Full-screen Support (Sort Of)!

Overview

I've been meaning to add support for the full-screen button on itch.io for a long time, and after a month of hard work, I've accomplished that task with some caveats.  Due to a number of factors, the full-screen button won't result in an ideal resolution for many users unless app scaling is adjusted.  I'll expand on all this in the sections below.

Where is the full-screen button?

The full-screen button is a clickable symbol of a box with arrows in the bottom-right corner of the game's viewport which should show up after you click the initial Run game button.  

How to exit full-screen mode

You should be able to exit full-screen mode any time by pressing the escape key.

For best results

Midnight Muffin Delivery Service was developed with a target display resolution of 1920 x 1080.  Unfortunately, due to a feature of Windows 11 (and likely other operating systems), your browser window could be displaying at a smaller resolution.  You can adjust the setting using the steps below, but please note that this will affect the scale of other apps too, so I recommend that you switch it back after playing.  Since I am a Windows 11 user, I can offer the following steps which worked for me:

1. Type Display settings into the search box on the taskbar.  Click on this setting.
2. Locate the Scale & layout section and change the value in the percentage dropdown next to the Scale setting.  The value of this percentage that is ideal for playing my game will depend on your display resolution which should be shown in the dropdown just below the Scale setting.  These settings worked the best on my device:
   1. For 1920 x 1080, 100%
   2. For 2560 x 1440, 125%
   3. For 3840 x 2160, 200%

I do not mean to imply that I expect all players to go out of their way to change their operating systems settings, but I also want to be transparent about this limitation and offer the only workaround I know.

What if I play the game in full-screen without an ideal resolution?

I've done my best to accommodate different resolutions, and the full-screen button should be functional in most cases, but may sometimes result in any combination of the following:

• Letterboxing
• The game having a larger field of view than is shown in the screenshots or videos I record for the game, which may make the game appear as if the graphics are zoomed out
• Some pixel distortion

The best way to report glitches with full-screen

As I mention in the section above, there will be some expected limitations to the full-screen feature, but the game should still be playable.  If you believe you've experienced any glitches since this update and would like to report the problem, please feel free to reply to this post, and it would be helpful for you to include the following information:

• Where were you in the game when the glitch occurred (title screen, map screen, level with name or number, etc.)?
• What actions were you taking in the game (if any) when the glitch occurred?
• What aspect of the game broke?
• What operating system were you using?
• What display resolution and app scale were you using?
• What browser were you using?

Why are different resolutions difficult to accommodate?

• Midnight Muffin Delivery Service was developed with pixel art assets which can only be scaled by whole numbers or else suffer significant distortion.  Furthermore, the pixel art assets in this game are relatively large, which I think looks nice, but this also means we have even less flexibility when scaling the game.
• As I mentioned earlier, the app scaling setting seems to place an extra limitation on the resolution of browser-based games, at least in my experience, and I have no control over this setting for other users.
• There are so many different resolutions!  And the pixel count varies a lot between these resolutions too.
• The most granularity I have over the resolution is through adjusting the size of the game's field of view, and I do utilize this, but it also has limitations because adjusting the size of the view in the game could detract from the intended game experience, so I've tried not to abuse this feature.
• I am a developing this game alone with no external funding. :)

Other minor updates have been made

While testing the resolution of my game, I spotted some minor issues which I have attempted to resolve.  These updates include:

• Fixing a small visual bug with the shop UI
• Removing one x2 powerup from level 3 for balancing reasons
• Adding acceleration to the money counter and score counter after surpassing a gold medal so that the player doesn't have to wait as long for the animation to finish if they achieve a really high score

Final remarks

I hope I've conveyed that developing for different resolutions is a balancing act with some necessary compromises, especially for this type of project.  Years from now I intend to release a full version of this game on Steam, and based on my tests and understanding, this should not be negatively impacted by the app scaling settings of your operating system.  However, I expect my game will still have some inherent resolution limitations which stem from the nature of pixel art scaling, and I want to be transparent about that.  I had to make many changes to my game and honestly had a tough time just to push resolution support this far for this current project.  With that said, I'm always learning, so I'm happy to review any resources if you're reading this and happen to know of any advanced pixel art scaling techniques for games.

Thank you for your interest in my game!