Or you could just ignore the safe area totally and allow the user to zoom their screen to fit. The upside of this is you don't have to compromise your games design in any way, the code is simple and all users get a consistent experience. The downside is that the player has to do a little tweaking (once) at startup. A number of XBLCG do this and the XBLA title Braid does it too.

This topic is guaranteed to split the community in half - anyone that doesn't agree with me though is a fool who's obviously been drinking too much whisky. They'll put forward compelling arguments as to why respecting the safe area is a good idea but they are evil and devious and should NOT under ANY circumstances be trusted.

"DOWN WITH SAFE AREAS" Add this to your signature and make the world a better place.

PaulCunningham:

A number of XBLCG do this and the XBLA title Braid does it too.

What XBLCG titles do this? I don't recall a single one...

This topic is guaranteed to split the community in half - anyone that doesn't agree with me though is a fool who's obviously been drinking too much whisky. They'll put forward compelling arguments as to why respecting the safe area is a good idea but they are evil and devious and should NOT under ANY circumstances be trusted.

Actually my argument has nothing to do with respecting safe area and more to do with the fact that, as a console gamer, I hate configuring stuff. That's the whole reason I prefer it over PC gaming. I don't want to adjust graphics settings or resolutions. I just want it to work.

Many HDTV screens (and VGA monitors, for the hard-core) actually show (or can show) the entire area, pixel-for-pixel. Thus, safe areas will slowly die. However, the default mode for many HDTV screens, even those that do support dot-for-dot accuracy, is to use some amount of overscan, the reason for which I can't fathom. (My Sharp Aquos I bought last year came set with 5% overscan, even for HDMI input sources, and I had to re-set it for dot-by-dot)

Note that "action safe" and "title safe" are two different amounts. The "action safe" area is where you can have (in film terms) "action," and is larger than the "title safe" area. If you don't want to do other kinds of work-arounds, putting your "character hits the edge" area in the action safe area (say, 5% in from each edge) is probably your best compromise. Making sure the character is fairly big would help, too, as at least some part of it would be visible even on really crappy TVs ;-)

PaulCunningham:

Or you could just ignore the safe area totally and allow the user to zoom their screen to fit. The upside of this is you don't have to compromise your games design in any way, the code is simple and all users get a consistent experience. The downside is that the player has to do a little tweaking (once) at startup. A number of XBLCG do this and the XBLA title Braid does it too.

That doesn't even make any sense. And it's completely ridiculous. I don't understand why this is an issue with people at all. Especially those can can grasp all the difficulties of game programming, but can't wrap their minds around this simple requirement.

Every product for a TV has to be designed around the safe area. TV, movies, station logos, news tickers, video games, media device on-screen menus, etc... You have the inner 512x384 (on 480i) to work with, just like everyone else making console games. There is no special considerations needed and their never has been. It's your only consideration. Keep your important stuff in that area, and consider everything around it to be unimportant filler.

This doesn't change with tile based RPGs. You simply have a border around all your maps that have enough tiles to cover the whole screen, even though they do not include walkable areas. Observe.





In fact, here is the entire overworld map to one of the Zelda games. Warning, that's a 4096x4096 png! Notice how every area has an inner playable area, and enough border tiles to cover the unsafe regions.

Notice I have the purple rectangle on the screen to illustrate the safe area. I use this in all my games, even ones targeting the PC (as the user might be running on a TV through a media center PC). I use F11 in dev builds to toggle the safe area graphic so I can play through and make sure nothing important ever leaves that area, and I can tell easy just by eye. I even use the purple square when I'm making fullscreen menu graphics and use it as a layer just to see where everything should be positioned.

If you are making a 3D game, you zoom out enough so that all playable objects are within the safe viewing frustum. I have some games that fail to do this, and sometimes people's heads get cut off when the action zooms in. It's very unpleasant.

Daaark:

PaulCunningham:

Or you could just ignore the safe area totally and allow the user to zoom their screen to fit. The upside of this is you don't have to compromise your games design in any way, the code is simple and all users get a consistent experience. The downside is that the player has to do a little tweaking (once) at startup. A number of XBLCG do this and the XBLA title Braid does it too.

That doesn't even make any sense. And it's completely ridiculous. I don't understand why this is an issue with people at all. Especially those can can grasp all the difficulties of game programming, but can't wrap their minds around this simple requirement.

