I have three questions here. Any help on any of them is great. Thanks!

I am using Guide.BeginShowStorageDeviceSelector but for some reason it is automatically picking the StorageDevice without opening up the Guide. Does it do that if there is only one StorageDevice? Or do you think I'm doing something wrong? I checked it with the StorageDemo as well as the API and I'm using it correctly from what I can tell. I googled and searched around for this but couldn't find anything. If it is not showing it because there is only one StorageDevice then is there a way to force it to show the Guide to select it? So that way the player knows that they are actually selecting a StorageDevice.

I have read a good amount about resolutions but kind of feel like I haven't really gotten a clear answer to my question. I am developing a game solely for the Xbox and and trying to decide which resolution(s) to support. I decided 1280x720 is a good resolution because it is kind of in the middle; however, should I support other resolutions? If so then which ones would you recommend?

Last question. I know for some cases dpi is extremely important for quality, is this the case for TVs? If so then what is a good dpi to have the graphics at?

 

 Thanks a bunch for the help in advance! :)

You're right about the StorageDevice automatically selecting if only one device is present. I also don't believe there is any way to force it to show the selection screen, as this is a dashboard feature that even licensed titles need to make use of. I don't see why you would need it though, you say "So that way the player knows that they are actually selecting a StorageDevice", but why not even give them the option and just assume they they'd rather save to their hard drive rather than the memory card they don't have plugged in?

As for the resolutions, 1280x720 is a good choice, but there's no reason why you couldn't support 1920x1080 (if you can find the performance) and perhaps a 4:3 resolution for those still using 640x480 or 1024x768 (on Xbox). If I were you I'd start with 1920x1080 until you decide you can't make the game run fast enough, then switch to 1280x720. Supporting different resolutions of the same aspect ratio is pretty straightforward, supporting multiple aspect ratios (for the UI) is considerably trickier.

I'm not sure about your DPI question though, perhaps someone else can help you with that one.

Thanks for that. That helps. I suppose it probably is best to let it just select the only StorageDevice so I dont waste the gamers time.

I suppose I can go with a 1920x1080 resolution. The game I'm developing is just a 2D card battle game so there wouldn't be any reason to not support it due to the performance. I suppose it would be good to support a 4:3 resolution  That would mean that I would need to scale all of the graphics down to that size right? I could have some of the graphics scale through the code; however, for things like the title screen(that takes up the full screen) I'd have to create a new graphic completely unless I wanted it to look really stretched...right? Just making sure I know what exactly goes into programming for multiple resolutions. I've done some research on it, but not too much. I will do more.

Thanks again Adam.

Just remember that a game that you set to render at 1920x1080 will not automatically scale down to standard definition. It will cause the game to throw an exception instead. If you make it at 1280x720, the Xbox 360 can automatically scale and letter box it to fit on any screen. I always just target that resolution because then I don't have to do anything to support every resolution the Xbox 360 supports. It will scale up for 1080p, and scale down with letterboxing for 640x480.

Ah. Hmmm, that is something to really consider. So pretty much if I'm going to support 1920x1080 then I'm also going to have to support 1280x720 as well...Maybe I will stick with 1280x720 after all. Mainly because of the time restrictions (DBP). I may eventually go back and support more if I get time or after the contest.

Well, no. It can scale 1920x1080 down to 1280x720, but it cannot scale 1920x1080 down to 640x480. What you can do is either do what I'm doing (just program everything for 1280x720 and let the Xbox handle all scaling and letterboxing) or you can manually program your game to detect the Xbox's output resolution and adjust your backbuffer accordingly. Then you can render at 1920x1080 for some people and 640x480 for others. The difficulty there is all of your game's graphics must be scaled for all the resolutions. It's a tradeoff for being able to fit each screen perfectly.

Alright, got it. Thanks Nick. Do you know anything about dpi? :P

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. You can make much larger sprites and scale them down, but at some point you start to get scaling artifacts. For my game (a 2D game) I generally have all my sprites drawn at about 2x the size that they are drawn on screen. Then we can get some nice details in there without seeing much in the way of scaling artifacts.

Baskinein:

Last question. I know for some cases dpi is extremely important for quality, is this the case for TVs? If so then what is a good dpi to have the graphics at?

I do not think that TVs have a comparable DPI like computer monitors (I guess it is somewhere below 2 times smaller). And considering that the users do not sitting as close infront of the TV as they do to a computer monitor, small (in the sence of 1px lines) graphics should not be used for vital information, e.g. text should be bigger than the common font sizes on computer screens.

Yeah, that question was actually my artist's. I just was trying to find out for him. I think he was thinking of other stuff, like printing on paper. With a low dpi and then scaling up you'd see the pixels, but I dont think that is how the TV works. Thanks for your guys' input and information. It's great to know that if I cant figure something out I have a place where I can come to find the answer!