Text is still too small?

[ubai]

Hello,

Although I enjoyed the first Xenonauts, I had a terrible time with the tiny, unreadable fonts, and so did a lot of other people. I also saw a post from Chris England saying they had seen enough complaints about this to fix it in Xenonauts 2. However, I just tried the demo and the fonts are exactly the same, and there doesn't appear to be any kind of text scaling option in the game.

I backed this game, but I am thinking of canceling now. I really don't want to have to spend hours squinting at a screen, especially after receiving assurances that this would be fixed. Has this been addressed in a later build? If not, I would like to know up front.

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Satoru]

What resolution are you running at?

 

A screenshot would be helpful as well. You should be able to attach one to your post

[Chris]

On 7/1/2018 at 2:14 PM, ubai said:

Hello,

Although I enjoyed the first Xenonauts, I had a terrible time with the tiny, unreadable fonts, and so did a lot of other people. I also saw a post from Chris England saying they had seen enough complaints about this to fix it in Xenonauts 2. However, I just tried the demo and the fonts are exactly the same, and there doesn't appear to be any kind of text scaling option in the game.

I backed this game, but I am thinking of canceling now. I really don't want to have to spend hours squinting at a screen, especially after receiving assurances that this would be fixed. Has this been addressed in a later build? If not, I would like to know up front.

Thanks,

Matt

Yeah, the UI in the demo is basically the same as the one in the first Xenonauts so we've not got round to fixing it yet. However most of the concern about small fonts was previously on the strategy layer; what specifically is too small? As Satoru said it'd be useful to have a screenshot as the resolution you're playing at also has a big bearing on this.

(I just noticed this post is from near the start of the Kickstarter so I'm not sure this reply is of any use any more)

[Warfrog]

While I'm not the OP, I have a related question. Will X2 support 4k resolution. I occasionally stream X1 via steam to my TV in the main room, which is 4k, and none of the UI scales to 4K making the text impossible to read and the buttons incredibly small. Luckily steam has a work around built in that it can temporarily change the desktop resolution for certain games and I just have it downscale for X1 but it would be nice to use my tv's native resolution.

If you want screenshots I can take some later today when I'm home.

[Sheepy]

I use a 3K monitor and I've bugged Chris about text not scaling in earlier X2 demo, which are promptly fixed.  So I have high hopes of X2 supporting 4K, or fix the support rapidly.

Wide screen is another matter, though.  I remember a forum member sent them one so that they can test and develop on it.

[Alienkiller]

I have a normal Monitor with a high resolution 3.xxx or 4.xxxx to 2.xxxx. I think he supports 4K but that´s brakes the Game itself. 4K is good for films but not for Games atm. If you get a 1000 MB Ram and a 18core Processor maybe, but not atm.

You can see it in XCom 2 and other high resolution games which are doing high resolutin, 20x AA etc. If you there get 4K too, the game won´t start anymore because the RAM, Graphics-Card and Processor wont make it.

And Chris Roberts / Erin Roberst with her new Game Star Citicen have the same Problems. They use the maximum today (like they did it in the Wing Commander-Series as well Strike Commander / Pacific Strike, Star- and Freelancer).

But if you push a Platform to hard like you wish Sheepy then you won´t play anything. A Game is everytime a compromise between max. Graphics, max. Power from stationiary Console / Mobile Console (like Processor, RAM, HDD) and the minimum specifications as well.

Edited July 25, 2018 by Alienkiller

[Chris]

The problem is that 4k gaming will become much more common in the future, and we don't want Xenonauts-2 to fall apart in 5 years because it can't handle 4k. We'll be doing our first tests with the resolution scaling stuff in the run-up to the closed beta, but it's complex stuff. It's definitely not impossible though.

I think the biggest problem will actually be if people try to play the game on too small a screen - e.g. if you're playing Xenonauts-2 on a 15" laptop screen I'm not sure we're ever going to be able to make the text big enough for someone to read easily because there's just not enough screen space to display everything we need.

[Alienkiller]

Then you have only one opinion: Take it in the Menue and everyone have to pick it up for its Monitor. Standard is 1.200x786.

More than Easy for that question. If anyone don´t know it´s settings he / she and is not looking in the Windwossettings for the Monitor before has the Problem. Than he / she can´t say it´s not working, and it shows that the People are to stupid to read first. Point.

[Baqar79]

I'm probably going to be out of luck here, but will 16:10 displays be fully supported?

I currently have a 1920x1200 10-bit IPS panel that I bought quite a while ago, it's not the end of the world if 16:10 won't be fully supported as I can handle the letterboxing that happens running at 1920x1080 which I had to do with xenonauts 1 (otherwise text dialogue gets cut off in game).

I know the Xenonauts 2 alpha works fine with my display, but it was the text explanations in the xenopedia/world map/tactical layer that got cut off abruptly, so it's a bit hard to tell from the alpha.

In addition, I noticed the gamma controls for brightness with the alpha...these always full me with a sense of dread since I have used a colour meter to callibrate the display and these controls usually mean overriding that carefully constructed colour profile with something that completely ruins the picture (I have a high contrast setting, so anything that overrides the colour profile results in cliping all highlights to white).  If borderless mode is included, this is usually a pretty good work around and since I have 2 displays setup it's convenient to have a game up and the web to research at the same time.