Oh, we "people" can wrap our minds around that simple requirement quite well! (Can you already guess that I'm a zoom-supporter, like Paul is? ;-)

The thing is, even though we understand the reasoning behind this requirement, we totally don't like it, because we think it's an evil feature from old times, when TVs were crappy machines, so why should we, with our new shiny HDTVs that support pixel-perfect display, suffer because other people are still playing their games on last century's hardware? ;-)

Oh no! It's happening! The community is indeed starting to split in two over this...

Ok, back to reality... :-)

The thing is, that some games lend themselves very well to obeying the title safe area. Top-down-view RPGs like you show are a prime example: Here you can simply draw the world over the full screen and just make sure that the character (and all other important stuff) stays inside of the title safe area. Both groups of players are happy: Players with overscan-TVs can still see everything that is important (they just see a little less of the world) while players with pixel-perfect-TVs do not have any ugly filler but have indeed their full TV resolution utilized for display (and thus see a little more of the world).

But there are games, where obeying the title safe area actually puts a disadvantage on all players with pixel-perfect-TVs. I always quote the XBLA title "Jewel Quest" as an example:

This game obeys the title safe area simply by drawing a frame around the edges of the screen that fills the outer 10% of the screen (in all directions, filled with a wood-texture, like a table top or so, so it's just optical filler). The actual game content is then drawn inside of this frame. So the game actually only utilizes 80% of the screen. Inside of these 80% the game then draws the playing board with all the jewels. Because this board has to fit inside of the outer frame, this board (and the jewels on it) is 20% smaller then it actually could be, if the whole screen were utilized.
And a playing board that is 20% smaller than it could be actually is a disadvantage, because it means that I have to sit that much closer to the TV to be reasonably able to play the game.

So everyone who actually has a TV that would be able to display the board in 100% size still has to play the game with an 80%-size board because of something that is not even his own fault! Or in other words: If someone has a crappy TV and therefore this same someone has to live with a less-than-optimal presentation of the game, then OK, it's his own fault. But if someone has a modern/better TV but still has a less-than-optimal presentation of the game because of someone else's crappy TV, then is this really such a good thing?

"Obey the title safe area!" is a time-honored best practice that really did make sense in the past and in a large part still makes sense.

However, I agree with the previous poster who wrote that overscan (the reason for the title-safe areas) is a feature in TVs that is slowly dying out. So if overscan is dying out, why not adjust the best practice to match this change? Instead of slavishly following the "Obey the title safe area!" rule, why not slowly migrate to "Either obey the title safe area or give a zoom option!"? And a bit later, as overscan becomes more and more uncommon this becomes "Give a zoom option!". And and some point, when overscan has died out, this whole best practice can be sent to spen its last days on the pasture, until it dies off on its own.

Actually, I think this is already happening. Braid from XLBA was already mentioned as one professional title that went the zoom-option way. I recently came about an AAA title that does too. I think it was Rock Band 2, but could have been Guitar Hero World Tour. (I tried out both on the same day so can't remember which one it was).

I certainly will go the zoom-option way with my XBLCG games (once I'm no longer "regionally challenged" and am allowed to submit games :-).

Daaark:

And it's completely ridiculous.

As Paul wrote, this seems to be one of the topics where you either support the one or the other side. But please do at least concede us zoom-supporters that we are not simply "ridiculous", but that we too have thought this through and have our own valid arguments for our side - even if you don't agree.

Doc

jwatte:

Many HDTV screens (and VGA monitors, for the hard-core) actually show (or can show) the entire area, pixel-for-pixel. Thus, safe areas will slowly die. However, the default mode for many HDTV screens, even those that do support dot-for-dot accuracy, is to use some amount of overscan, the reason for which I can't fathom. (My Sharp Aquos I bought last year came set with 5% overscan, even for HDMI input sources, and I had to re-set it for dot-by-dot)

One of the reasons for the cut off was in some cases the edges of the analog transmitted images were used to encode things like teletext services, closed captioning etc. Of course this is redundant in the digital world and some countries use different systems.

Spyn Doctor:

I certainly will go the zoom-option way with my XBLCG games (once I'm no longer "regionally challenged" and am allowed to submit games :-).

I said it last time this was discussed and I'll say it again. I'm not opposed to games having zoom options. But they should be just that: options. Put on the options screen for me to configure if I want. If I boot a game and it asks me to configure some zoom option, I'm going to be annoyed. Afterall, when was the last time a game prompted you to set your audio preferences upon startup?

