fullscreen?

To be honest Nifflas I'm a bit annoyed that you were aware that this would be a limitation but didn't say so anywhere on the purchasing website. I would have held off on buying it, because as it is I just can't play it. There's no info about MMF or any future C++ build on the Nicalis website either.

Really looking forward to playing this game, which looks wonderful, once you've fixed the problems.

I'm sorry to say this, but this is bullshit.

The sole reason why a demo is being released is to test if the game works on your pc and to see how it performs. You would've seen this problem already in the demo and could've asked before you bought the game.

Nifflas really cannot be blamed for you being too enthusiastic and buy the game without testing if it actually runs fine on your computer.

@Bennett: I don't really find this a 'limitation' at all. And, more importantly, the way MMF2 handles fullscreen it's gonna look the exact same as when you lower the resolution; it just stretches it. I play fullscreen with the window not stretched, but simply centered and it isn't too small if you are playing on a normal monitor (even if it is fullHD).

I think you assume a lot of things in your post. Not everyone has a fullHD display, Nifflas is not to blame for this (he already mentioned he can't really fix it), and just because you find it a limitation, doesn't mean he does, nor anyone else.
In my opinion you got a great game, and you'd be selling it short if you let this so called 'limitation' ruin your experience.

The sole reason why a demo is being released is to test if the game works on your pc and to see how it performs. You would've seen this problem already in the demo and could've asked before you bought the game.

If a game turns out to be bad or not entertaining, I agree there's no valid complaint if you didn't try the demo. But I think it's totally reasonable to assume a game won't be broken. I don't think we're at the point where you have to download and install a demo for every game just to make sure its fullscreen mode will actually fill your screen. And I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that a game you pay for will be able to work in fullscreen mode rather than in a tiny letterbox that fills 1/6th of the screen.

In my opinion you got a great game, and you'd be selling it short if you let this so called 'limitation' ruin your experience.

I'm sure it is a wonderful game, but I'm not going to play it when it's filling up 1/6th of my screen. My PC is plugged into a TV, and I just can't see the game at that size. That would absolutely ruin my experience!

The full screen mode is meant to work and keep the display proportional. It sure works nicely on my laptop, but I can not guarantee it does on every monitor or graphics card, and I have no idea why. The game is supposed to start, but I don't know if there can be a dependency problem with a specific machine, or software/hardware setup. The game is not supposed to crash, but there can be a problem causing it to crash on some machines anyway.

Unfortunately, I can't list everything that can potentially go wrong on every machine. A PC is a mess of incompatible standards created by tons of manifacturers and developers. You can never be 100% sure any game will run at all before you have tried. This is why you always need to try a demo for a Windows game. This is why I made sure that savegames from the demo can run in the full version.

However, a full screen C++ version is on the way which won't have this problem. Jamie will start posting the betas very soon.

Yeah, I mean obviously I understand that bugs happen on PCs, or on any platform, and I'm sure you'll ultimately fix this one with your C++ build. My games have had their share of horrible bugs.

It's just a bit frustrating to me that you knew about this one in advance.

I don't normally get demos because it takes forever to download and install and uninstall them, and I feel like they spoil the experience of the full game. Surely I'm not alone in that regard. And I don't usually assume that 2D indie games will be technically impossible to run on my computer (and I don't recall it ever happening before).

Anyway, enough complaining, I just think it might be nice if you could just post some kind of note (under a system requirements page, for example) so people can see this before buying it. I'm sure this is why most games have a system requirements page.

To be clear, the game does start. It's just it takes up a tiny proportion of the screen. I updated the graphics drivers to the newest versions, and now I can't even set 640x480 anymore so there's literally nothing I can do about it.

The only thing I knew in advance was some monitors inability to use a really low resolution, I didn't think the problem would happen often. However, I'd be happier if people try the demo than needing to put a whole bunch of notices at the website about everything I know can go wrong in Multimedia Fusion 2 games.

I've built a version that doesn't keep the aspect ratio and allows the game to change to more resolutions. I have no idea if it'll help but you can put it in your NightSky directory and try. Make sure the settings tool is set to "Full Screen" and not "Maximized". Also remember that the Settings program will launch NightSky.exe and not NightSky DontKeepRatio.exe (which is the one you want to try), just so that you start the right version.

