Hello guys!

First of all, this game is based on the game "Tibia", a 2D MMORPG. Many open servers exist and they use the same client of the game. They basically change the map, add new monsters/spells, etc.

What we want to do, is make a new client. (and of course new content...)

This is what the current client looks like : http://i.imgur.com/jjrnyNt.jpg

As you can see, only the playable area is stretched, the menus/windows stay exactly the same.

This is what we want to do :

Instead of a 4:3 resolution with 32x32 sprites, we want to make a 16:9 resolution with 64x64 sprites. Instead of 15x11 tiles, we want to make it 25x15 tiles with no borders, only hovering menus/windows. The playable area will be 19x11 tiles. This is what it looks like at 720p http://i.imgur.com/rXuHRaI.jpg (just a test I did on paint)

Our question is : Is it doable? Ours menus/windows can't reach the playable area (because of the gameplay) and we don't want them stretched. Will they cause problems?

Our GUI needs to run with pretty much every sized monitors. Will smaller monitors and old school 4:3 monitors have problems?

Thanks for your help!

Will smaller monitors and old school 4:3 monitors have problems?

no.

you have to scale everything to the current resolution. that takes care of supporting different resolutions with the same aspect ratio.

but a 16:9 screen won't fit on a 4:3 unless you letterbox the top and bottom. thats how you support 4:3 on a native 16:9 app.

so you'll probably want to write wrapper or converter routines, so you can use something like a virtual 10000x10000 coordinate system, then convert to screen specific coords on the fly. write the entire game using the 10000x10000 virtual coordinate system, and all your graphics will look the same at both aspect ratios and all resolutions.

only a pain if you've already hard coded to a specific resolution, such as 1600x900.

best part, anything done that way can easily support future hardware up to 10000x10000 rez with no code mods required.

If we do use letterboxes,for the 4:3 screens, is the 10000x10000 coordinate system needed?

Also, because the resolution depends on the tiles used in-game (25x15 = 1600x960 modified to 1706x960 for a proper 16:9), can we really use such a big resolution?