I have less than average vision, even with glasses, though it is better than “poor”. It’s difficult to see some of the tiny features and writing. I’ve even found myself zooming into the playdate screen with my phone camera.
A rudimentary 2x in each direction zoom function would be useful.
I envisage it being invoked through a universal button shortcut like a triple click of menu button. Alternatively, it could be an option under Settings>Accessibility and then show up as Zoom in the menu dialog.
The OS would pause the game, take a screenshot, and the D pad would allow panning. Any other key would cancel zoom mode.
Maybe this is an OS not sdk request?
Edit: just to clarify, this would work on a paused screen only, not “live” gameplay.
If the system were to offer it, which part of the screen would be zoomed? Would the game pause whilst zoomed so you can pan around the screen? I imagine there would be a lot of button presses.
But, good news, the SDK already has this function! So, it's up to developers to implement it. The benefit of this approach is that the developer can control the camera when zoom is active, the game can keep running the whole time, and no buttons need to be pressed. We do it in Sparrow Solitaire, free demo at: https://vogelscript.itch.io/sparrow-solitaire
I’m attracted to a universal solution as in the iOS zoom accessibility handling where the experience is common across all apps (double tap three fingers). I don’t mind how it works, though, the user need is simply for visual aids for the less able. There was a screen magnifier with light for the gameboy… maybe I can rig one up for the play date!
I’ll try it the sparrow solitaire handling. I knew it had zoom, but didn’t realise you had a free demo.
I don't use glasses, yet I find many games hard to read when they use 1 px wide fonts or outlines. Perhaps, those games were mainly developed on a simulator during Playdate supply shortage shrug Just a rant.
On a relevant note, I guess it may be impractical to play many games on such zoom mode. Although, if this mode gets Panic staff's attention, one case study may be PlayStation 5 zoom feature. I use it quite often and grateful it exists.