

For example, take the transformers movie, you get the base models from the movie, and convert/reconstruct it to something your target machine will hold.
If your target machine is a gameboy advance, you are going to be busted accomodating such there, if it is a ps3, you will have a loooot less work.
But either way, past or future, high res or not an indie won´t be able to cope with the original price of doing transformer´s art.

In the end, the resolution opens up possibilities of more art styles and makes processing easy. Anything low res implies on a lot of manual labor on a pixel level.

Here in the publicity industry, it has been a couple years I have been avoiding work with low resolution assets(lower then 1kx1k) as it ends up costing more to produce then a 7kx7k image. It holds specially true for image processing work, less for 3d, but 3d is so expensive in the first place, that it also makes no difference in the end.

[Ian Price]

Pixel art is dominat on indies and is resolution independent

Sorry, but it's not. The higher the res, the more work is required.

Whether you see it or not, increasing the resolution DOES increase the work required to make the scene look prettier. Yes, vector art is res independent, as is 3D to a degree, but you still have to ensure that the textures look good at a higher res and therefore more work goes into them.

Even vector art will still need more work doing to it, to ensure that the final results fill the scene and don't look barren. Vector art scales nicely, but it can look empty if images get too large.

Plasticine art isn't the norm, and I doubt it will become it, but I'll give you that one - little if any extra work is required.

And generally, you won't see a game done in ALL vectors, or ALL 3D or ALL pixel art. There are usually elements of other art types in one project.

[spacefractal]

Its depend in art used and how dealing with different resoulutions.

The clay art is still limit how high resoulution we could take from the camera (most was taking from a mobile camera). So we still have a limit on max resoulution, but its a quite high limit. Actuelly its was NOT very much more work doing that in first time. So we could do Retina graphics here (max resoulution here is around Mac Retina). Photoart dosent increase very much in work time and we also did some tradeoffs as well.

In Jungool (a none glbasic game, where I did the music for the game) we originally did pixel art for 3gs resoulution, just around time we got the first iPad and iPhone 4. Here Lobo (the graphics artist here) said its would take far to long time to redraw in higher resoulution and he is not fan of a software upscaling. Howover we did found a 150$ upscaling software. The software was named "Genius Fractal" (hehe, yes we launched about the title as well due my nickname), but today its named "Perfect Resize 7 Pro"). that software upscaled very good, and only required some cleanup. I'm glad we did that because its did look a lots better on iPad actuelly, even is just upscaled (but still far better than internal Photoshop did). Howovere you might see seome artifact, but that is due PVR compression.

Also a real vector game should allways been scaled correct in all resoulutions. See example games Sokurah (tardis.dk) have been created.

8 and 16 style graphics also dosent require much more work. They dont need retina art at all. Here screenratio can been a issue instead.

More common problem is more screen ratio, which can been quite annoying to support them all (4:3, 16:9, 3:2 etc). Here titel and other static screen can been quite annoying.

[Ian Price]

and only required some cleanup.

It still required some extra work.

8 and 16 style graphics also dosent require much more work. They dont need retina art at all. Here screenratio can been a issue instead.

That will depend if you want chunky pixels or not. I personally love chunky pixels, and they're fine on a phone, but maybe not so good on a tablet/iPad. It depends on the game.

I do agree that the screen ratio is a real PITA though - odd scaling can really feck up a screen, no matter how good the art or how it was originally created.

[spacefractal]

But its only one, mightbeen two hours (compared its would take one/ two week to redraw a level, which did not use tiles), so cleanup was fast to do and still look nice....

Super Mega Worm works excellent on iPad, so chuncky pixels works nice. I love them too. Here screen ration scaling can been a more issue than resoulution issues itself.

[Ian Price]

Yeah, I know what you mean with regards to cleaning rather than redrawing, but the point still stands - having multiple devices, offering multiple resolutions (and now multiple screen ratios) costs devs time and money. I'm sure the better apps do recoup their dev costs, but I know many don't and haven't. But this generally is not just about the graphics, but the game subject matter/content/portrayal etc. etc. Failure can come to anyone at anytime, no matter how much time/effort or money is poured into the project.

Incidently, my current game is nice and chunky and looks great (IMHO) scaled up on my TouchPad.

[erico]

Pixel art is dominat on indies and is resolution independent

Sorry, but it's not. The higher the res, the more work is required.

It actually is: If you can see the pixels, more work required.

It has a bit to do with the DPI too, but what I mean, is that you can tell 2 pixels together on a 14" monitor 320x240, you quite can´t tell on a 14" monitor on 2k x 2k. 

So, working with high resolution and density (as ipad3), on a production level, is faster and easier. Many things are quite automatic, and many other fine tunnings not necessary. Programs like gimp and photoshop are made to have tools to deal group of pixels, hardly individuals. Ex. masking a high resolution sprite is something that can be perfecly done in seconds with a magic wand, masking an 800x800 sprite will require you to manually draw a vector path if you want anything good, anything lower and paths don´t work either, you have to place pixels individually.

Whether you see it or not, increasing the resolution DOES increase the work required to make the scene look prettier. Yes, vector art is res independent, as is 3D to a degree, but you still have to ensure that the textures look good at a higher res and therefore more work goes into them.

It dosen´t, the increase in detail you get won´t load the work.
Usually, you are working with even higher resolution references and layouts, you get more from your sources preserved. For example, it takes more time to make a minecraft good looking pixel tiles then to add photorealistic high res images. You will have to deal every pixel, hours, while on photo, a simple levels and making it tileable is enough, 10 seconds, and both actions can be fully automatized.
If you are creating your art straight on the computer with no references at all, you still benefit 100% of the ´group´ focus most of the art programs have, everything will be masked and perfectly antialiased etc. Not to count procedural generated details.

Things also reflect on animation, you won´t be able to convert anything into low resolution, you will have to draw each frame labourly.
On higher hes, you can rotate and deform freely, you can create esqueletons, keyframe animation, etc.

Plasticine art isn't the norm, and I doubt it will become it, but I'll give you that one - little if any extra work is required.

Just like picture too, there is a minimun little post production work, now, use 320x240 pics as originals, and try to make the game on that same resolution.
There will be a a lot of extra work.

A higher resolution/depth also permits you to do a fast cheap job and you won´t spot the failures, you can´t hide those on low res.

Another example, suppose you take a picture of a girl with a fuzzy hair and you want to cut the girl off the pic and compose on a different scenario in game.
If the source is at ipad3 res, it will be easy and fast to cut it, the more work will come in cleaning up the image, like pimples and dirt.
If your source is at 800x600, there won´t be pimples to clean, but you won´t be able to accuretly cut her off, and the fuzzy hair would require an army of hercules to get it ok looking in a 6 month timescale. It gets to the point it is faster and cheaper to photograph again. On another side, a real picture won´t scale ok to 800x600 ipad3 size, as details will get mixed on the interpolation and some will look as garbage so requiring you to post process it further and pixel work harder.