This one works properly - thanks a lot Nifflas.

How about this version and this version? I know the problem is solved, but it would be better if the game can still try to keep the aspect ratio than ignoring it completely (otherwise there's a risk for the Knytt Stories stretch problems instead). If this work, I can release this version as 1.0.1.

If I release the one which doesn't keep the aspect ratio at all, I can break the resolution for some players in the process of fixing it for others.

The more people that can test this, the more helpful it'll be!

I'll try these out tomorrow and report back. (Gone to bed now)

I may test these tomorrow as well.

I too will try those and report back, since I also have the fullscreen problem.

I just wanted to comment in defense of those of us who didn't try the demo, that when I'm excited for a game and I know I want to own it, I usually don't even think about demos.  I had already paid for the full version of NightSky before I even noticed there was a demo link on the page.  I think of demos as being for people to see if they like the game, not for seeing if their computer will run it.  The latter is why there is beta testing, why game developers release minimum and recommended system requirements, and so forth, not why there are demos.  I've never heard of demos being thought of as a technical trial rather than a gameplay trial.  I'm not complaining, I'm just playing the devil's advocate and explaining why some people would never think to use a demo as a "can I run it?" test.

Beta testing is for bugs in the game itself that are consistent with every system it's played on. It could also be for testing minimum/recommended systems, but that does not account for everything that could go wrong on specific systems. If game developers took the time to test their games with every single combination of specs imaginable, their games would never be released. That is what the demo is for.

I've never heard of demos being thought of as a technical trial rather than a gameplay trial.  I'm not complaining, I'm just playing the devil's advocate and explaining why some people would never think to use a demo as a "can I run it?" test.

Again, a PC running Windows is a horrible mess of incompatible standards between hardware and software manifacturers. There's absolutely no way I, as a developer, can even with a bunch of betatesters know everything that's going to happen. Sure, I had heard that sometime the game couldn't go full screen, but I still didn't know how often I could expect the problem to happen, not even the actual cause.

You're expecting the smallest possible game studio to be perfect, or if I turn out not to be I should put every potential problem out on my website. Please, I'm trying as hard as I can here, I even posted three test versions to figure out which I should make the 1.0.1 version that'll probably fix this problem so I'm trying to be helpful too, but again, I can still not guarantee a game will work on your computer. However, I can guarantee that the demo will let you know!

Again, I wasn't complaining or saying there was anything more you should have done about this, nor was I agreeing with everything the other poster said.  I was strictly commenting on the notion that the whole responsibility falls upon the player to always test a game on their system by playing a demo first.  That notion seems like a stretch to me.  Many games don't even release demos.

Beta testing is for bugs in the game itself that are consistent with every system it's played on. It could also be for testing minimum/recommended systems, but that does not account for everything that could go wrong on specific systems. If game developers took the time to test their games with every single combination of specs imaginable, their games would never be released. That is what the demo is for.

Then why has almost every beta test I've ever been involved in asked for my system specs?  I've participated in beta tests where I know for a fact that the developers were very interested in knowing what kind of system any given bug was occurring on.  The truth is that a major aspect of beta testing, as I've experienced it, is in fact finding out about bugs that happen not just to all systems, but to specific specs.  If the point was only to find bugs that would happen on any and every system, there would be no need for public beta tests, they could just test the game on one system and find all the bugs of the type you're talking about.  The only reason to have a bunch of people with different systems test a game at all is to catch the bugs that aren't on every system, but only on some.  As for demos, they seem usually to have more to do with marketing and trying to get players interested in the game.  I repeat that the notion that a major reason for the existence of demos is for players to test the game on their systems, is quite a stretch, and I doubt it's how most people think about demos.

(Again, just playing the devil's advocate on this one issue.  I don't hold anything against Nifflas for releasing the game in its current state.)

There are no problems with NightSky's specs, it'll run on more or less any computer. However, there are so many more potential setups the game can run on than I can have betatesters, and I work harder than a full time employee, I'm often exausted near a game release, and to do all this properly with many more betatesters and me gathering, processing, understanding all data, fixing, sending out new test versions - then I really need that extra full time employee that I can't yet afford. That, or I can further delay everything I do.

And again, plenty of game websites tells the users to try the demo first.