Braid may have had a zoom option, but they (he, I suppose) did it right because I didn't know it existed. I was able to just play the game and enjoy it and not have to configure some option. If that's how your game implements it, kudos. But I look down on anyone who starts the game up with a "Hey, how big do you want your game?" prompt. Put the option in for those who care, but don't bug the rest of us that don't.

Ran into this issue as well recently. If you have a 10% border on each side, you're actually only using about 64% of your total screen instead of 80%.

To me, this is unacceptable.

I use a 5% safe zone border. I don't put text in there, but I do allow game objects to reside there. For people with crappy TV's, I provide a zoom feature in the options menu.

I don't need dev builds or purple squares telling me where I can or can't display something - I don't need to concern myself with that nonsense. I use the entire screen and will not pander to the lowest common denominator :)

I really fail to understand this 'I'm a console gamer, I just want it to work' argument - it does work - perfectly. Whether you have a super duper 50 inch plasma or a crummy 14 inch portable makes no odds. You can configure the game so that it works best for YOU and YOUR SETUP. How many games allow you to configure the controls? Do they not just work? Or set the difficulty? Or how about allowing you to select a character that aligns with your play style? Do these not 'just work' because they require some form of decision by the player? I've played many a XBLA game that allows me to do all of those things. We haven't gotten to the game yet and players are making decisions about what works best for THEM. This is no different. It's a non issue to gamers. And as designers we don't have to compromise our designs.

As for XBLCG that use zooming. Doppelganger, Sumo, Ultratron off the top of my head ;)

Oh yeah, Zelda's rubbish too - here, have another winky ;)

Spyn Doctor:

Daaark:

And it's completely ridiculous.

As Paul wrote, this seems to be one of the topics where you either support the one or the other side. But please do at least concede us zoom-supporters that we are not simply "ridiculous", but that we too have thought this through and have our own valid arguments for our side - even if you don't agree.

It doesn't seem to be anything. There are standards and best practices to follow. I don't see valid points, I see excuses via wall of text.

When I get my Jasper 360 soon, and start testing games, anyone who doesn't immediately obey the safe area is:

<- see what i did there? :P

Overscan is not dying out. The 360 userbase isn't constantly swapping their TVs out, nor all they all running one expensive top of the line gear like some people like to pretend. If your game doesn't show all the content and the HUD on someone's 10 year old set with just over 512x384 viewable, then no wall of text will cover you. The reality of the situation doesn't change because 'you don't like it'. Your free to disobey this when making programs for personal use, but when releasing something to the masses, you should do it PROPERLY.

OH NOES - Nick's looking down on me!

Daaark - you'd do well to read that 'wall of text' - you'd see your post doesn't make any sense if you did. I can quote the relevant bits if it would help?

PaulCunningham:

OH NOES - Nick's looking down on me!

Daaark - you'd do well to read that 'wall of text' - you'd see your post doesn't make any sense if you did. I can quote the relevant bits if it would help?

I did read your wall of text.

Daaark:

There are standards and best practices to follow.

You should only reject games if they're unplayable (hang/crash).

Best practices also state that you should always call the controller the "XBox 360 Controller", but I won't fail a game who doesn't ;)

PaulCunningham:

Whether you have a super duper 50 inch plasma or a crummy 14 inch portable makes no odds.

PaulCunningham:

I [...] will not pander to the lowest common denominator

That's exactly what consoles are for. Why is it that no games are able to require a hard drive? Because not everyone has them. Why do retail games require following the title safe area? Because enough of the market owns crappy TVs to make Microsoft decide it was important. Why does every game (that passes through cert) have to be playable with a standard game pad? Because not everyone has special controllers. You always shoot for the lowest common denominator.

I really fail to understand this 'I'm a console gamer, I just want it to work' argument - it does work - perfectly.

But it's an extra step that I don't want, and shouldn't have, to do. It's not directly related to my gameplay (like choosing a character or difficulty) so sticking that extra choice in my face is just annoying when every other game for this exact same system on this exact same TV has worked perfectly fine without asking me.

More to the point, I think we're pretty much on the same page as far as enabling this choice, but what we actually disagree on is who should be the "default". I believe you should always default to the low-tech people because those people are far less likely to understand what the settings are or why they have to set them and so forth. People with their top of the line HDTVs who care about all these settings will still find them if they are there and then they can enjoy the game however they would like. But you default to the lower of the two so that those people aren't bothered with all the technical details. I'm not saying don't add options, I'm just saying to stick them in the options screen where they belong and if the user wants to change them, they can change them.