[Chris]

Yeah, we'll be supporting 16:9, 16:10, 21:9 and 4:3 ... although 4:3 is a real pain. But you should be fine with a 1920 x 1200 panel, Baqar. There'll just be a bit of extra horizontal dead space added into the UI somewhere.

[Ravn7]

10 hours ago, Chris said:

e.g. if you're playing Xenonauts-2 on a 15" laptop screen I'm not sure we're ever going to be able to make the text big enough for someone to read easily because there's just not enough screen space to display everything we need.

Apart from my desktop PC, I have a 15" laptop. With deliberately chosen 1366x768 resolution. I just didn't want to hurt my eyes with HD resolution on a small notebook screen. It doesn't matter whether it's 15" or 17" at this point.

I haven't notice any game I've played in recent years (PoE, D:OS, Anno 2205, Banished, Civ:BE and others) having problems with that (except for X1, of course). BUT, if it really poses an unresolvable issue for X2, some text may fall out of its space and I could live with that. You could only add appropriate info to the graphics settings menu - when someone chooses too low resolution - that it's not supported. It would just require to make sure vital information (like ammo amount etc.) are not placed at the end of the screen.

In the worst case, I will play only on my desktop.

[Baqar79]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

Yeah, we'll be supporting 16:9, 16:10, 21:9 and 4:3 ... although 4:3 is a real pain. But you should be fine with a 1920 x 1200 panel, Baqar. There'll just be a bit of extra horizontal dead space added into the UI somewhere.

Many thanks for the response, that is great news, quite surprising considering the ratio I'm using is likely only shared by a minority of users now.  On the other hand...4:3, that is pretty much the original CRT display ratio right? 1024x768, 1600x1200...that takes me back

Any chance as well on the Windowed borderless mode?

Mostly I use it to stop a game changing the gamma settings (which usually results in resetting the custom windows colour management profile I've created), but it can also be handy to seamlessly switch between displays.

Oh, sorry OP for hijacking the thread, while the issue I had with the original Xenonauts was a text one, it wasn't the same issue and now I'm getting more off your original questions topic.

[ubai]

Sorry for the late reply/necro, but when I didn't hear back after a week or so I canceled my backing. I just recently discovered there had been an official reply.

Even though I pulled my backing, I would still like to buy this game if the UI issues have been addressed. The problems are the worst on the strategy layer as you say, but the batlle UI has issues too. In general, the fonts are/were too small at 1920 x 1080 to be legible.

So I guess I am checking back in to see if this has been addressed, or if it will ever be addressed. I noticed you said it hasn't been fixed "yet", so I hope that means it has been done or will be done by release.

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Chris]

On 12/9/2018 at 2:05 PM, ubai said:

Even though I pulled my backing, I would still like to buy this game if the UI issues have been addressed. The problems are the worst on the strategy layer as you say, but the batlle UI has issues too. In general, the fonts are/were too small at 1920 x 1080 to be legible.

So I guess I am checking back in to see if this has been addressed, or if it will ever be addressed. I noticed you said it hasn't been fixed "yet", so I hope that means it has been done or will be done by release.

It's something we would like to address, at least in theory - but it's something that we do need to be sensible about too. How big is your monitor screen? Some screens are extremely pixel dense but very small in physical terms, and at some point the amount of information we need to display on the screen just isn't going to work - for example, it's probably not feasible for the game to run on the amount of screen estate available on a phone or most tablets. I suspect some laptops are also going to fall into this category if the user also has a very strong aversion to small text.

Maybe we can do some testing to see what sized text you actually want to have on your screen? That'd at least help us get some idea of the scale of the issue.

[ubai]

Xenonauts 1 had a lot of "text walls" (comparatively speaking) that could just as easily use scalable fonts in a scrolling window. Also, if you have to use a lot of small static fonts, you might be able to use tooltips with a larger font that pop up. Unity also has built in UI scaling, maybe that can be used in places where the text might be small?

I do understand that you have a limited amount of screen real estate, but I have seen a lot of game UIs that scale and still convey a lot of information. One of the best I have seen is Star Ruler 2, the interface scales just like a web browser using ctrl-+ and ctrl--, it's great (its code was also just released as open source).

Thanks,

Matt

[Chris]

So which specific areas of the text in X1 were problematic for you, and what size screen and what resolution were you playing on?

As I mentioned previously, we don't really have any data beyond a number of people saying "the text is too small". One of the problems is there's quite a bit of semi-irrelevant flavour / lore text in the game that the player isn't really meant to read but was intended to give the impression of the player's secret organisation having a large amount of information at their fingertips, and as such it was deliberately displayed small so it wasn't too distracting.

Unfortunately right now I don't know how much of the "I can't read the text" is people trying to read that stuff, and how much is the fact that an ALL CAPS font is a bad choice for displaying long sentences, and how much is the large blocks of text in the Xenopedia etc that (as you correctly say) we could quite easily have scaled up, so it'd help to know where the problems are.

[ubai]

It has been so long since I have played that I will have to re-install and play a bit, I will try and get some screenshots.

Thanks,

Matt