Oouch. That screen shot is painful.
My very low vision objects. 
2 Likes
Oh yes, I got an LED screen about two months ago and now I love having proper blacks again! Iâd gotten too used to the gray from LCDs.
2 Likes
Donât put it past me to make some games that are really bad, but with nice ideas! Iâll make sure you hate it!
1 Like
I let people choose the fonts and color schemes. Also font weight. Although i only usually offer âlightâ and âregularâ as base weights.
I also discovered that maximum contrast looks good. By default the âdarkâ scheme has pure white text against pure black and the âlightâ scheme has pure black text. But here the background is not pure white otherwise itâs just too bright.
Interestingly, regarding weights. âlightâ (ie 300) looks better in the âdarkâ mode (ie white text) and âregularâ (ie 400) looks better in the âlightâ mode (ie black text).
Another difference is whether youâre on a mobile device. Web or not. Somehow ârobotoâ always seems to look better on mobile. Not sure why this is. Consequently, a game can suggest both âdesktopâ and âmobileâ fonts to default. Some game look better in serif and some look better in sans. Depends on the genre.
4 Likes
Wasnât it explicitly designed by Google to be the Android font? Makes sense it looks good on mobile.
3 Likes
Yes it was. But it must be that it just looks good on small screens, rather than Android specific. I understand itâs used on other systems too.
Does anyone have any good font face recommendations for playing IF? Ideally ones with open licences like those of Google fonts.
Iâve been using Merriweather quite a bit, both the sans and serif editions. For a while i tried Open Sans, but it appears a bit more condensed by comparison. Itâs still a good choice though.
Presumably this has been already discussed somewhere, but I found the âsimplestâ[1] looking fonts look the best eventually. Fancy fonts look cool initially, but their appeal fades fast after a few pages.
[1] When i say âsimplestâ, i donât mean simple. I mean good, clean design.
Iâm a fan of Lora for serif fonts. I find the best size is when the âmiddle lineâ in the lower case âeâ looks the best to your eyes. (Unfortunately, that part of the letter has a slight angle.) The most readable fonts tend to be more simple (as you had mentioned).
â https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lora
I kind of like serif fonts for text heavy games (like books), but Montserrat has potential for sans. I havenât taken it for a spin yet though.
Good call on Montserrat. Thanks! I think i make this the default in this game;
1 Like
My knowledge may be outdated, but arenât smartphones more likely to have OLED type displays while monitors and tvs are more likely to be LCD panels? Or has the manufacturing side of OLED tech advanced enough that large OLED panels can be made without pricing everyone who isnât rich out of the market?
Pixels emitting colored light directly(OLED displays) versus translucent pixels tinting white light shining through them(Backlit LCDs) makes a big difference(that black LCD pixels arenât fully opaque while black OLED pixels emit no light at all is a big part, but thatâs not all), and it makes sense a font optimized for a particular type of display would look best on that type of display.
Also, +1 to simple fonts being better. I have some giant dice that have big numbers with thick lines that are deeply carved that are still hard to read by touch because the font is so fancy and I have dice that are smaller with numbers that arenât engraved as deeply or with as thick of lines, but are easier to read by touch because the font is clean and simple.
1 Like
This is kind of an issue where the medium matters. The whitest paper still isnât âpureâ white, no matter what you do to it. I actually prefer older books where the paper has a bit of age to it.
As for white screens with black text, its impossible to make that screen look like a piece of paper, so I always try to adjust to whatâs best for the screen, not emulating a page from a book. That doesnât mean I donât love classical serif fonts in text games, though.
1 Like
Youâre right about OLEDs. Although a lot of laptops have them as screens too now. My understanding is that they have a higher dynamic range. So the dark is darker and the white is whiter - basically, what youâre saying.
However, that wouldnât necessarily lead to a specific font design, aside from one that works better with a wider brightness range. But I would have thought that most fonts would benefit from that. Basically the same point about contrast?
Yes, i think this is the problem. Paper will reflect light but screens must emit it. Although reflection is a bit like emission, itâs not really the same.
I feel like font choice is not purely about accessibility - it is also important if it fits with the aesthetics of the game itself.
Iâm currently writing a story set in a vaguely Victorian setting, and Roboto would be a horrible fit for that story, in my opinion. I went with Baskerville, a more old-school and book-like font (with serifs, and a nice curly a), on a slightly off-grey background that feels a bit more like a book page than an Internet Explorer error page (#2d232e on #f1f0ea). But I wouldnât pick the same options for a story in a vastly different setting.
Accessibility is, of course, still important - i think I have plenty of contrast, and the font is pretty readable in my opinion.
