Fonts are killing me

Distant Worlds is a vast, pausable real-time, 4X space strategy game which models a "living galaxy" with incredible options for replayability and customizability. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game. Now greatly enhanced with the new Universe release, which includes all four previous releases as well as the new Universe expansion!

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StarWolf
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Fonts are killing me

Post by StarWolf »

I'm loving the Legends expansion. It adds a lot to the base game and RoTS expansion. I think at this point Distant Worlds is one of the best 4X space games I've ever played and once the ship design part of the game gets a little love in the second update as Erik had mentioned, it's going to be just tremendous.

However, there is one thing that is a constant distraction and annoyance to me as I play the game and that is the fonts. On a lot iof the screens I can barely read them. I have to really squint sometimes to try and tell if it is a plus or minus (+-) in front of some of the numbers. Reading the encyclopedia can be painful. I have a 22 inch monitor and the native resolution is 1680x1050. That's about average these days and many people have a lot higher resolutions for their setups. Surely I am not alone in my plight? Looking at the "how old are you" thread, many DW gamers are in their 40s, 50, and 60s. It's got to be hard on that demographic.

Is there any chance at all that something, ANYTHING could be done about this in the future? Perhaps you could allow a lot of the in-game windows to be maximized with the fonts scaling up when they do? Many of the current game windows are very small and only take up a third or less of the space on my monitor, if they could be maximized, I could easily read them.

If that's not possible, how about introducing a graphics option to allow you to change the resolution in game? I know that I can change it outside of the game but that totally screws up my desktop and it takes forever to fix it afterwards. Most games allow in-game changing of resolution, is this impossible/hard to do for some reason?

Please understand that I totally love the game but the fonts really are an issue for me. I really hope Matrix and Codeforce can come up with a viable solutions to this at some point in a future update.
comsolut
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by comsolut »

+1
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MasterChief
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by MasterChief »

+ 2
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Franky007
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Franky007 »

+3
Cauldyth
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Cauldyth »

+4
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adamsolo
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by adamsolo »

+5.

I've been reporting the font issue (and the bluriness) constantly in my reviews and in the forums but for some reason this is never fixed. I have a feeling that the bluriness is slightly improved with Legends but it's still hard to read. Everytime I play DW the first thing I do is put my reading glasses on. Why can't this be improved Erik? I run a pretty standard 1280x1024 resolution on my 17' LCD.
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WiZz
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by WiZz »

-1. Fonts are fine on my 1280x1024-display (19")
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StarWolf
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by StarWolf »

After further review, actually many of the game windows are okay, it's only some of them that are particularly harsh on the eyes. I was just playing again and took a few notes. The ones that have the most problematic fonts for me are:

The Diplomacy screen
The Ship Design screen
The Galaxy Map screen (this one is really one the worst for me since I use it so much. I wish you could zoom in and out on it, that would help, especially when trying to select something).

The one section of windows that are the most consistently problematic for me are all the ones from the vertical shortcut bar along the left side of the screen (Potential Research, Potential Colonies, Potential Resorts, Military, etc.) All of those have some really, really teeny fonts in them. Especially the numbers.

After looking at it again, I think the encyclopedia is fine in most places. I do wish there was an offline version provided in something like a windows help file format or even a PDF.

Most of the rest of the game fonts/windows are just fine. If they could just improve the visibility of the ones mentioned above, it would go a long way.
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WoodMan
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by WoodMan »

Fonts have always been fine for me, but I've been playing on a small screen.  I have a new much bigger screen arriving next week, I'll guess I'll find out then if it makes the text harder to read.
"My body may be confined to this chair, but my mind is free to explore the universe" - Stephen Hawking
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Webbco
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Webbco »

I'm 26 and I've got to be honest - after longer games I feel like my eyes are exhausted [X(]
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freeboy
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by freeboy »

i am supprised no one has modded this ..
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blastpop
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by blastpop »

+1 for font changes to make them readable...
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Fetrik
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Fetrik »

So is font size complaints the drawback of having a elderly userbase? [:D]

Jk of course. Some screens make me lean forward to read them.
Playing in 1920*1080.
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ASHBERY76
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by ASHBERY76 »

It needs to scale with higher res.
frugaldude
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by frugaldude »

I bought DW on the day it was released.  ROTS too.  One of my favorite games.  I finally had to quit due to the eye strain.
I had hoped this one issue would have been resolved in this release.
Maybe the next release will resolve this issue.  I would surely love to play again.

I am enjoying all the posts though.  It is a great game even through others eyes.
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Grotius
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Grotius »

I agree -- the font should scale to higher resolutions.
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adamsolo
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by adamsolo »

ORIGINAL: Fetrik Snubbe
Some screens make me lean forward to read them. Playing in 1920*1080.
Yep, I'm leaning sometimes also, even with my reading glasses. I also had to approach my monitor a bit more than it was before.
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badken
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by badken »

The text has always been a problem for me in this game, too--to the point that yes, I will stop playing sometimes because my tired old eyes are having trouble making out the text.

There are a couple of problems with readability with the game. The most important one is obviously font size, but also the design of the font and the contrast of the colors used could be improved. The specific font that's used has a lot of densely packed vertical lines, which makes letter forms difficult to distinguish. Notably, the bold version of the font is *much* better than the thin version that is used for most text in the game. Color contrast, the other issue, can be really bad in some cases: for example, dark blue on gray or dark blue on black are VERY hard to read because of the way the eye perceives the color blue. If you're going to use blue on a dark background, you need to give it a lighter high contrast shadow to make it legible. The default text color in the game is not very readable either. It's a medium-dark grey on black, and there just isn't enough contrast to make things out clearly.

I have a feeling that merely adjusting the text color, making it brighter, creating higher contrast between text and background, would help a lot of people. A bigger font (or using the bold font, which has better spacing built in) would help more, but I realize that might cause some screen layout headaches. An alternative to resizing screens would be giving players the option to use a different font which was better designed for reading at small sizes.
Harry2
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Harry2 »

+1 for bigger fonts

I tried using the Windows Magnifier app but it did not function very well inside DW

The other issue I have is red lettering on black or dark grey. Of course this only gets used for very important messages indicating that something is wrong or dangerous...and it's almost invisible to me! [8D]
Bingeling
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RE: Fonts are killing me

Post by Bingeling »

Fonts are indeed tiny, but with good glasses I do manage since I sit close to the screen. Some larger option to the tiniest would not hurt.
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