A quick survey

[bookofholsety]

okay so it's still pretty early as far as the hacking side of the project goes, but there's been one development which i thought i'd seek opinions about. DDS is currently spending a bit of time looking at implementing the translation's font which, big surprise, i chose to pilfer from earthbound.  he conducted a couple of tests to compare outline schemes for the font and weigh the pros and cons of each, and those tests look like this:



left: a 3-colour version where the outlines are shaded with 2 colours, like vanilla fe4's japanese font
right: a 2-colour version where the outlines are a single flat colour

now, while i've got my opinions on each, i'm obviously very biased on the subject so i figure i'd see if i could sample some other opinions on the matter. to that end: which of these two do you prefer? which outline scheme do you feel looks nicer? do you have any legibility or accessiblity concerns about either one? i'm all ears

(also, for the record, i am extremely excited about my work being at least partially in patch form for the first time! you should've seen my reaction to the first test he sent)

Comments

[fionordequester]

Personally I believe that the right picture's font looks much cleaner. But that's me.

[hilow]

No, I agree.

[taichara]

This one, please:



The text reads as much crisper and cleaner; the other makes my eyes strain to resolve a "blurriness" that is just the font itself.

[amielleon]

I think the left one looks a lot better. It looks much clearer and brighter and I think it's also slightly more legible.

[amielleon]

Although I also want to say that I think the kerning is too tight now. It was more legible in your earlier screenshot.

ETA: instead of triple-commenting: I think my favorite option would actually be the one to the right, but with brighter whites for the interior.

[bookofholsety]

but with brighter whites for the interior

the interior is already #FFFFFF in both so that miiiiiiiight be a little difficult :P

(no i get what you mean about it coming across as a little dark. maybe it'll look better if it goes with the grey outline colour rather than the black)

[hakkari]

I prefer the one on the right. It's much easier to read, and the one on the left feels a bit blurry and is a bit of a strain for me (though that's probably because my eyes aren't great to begin with).

I do agree that the white part should probably be brightened if possible, especially if the black outline is going to be melding into the next letter like it is currently (not that it's bad it's just not as immediately readable).

[amielleon]

I feel like the spacing right now looks nice, but might not be as easy to read as if it were given just slightly more space.

[hakkari]

For the most part I can read the spacing fine at a glance, it's only really when you get words like 'Milady' where the M, I, and L all seem to roll together. Same with Midir's name (honestly I think it's mostly the 'Mi' combo). The rest looks very nice.

Again, though, I have pretty garbage eyesight and issues with text blur especially when I'm tired so I could be wrong.

[bookofholsety]

suddenly i'm kind of curious. do you have the same problem with the combination in this screenshot?



i'm kind of wondering if the issue is inherent to the font (god i hope not the earthbound font is my baby) or a side effect of the outlining specifically

[hakkari]

I can read that one, but I think that's because the outline blends into the background so it doesn't feel like it's rolling together. It's only when the outline is thick and noticeable that I have the issue.

...let me know if that makes sense haha

[bookofholsety]

oh, no, i understand. i had a feeling something like this might be the case. actually, follow-up question: when you emulate snes games, do you normally play on just 1x magnification like this, or do you usually go for something larger? i probably should've polled everyone on this to begin with to get a better sense of what the average might be with emulator usage, because i'm sort of thinking that it might be easier on the eyes at a higher magnification

(the prospect of playing the tri-colour variant at a higher resolution was probably the last nail in the coffin, imo. whatever okayness it has at low-res is promptly ruined once it's blown up :P)

[hakkari]

I usually play them at the default screen size that ZSNES comes with. Im fairly sure it's larger than these screenshots - dunno for sure though. It could just be that the current text is larger.

[bookofholsety]

ZSNES

oh you poor, poor girl :P

[hakkari]

....it works leave me alone :(

But hey most of the people I know who emulate irl use that one so I'm not alone :,D

[bookofholsety]

ever noticed how the level up boxes in fe4/5 are really twitchy? yup, that's a zsnes bug. i recommend upgrading to snes9x; better compatibility, less clunky interface, still not very demanding on your system

[mark_asphodel]

If snes9x is LESS clunky than ZNES then I don't even want to know...

The one on the right looks better to me.

[amielleon]

Does the font in FE4 consistently appear on that samey green background? Maybe it would be worthwhile lightening the border to a similar darkness as that samey green background.

[bookofholsety]

it also appears on brown, but it's of a similar level of lightness to the green. while this isn't taking gameplay menu stuff into account, i think you might be onto something here