I recall talk some time back that this rez of 800x600 isn't ideal for games since some Macs don't support it. I want to release some background images for use in games and need to decide the rez size. What is the "best" size? I know I could go for the highest and let people scale down, but I want to conserve space.

Cheers

Go for the highest and let people scale down.

Certainly don't go below 1024x768.

Ok, I will shoot for 1024x768

Cheers

Most macs support 640,480

OS X won't let me use 640x480 or 256 colours unless I trick it. The only way I can play Prince of Persia is by starting Monkey Island and then going back to try to make my way through the ink-smeared mess of the Finder to open PoP.

I think it's a fairly simple matter to programmatically switch to 640x480 and/or 256 colours, but it's not a "standard" option anymore.

I remember 256 colours being pretty damn cool, and now it's too outdated to feature. Hey ho.

Can't you uncheck "show recommended modes" in the Displays control panel, switch to 256 colors and go from there? I seem to recall that worked for me with PoP...

I think 640x480 WAS interesting, but seeing a fullscreen game at that rez (say using OpenGL) on a big monitor, and you get huge ugly sprites/assets... So I think I won't there...

640*480 looks mighty funny on a 23 inch screen. Take my word for it.

when finding the prime factors of 640 and 480 you get:
640=2*2*2*2*2*2*2*5
480=2*2*2*2*2*3*5
you have 6 common prime factors. compare that with 800x600:
800=2*2*2*2*2*5*5
600=2*2*2*3*5*5
you only have 5 common prime factors.
I'm not ENTIRELY certain how this relates to screen compatibility, but it is very useful to have lots of posibilities when designing tiles for games.