I hear Dead Rising has this problem. Assassin's Creed has this problem a little. The Darkness has this problem a little. Condemned 2: Bloodshot has parts of it nigh unplayable because of this problem.

 

Dear Developers,

Check your bloody fonts on SD televisions. Or give an option in the options menu for different fonts. Check your loading screens. Check your menus. Most importantly of all, check the dialogue and choices! If the player can't tell the difference between a 4 and a 1 or a 5 and a 6*, he's not going to have a good time playing your game.

 

 

*Now that I think about it, the fact that a 1-4 and 5-6 problem popped up so early and so literally, I have to think Monolith is intentionally mocking users of SD televisions.

Edited March 21, 200817 yr by Tale

I often play our builds on an SD display specifically to catch potential text issues and TCR/TRC violations. That said, we have to strike a good balance between being legible in SD and reasonably small in HD. The differences between 480i and 720p (for example) are pretty huge.

An option for two different font sizes should be the best solution.

An option for two different font sizes should be the best solution.

That's much easier said than done. What fits and is legible on an interlaced screen that's 480 pixels high (minus safe zone) is a far cry from what goes on a screen that's at 720 pixels in progressive scan. Think about playing Fallout on a blurry monitor (~SD 480i) vs. playing Neverwinter Nights 2 on an LCD at 1280x1024 or even 800x600.

Tale is right though, this has been an issue with several games which, thankfully, havn't been textually important (dead rising and Ace Combat 6 spring to mind).

 

However, trying to read subtitles in Lost Odyssey (screw the dubs) can be a bit annoying at times.

I seem to recall thaqt one of the reasons the writing was so dire in FF games was because of the large font size TV screens require for good readability. I'm guessing that in a text intensive game like the usual Obsidian production, that should be quite an issue to surmount.

 

How do you devs plan to bypass this problem?

Frankly, that's B.S. Dialogue isn't where text space really becomes a concern. Our banter and dialogue text is pretty easy to read. It becomes more of an issue on screens like character sheets and inventory screens where you have lots of labels and descriptions vying for space with visual representations of things like perks and items.

Wouldn't using popups with the labels and descriptions help you there? Or does that become too cumbersome when using a gamepad?

Wouldn't using popups with the labels and descriptions help you there? Or does that become too cumbersome when using a gamepad?

Typically, people want to be able to rapidly cycle through descriptions of things, so using pop-ups would be cumbersome -- whether on a mouse or gamepad.

Another possible solution would be to divide the inventory and the character sheet into several screens. The inventory specifically, for example, could be divided into pages for each body part's equipment, for weapons and for useable items. It would still be a bit cumbersome, though.

 

 

How about a turnable solid as an inventory/character sheet GUI?