Does the Android back/home bar influences on the game size?

Comments

• ar2rsawseen Maintainer

  March 2014

  @somezombiegm letter box scales your scene up to screens width or height (which ever comes first) while keeping aspect ratio
  so if you have different aspect ratio than defined in logical dimensions, it means you will have whitespaces.
  
  To tacle them, you can create larger resolution images, as stated here:
  http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/comment/35318#Comment_35318
  and here:
  http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/comment/13692#Comment_13692
  
  

  http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile

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• somezombiegm Member

  March 2014

  @ar2rsawseen Yes, e.g If my logical Dimensions are 480x800, and the device resolution is 480x854, the whitespaces appear on the sides. But when I test it on a physical device which is 480x800, the whitespaces appear (this time on top and bottom). The thing is, that shouldn't happen because the device has the same resolution as the logical dimensions.
  
  I understand the big background solution and I intend to implement it, but that's in the case of different resolution devices. My problem happens with the same resolution as the Logical Dimensions.
  
  That's what I could only guess that it could be because of the back/home bar, because on the emulator doesn't appear. And btw, my games is on Lanscape mode and the bar appears on the right side.
  
  Maybe it's not because of the bar, but the problem is there, I don't know if it has happened to someone else, I appreciate your help.

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• petec Member

  March 2014

  I've had the same thing with the back/home bar when in letterbox landscape mode. I think that the bar means that the 'useable' screen has slightly less width than the stated 800 whilst the height remains at the expected 480, so the 'useable' screen has a slightly different aspect ratio. The letterboxing reaches its width a little earlier so the height is slightly reduced. I guess this is done so that you don't lose anything under the bar. It's never bothered me too much as I always allow some padding in my backgrounds to cater for different size screens.

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• somezombiegm Member

  March 2014 edited March 2014

  @petec Yes, My thoughts exactly. The "usable" screen is smaller that the actual screen size. Offcourse I will also put some padding or background to eliminate the whitespaces that show with Letterbox. I don't really like the Stretch scale mode.
  
  I just wanted to know for sure that was the case. And I also wanted to know if there was a way of taking into account the back/home bar so maybe we could work our games with Height x (Width-BarWidth) or (Height-BarHeight) x Width. It would be really cool =D.

  Where could Bacon Chancho be? http://baconchanchotravels.com/travel-pictures/

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• petec Member

  March 2014 Accepted Answer

  I'd think that catering for the bar could be difficult given that devices don't all behave in the same way. On my phone, the bar remains at all times but on a Kindle Fire the bar slides off screen and leaves a little tab to bring it back, so although there's a bar it doesn't interfere for long and the app used the full screen (but it's a good idea not to put touchable items too near the tab in the middle of the rhs in landscape left). I'm quite happy using letterbox and steering clear of the very edges for vital things.

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