6 Likes
I donât believe this has been mentioned before in this thread, but our perception of light causes things to appear heavier or thinner on computer displays, even though black and white are simply reversed. The symbols are identical.
If you just relax and donât scrutinize the symbols (like how we read text), the right side appears thicker. This is the real reason why thinner weight fonts should be used for dark themes.
When I do logo design, I always have to make the dark theme version with a slightly thinner weight to make both versions appear the same.
5 Likes
In the end, I have used oc- because I needed the new 2.1 passage.from for breaking an {back link} infinite loop (a common problem, I presume)
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
2 Likes
The thickness of both symbols looks the same to me. Either Iâm studying this too closely or the thickness perception thing depends on the individual.
3 Likes
When I glance between the two dots, the right feels heavier to me. Like, thereâs more empty space inside the logo on the left.
Maybe you got some fancy newfangled monitor built on alien tech that the US government is hiding in their underground bunker facilities? Who knows, you might have some weird light perception ambidexterity abilities. WaaaaaiiiitâŚ
Garry, can you shoot lasers from your eyes? Are⌠are, you a⌠a superhero?! How many buses can you lift? Be honest now.
2 Likes
I think itâs the opposite. Iâm using crappy old technology and my eyesight is starting to get a bit blurry in my old age.
3 Likes
Bizarre side tangent on color perception.
Many of the people I know say âI would never paint my walls a dark color - it will make the room look smaller!â
This is probably true for a small closet or bathroom, but if you think about makeup contouring, and shadows and light in art, dark colors tend to recede and lighter colors by contrast push forward as a highlight and may seem bigger or more prominent.
So actually, painting a normal room in a darker color will make the walls recede and the room seem bigger under most circumstances. Itâs contrary to expectations, but you have to see it to understand.
At one point my mom started campaigning that they needed to spend $300-400 on a new couch, because theirs (it was kind of a beige color) looked âdingy.â I requested full control to let me try a $20 solution first.
They were in an apartment with large rooms and walls painted the default white/off-white that every default wall is. I taped off the wall borders of the wall behind the couch with 2" painterâs tape (this is an apartment trick - if you want to paint the walls a color, tape the corners and donât paint them so itâs easier to quickly repaint default white on the way out without having to spend time detailing the corners) and I selected a dark red color (âOh my god, this room is going to look like a murder scene - red? Are you serious?â) And I painted the wall behind a muted deep burgundy red. Pulling the tape off gave it a white border which looked really cool.
The result? The couch that looked dingy against a faded yellowing white wall looked much brighter and nicer against an accent wall that was a darker shade than it was. If you think about it, dark colors look more rich and âexpensive.â Reflected light is also much less harsh and the whole room and everything in it looks warmer and more inviting. If you tour a historical house, rarely do they have default white walls. Everything is deep dark colors (dark red, hunter green, navy) whether through paint or wallpaper. Dark colors make the walls recede and make even old furniture âpop.â Another advantage: dark colored walls donât show dust and imperfections over time as much as a white wall does. Once I was done and Mom could see the whole effect, she loved it despite her initial pre-conceptions.
3 Likes
I remember seeing plenty of optical illusions of the "these are the same size, but look different because of the surroundings back when I had a working eye, but the font weight ambiguity is a new variant on me⌠Though to add to the color perception conversation, the exact same spot of color can look orange or brown depending on the background color(I believe itâs the darker the background, the more orange it looks, the lighter the background, the more brown⌠and I remember seeing an illustration where the apparent discrepency holds up with two identical dots on close, but opposite colored square of a checkerboard(if memory serves, the illustration used white on a medium dark gray for the checkerboard).
And Iâve heard itâs fairly well documented that some optical illusions work better on some people than others, but tsuch claims Iâve heard have usually been in regards to ambiguous image type illusions where people differ on which image they see by default and some people have an easier time switching between the images than otherâs. Examples that come to mind are the mask illusion where most people see the outside convex surface of the mask but a minority default to seeing the concave inside of the mask, and the dancer illusion which is just two mirror image frames of a dancer alternating that most people interpret as the dancer spinning which was once believed to be a test for left-brainess versus right-brainess as to whether the viewer saw clockwise or counterclockwise rotation by default⌠of course, left/right brain dichotomy is discredited.
I can say from personal experience that magic eye, 3-d glasses, the hole in the hand illusion, the 3DSâs top screen, and all other illusions based on binocular vision have never worked on me. Granted, I went blind in my right eye as an infant, so I never had the prerequisite biological hardware for such illusions.
3 Likes