This is more of a general question, but I thought I'd point out that I'm using Lua.

My question is what's the best way to handle multiple resolutions while keeping my aspect ratio?

I used to think that by keeping the window sizes at 16:9 (my game's aspect ratio) , and going into fullscreen that the game would just add black borders without stretching and everything would be fine. This doesn't seem to be the case however as I'm getting mostly erratic behavior with that.

I did manage to get it working perfectly when setting the window size to the screen size before going into full screen. And while that works and keeps the aspect ratio, I feel that defeats some of the purpose of setting resolutions.

Don't older games have it so that, you could set to a lower resolution in the same aspect ratio, and you'd still see the same amount of stuff in the same screen area but since you made the graphics at a lower resolution they would be blurred but it would in turn be better for performance?

Is this worth pursuing or do most modern games now just set the window to the monitor size before going into full screen? That mean we'd only support one resolution in full screen, and that'd be whatever resolution your monitor is at, and add black borders where there is no game.

Any info/tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Unless there is a specific reason, I wouldn't force an aspect ration - there are people using 16:10 native resolutions, and even older 4:3 CRTs, that would prefer to use all the pixels at their disposal.

However, the resolutions available are a function of what's supported by the monitor. Functions that are useful include EnumDisplayDevices, EnumDisplaySettings, and ChangeDisplaySettings/ChangeDisplaySettingsEx.

Unless there is a specific reason, I wouldn't force an aspect ration - there are people using 16:10 native resolutions, and even older 4:3 CRTs, that would prefer to use all the pixels at their disposal.

I can't support more than 1 aspect ratio because then the graphics would be stretched in some way or another and that would look horrible. I'm trying to make it exactly like how when you watch a movie in full screen, there's always black bars on the top and bottom.

I can see where he's coming from with the whole aspect ratio thing though, for some kind of games having a different aspect ratio can be considered an advantage/disadvantage because the player can see more/less. If this gets really serious then forcing the aspect ratio (and adding padding as needed) could be considered a good idea.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of.

Interesting post Ashaman! It's a 2D game by the way.

I guess the only reason I was having doubts is that, no matter what language I used, the only resolution on which fullscreen worked perfectly was the monitor's native resolution, which makes sense.

I think it's cleared up now but if anyone wants to post any more info, feel free to do so!

I just set the viewport to keep the game aspect ratio (aka black borders)