As for XBLCG that use zooming. Doppelganger, Sumo, Ultratron off the top of my head ;)

Three out of sixty. You're batting 5%. While I suppose three is "a number" like you said, it certainly isn't a large number. ;)

Harald Maassen:

Daaark:

There are standards and best practices to follow.

You should only reject games if they're unplayable (hang/crash).

If a game renders vital information outside of the title safe area, I fail them because that is unplayable.

Nick Gravelyn:

Harald Maassen:

Daaark:

There are standards and best practices to follow.

You should only reject games if they're unplayable (hang/crash).

If a game renders vital information outside of the title safe area, I fail them because that is unplayable.

Ah but what if they force that nasty zoom screen on you! :)

Harald Maassen:

Nick Gravelyn:

Harald Maassen:

Daaark:

There are standards and best practices to follow.

You should only reject games if they're unplayable (hang/crash).

If a game renders vital information outside of the title safe area, I fail them because that is unplayable.

Ah but what if they force that nasty zoom screen on you! :)

If you game lets me make it unplayable, it's still unplayable. No different than me hitting B on a storage device selector and your game crashing.

I am not against people with crappy TVs - STOP SAYING I AM PLEASE! It's all there in black and white (or 2 shades of a much too similar grey for my liking - hey, if only I could tweak that I'd be real happy) I even quoted it myself.

Well I named the 3 games that I wrote - I have no idea if any others have used the system - but I've noticed more and more people saying they will provide that option in future.

That's thin ice.. how would you define unplayable? I'd say that if there is a sequence of actions that lets you play the game (ie: go to options and set the zoom properly) then it is by definition playable.

@Daaark: I understand the concept of the safe area, and I understand your reasons for sticking with it instead of pestering the player to configure the zoom.

However, the fact still remains that I do not know how to distinguish where the border of the safe area will be, to make the collisions with the edge of the map. If I assume the border to be at the title safe area, that may work on many TVs. However, some TVs may see a little bit into the action safe area, and some tweaked ones may even peek into the overscan. On these TV's, it'll look like the map is changing when the character touches an invisible barrier about 30+ pixels away from the actual edge of the screen.

Likewise, if I assume the edge of the screen to be at the edge of the action safe area, or even all the way at the edges of the overscan, on most TV's, the character will wind up going offscreen before they reach the point where they hit the trigger to go to the next map.

Right now the zoom is seeming like the best approach to take to solve this problem. However, please enlighten me if I'm just missing something obvious.

I think the original zelda didn't let you walk onto the outer row of tiles.

PaulCunningham:

I am not against people with crappy TVs - STOP SAYING I AM PLEASE!

Not sure exactly who you are addressing, but I personally never said that. I just said you should consider the lowest common denominator as your default.

I've noticed more and more people saying they will provide that option in future.

I've noticed at least a dozen threads of people who say they are going to make an MMO, too. ;-)

Harald Maassen:

That's thin ice.. how would you define unplayable? I'd say that if there is a sequence of actions that lets you play the game (ie: go to options and set the zoom properly) then it is by definition playable.

What if I can't see the options because they're off the screen? Ok, admittedly I'm being a little silly here. My point, though, is that peer review has proved that everyone has their own definition of playable, and that's how it should be. What's playable on one setup might not be playable on another. I wouldn't actually fail a game for having this zoom option on start up, but I can see someone adjusting it, putting vital stuff off screen, and claiming it makes the game unplayable.

So to ask you guys a question (since it's our "side" that's been defending our stance), why not just put this option in the options screen next to the volume sliders? Why does it have to be shown first thing before the game starts? Why not default to the standard title safe area and let users adjust it later if they want?

Nick Gravelyn:

So to ask you guys a question (since it's our "side" that's been defending our stance), why not just put this option in the options screen next to the volume sliders? Why does it have to be shown first thing before the game starts? Why not default to the standard title safe area and let users adjust it later if they want?

I may well do that - not decided yet.

PS - your MMO comment made me LOL

PaulCunningham:

Nick Gravelyn:

So to ask you guys a question (since it's our "side" that's been defending our stance), why not just put this option in the options screen next to the volume sliders? Why does it have to be shown first thing before the game starts? Why not default to the standard title safe area and let users adjust it later if they want?

I may well do that - not decided yet.

Well, there we go. (Potential) agreement. :-)