To stretch or not to stretch. While stretching is a very important for exercising, it's a no-go for video game design. Looking back in time, it was actually kind of nice when computer monitors were all the same aspect ratio. Developers could work with a single ratio and it would be right. Now, we have widescreen. It's great to use, but can be a pain to develop for. With so many aspect ratios out there from 16:9, 16:10, 5:3, and even people refusing to play anything if they can't scale it across 3 widescreen monitors, it's nearly impossible to make things work smoothly for everybody.
When a person, like me, is making a game with a target audience of "everybody that likes this kind of thing", it takes time and a lot of trial and error to make it work with multiple aspect ratios. I am developing my game in a specific resolution. To make it work at different resolutions, I have to make it scale properly and not stretch. It's also tempting to just put it out with a single aspect ratio and suggest that people with other ratios play it windowed instead of fullscreen. It all depends on the limitations of the engine and development environment. Once those limitations are figured out, then I get to figure out what my own limitations are. "What can I get figured out to fix this?" is something I ask myself a lot more than I probably should.
Nearly all of the games I like to play, I probably wouldn't enjoy them as much if I had to play them in a window rather than fullscreen. If this is the way I feel, how could I ask other people to play my game in a window? The simple answer is that I can't. With that in mind, I have to decide if I'm going to be able to make things work with what I'm already using, or if I have to rebuild, possibly with another engine/development environment.
Have something to say about this? I'd love to get some input from others, whether your are a game developer, game player, or just have an opinion.
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