Ok, I read a lot about televison safe zone (title safe zone and action safe zone) and everywhere the answer is basically the same : we should keep a 20% border around the screen where no text should be displayed. There is even a lot of images showing that, but one thing elude me : this is surely not the best way to do this because we lose too much space ! I just tested with some games and I can clearly see the HUD (in a lot of games) is outside the 80% safe zone.

 So my question is simple : is there a better way to know the safe zone of a television because mine seem to be about 5%. This is far from the suggested 20%. Of course I want my game to run on any TV and most game out there certainly dont use this 20% safe zone.

 

Well, I hope you can help me, but for now I will continue working with 5-7% safe zone. I hope someone can answer this. Thanks in advance.

 

Mick

20%?!  That's 298px on my computer!!!

I have an SDTV, and I use a 50px safe zone.  Nobody's complained about my games yet (see signature).

Pigyman:

20%?!  That's 298px on my computer!!!

I have an SDTV, and I use a 50px safe zone.  Nobody's complained about my games yet (see signature).

Yep. According to these docs, 20% is recommended. I've also heard that 10% is actually a requirement for published games on Xbox 360 (retail or XBLA). So these figures are certainly fair as they take into account the worst of the worst TVs. I've made a small utility class and game component that should help people figure out (and stay inside) the title safe area: http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Safe_Zone.

MickD777:

So my question is simple : is there a better way to know the safe zone of a television because mine seem to be about 5%. This is far from the suggested 20%. Of course I want my game to run on any TV and most game out there certainly dont use this 20% safe zone

On the contrary, most games do get that high. And as I mentioned above, published games on Xbox 360 (from what I've heard) require a minimum 10% to get past certification. Definitely some TVs are better and have low 5-7% safe zones, but the vast majority of SDTVs and even some HDTVs do not.

Ok, but the thing is, most of the games have their main HUD (Score, life, etc) showing at the limit of my screen. Since my TV Safe zone limit is NOT 10% I'm wondering how do they detect the PERFECT spot to put the score or other information. I mean, this is ridiculously at the right spot. If it was 20% or even 10% it would not show so near my TV borders.

 So, I wonder how I can make it look as good as any AAA Title (I'm not doing this kind of game of course but still, showing a score at the right spot is my first step lol).

 I checked some methods from the GraphicDevice, and I can get my TV native resolution but nothing too usefull to deal with the safe zone "problem". Hope I made myself clear this time : I know about 10% and 20% rules but I also know AAA don't respect that since my TV shows important information (like score) at the border of my screen. 

 Thanks you in advance !

Mick

Nick Gravelyn:

And as I mentioned above, published games on Xbox 360 (from what I've heard) require a minimum 10% to get past certification. Definitely some TVs are better and have low 5-7% safe zones, but the vast majority of SDTVs and even some HDTVs do not.

Are you sure about that "require", rather than "suggest"? Because the XBLA TCRs I can find don't mention it anywhere.
 They mention using at least 16pt font, and mention the differences with PAL TVs, but I couldn't find anything about a required safe zone.

That would explain why some games do this badly ;-)

Neither Nick or myself has ever had access to the TCRs so you have one up on us here. But we've been told that it was the case so I guess we are all misinformed.

Pigyman:

I have an SDTV, and I use a 50px safe zone.  Nobody's complained about my games yet (see signature).

If you mean 50 pixels from each edge, then you're already using the 20% safe zone vertically and you have about a 14% safe zone horizontally (assuming 720x480 resolution).  It's 10% on each side.  (You may already know this, but it seems many people get confused about it -- it wasn't obvious to me when I first read about it).

You also have the option of using a conservative safe zone initially and allowing the user to adjust the position of your HUD or whatever at runtime.

They did show us one cool thing about this at Gamefest. They had a screenshot of the Robot Game where the HUD went all the way to the edge. So obviously on a TV with overscan you couldn't see your health or ammo. But then rather than move all of the HUD into the inner 80%, they positioned it in such a way that all the graphics were in the inner 90% and all the vital information (the actual health bar and the actual ammo numbers) fell into the inner 80%. By doing it this way, the HUD will appear closer to the edge of the screen while still ensuring that the vital components are visible even under 20% overscan.

Carcassone allows you to adjust the HUD placement. It uses 20% by default which is waaay too much on my TV that could get by with 0%. It would be kind of cool if there was a system-level setting for "my TV doesn't lie about it's resolution" :-)

For most TVs, 10% is sufficient. The number of TVs with 20% overscan in this day and age are vanishingly small.

You can also check for HD as any TV that supports higher resolutions doesn't have overscan at all.

Actually according to Mitch's gamefest talk this isn't true... several commercial games have made that assumption and got bitten by it. I think he said computer monitors and projectors are usuall free but not all TVs.