I think you have to consider 640x480 as being viable for a number of people even though 800 and 1024 are more popular. Apparently 1024 is now the most popular.
I'm working on a solution to do resolution-independent graphics, to support widescreen and different aspect ratios, keeping everything the right proportion and as much detail as possible. You pretty much have to get into playing with the projection matrix to do that.
I don't think the player should have to suffer `side effects` produced by your game not being comprehensive enough in its understanding of the issue of resolution. You as the designer should be sensitive to the fact there are many different resolutions and aspect ratios and try to get your game to work with all of them without noticeable loss of quality or wierd stretching or whatever. I'd consider it a bug or lack of feature if everything appeared stretched out in a different resolution than the one you intended. Of course, you have control of what options you offer, so you could just fix to a given resolution or set of resolutions and ignore the rest.
There are some drawbacks to supporting different aspect ratios and widescreen etc, in that you have to start considering how to use the space, what happens when you have a different proportion of width and height, does the game area get bigger, does that affect gameplay or give an advantage, do you shrink the graphics or keep it in proportion, etc.
I'm working on a solution to do resolution-independent graphics, to support widescreen and different aspect ratios, keeping everything the right proportion and as much detail as possible. You pretty much have to get into playing with the projection matrix to do that.
I don't think the player should have to suffer `side effects` produced by your game not being comprehensive enough in its understanding of the issue of resolution. You as the designer should be sensitive to the fact there are many different resolutions and aspect ratios and try to get your game to work with all of them without noticeable loss of quality or wierd stretching or whatever. I'd consider it a bug or lack of feature if everything appeared stretched out in a different resolution than the one you intended. Of course, you have control of what options you offer, so you could just fix to a given resolution or set of resolutions and ignore the rest.
There are some drawbacks to supporting different aspect ratios and widescreen etc, in that you have to start considering how to use the space, what happens when you have a different proportion of width and height, does the game area get bigger, does that affect gameplay or give an advantage, do you shrink the graphics or keep it in proportion, etc.