Question

I am creating a Java game for Windows and I have come across a problem: there are lots of different screens and resolutions when it comes to Windows. What would be the best way to make it so that it looks just about the same on all screens?

Answer 1

You basically have three options:

1. Fix the size of the game window to something small that will fit n all screens (800*600 maybe)? This is easy to do, but could annoy users with big screens…..
2. Make the game resolution-independent, so that that it is rendered to a scale to fit the current window size. This is how most FPS games work for example. The main downside of this is that you need to do some extra scaling maths in your code and there may be some runtime overhead for rescaling images etc.
3. Make the game screen dynamically resizable, so that the components within it rearrange and resize themselves to fit the available space (like with a web page). This is the hardest to implement as you have to make use of appropriate layout managers and test lots of different combinations, but can give the nicest user “experience”. I’ve successfully used MigLayout to do this in the past with a Swing game.

Any of these options could be best for you depending on the circumstances. It will probably depend mainly on the type/design of your game and your willingness to spend time on making the more complicated methods work well.