So I've noticed that most technical questions to be posted have been met with little more than conjectures, but that isn't going to stop me from asking anyways...

What sort of screen resolution will we be able to set for our games? I drive a 21 inch monitor at 1280 x 1024, and was mocking up some landscape ideas in Photoshop and Painter (from sketches I made) and realized how small something like 800 x 600 is in comparason.

I hope to be able to use size ratios as a dramatic effect--that is, make a building take up most of the screen so it seems impressive, or something similar. I ask this now because I hope to start mechanizing my graphics* soon and would hate to have to go back and re-do this because we can only set the resolution to 640 x 480 when I was hoping to use something more like 1024 x 768

Also, I know the 8.1beta had the ability to separate graphics into layers. Is there any possibility of being able to set layers to scroll in parallax? This is a cool effect when used properly, and is very useful for simulating distance and granduer.

Thanks in Advance,
Matt

• I've worked in the graphics industry too long: Mechanizing graphics means to prep them for whatever output medium they will be used in. For example, turning something into transparent GIFs or a JPEG for a web page, a TIFF or EPS for prepress, all at the proper resolution, etc.

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Originally posted by sanehatter:
**What sort of screen resolution will we be able to set for our games? I drive a 21 inch monitor at 1280 x 1024, and was mocking up some landscape ideas in Photoshop and Painter (from sketches I made) and realized how small something like 800 x 600 is in comparason.

I hope to be able to use size ratios as a dramatic effect--that is, make a building take up most of the screen so it seems impressive, or something similar. I ask this now because I hope to start mechanizing my graphics* soon and would hate to have to go back and re-do this because we can only set the resolution to 640 x 480 when I was hoping to use something more like 1024 x 768

Also, I know the 8.1beta had the ability to separate graphics into layers. Is there any possibility of being able to set layers to scroll in parallax? This is a cool effect when used properly, and is very useful for simulating distance and granduer.
**

I know I am not working on ColdStone myself, but my best guess is that Beenox will add in some sort of bigger resolution support, because they added in "almost any-size" sprite support. If they have it running JUST at 640 x 480 then they honestly need to change it. But I believe that the final version will have, as said before by Beenox, "Complete control over how your game area looks" (those may not have been the exact words, but they are close).

On your other question, the parallax scrolling, don't count on it. ColdStone is meant to be an overhead view engine, so no side-scrolling games. And by the looks of the engine screenshots, it doesn't look like that feature is going to be added. BUT, you can always find a way to fake it. Depending on how much control you have with animations, you may be able to set a background object to animate while the player is moving in a certain direction. But that could end up being more trouble than its worth...

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