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New dev blog: News from the fontlines

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Vyktor Abyss
Abyss Research
#41 - 2011-09-20 13:06:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Vyktor Abyss
Mar Drakar wrote:
Vyktor Abyss wrote:
For the love of God, please when you go changing things like this, give us the option to keep the old setting.

I hate the look of that font compared to the old one, and don't understand why you can't just give us a checkbox/drop down selection in our options to choose the font we use.

It is subjective whether it is better or not; I generally don't have an issue differentiating between the 6G& etc to be honest and when you make changes like this you should consider those who like or are used to the old way of things.

Make subjective changes OPTIONAL.


every optional thing for you means TWO supported possibly clusterfuxed hacks, and another option to store... and to read... and be aware while doing anything anywhere in the code.

so no, bye old font, welcome future.



It is idiotic attitudes like this (well you are a goon so...) that would have all old buildings bulldozed and have us all living in modern luxury cargo containers....Why? because its the future!!!!111elev..11! Deal with it!!

Just because it requires *slightly* more effort to upkeep does not mean it should not be done. Are regression tests checking a font with automation after each new release so hard? No. It is about quality of service.

This game is customer service driven don't forget, and upsetting long-standing customers for the sake of a little effort is generally not good business sense. And I'm not talking just this specific change, but CCPs other recent changes, like hangar view, turret icons and forums. Responding to customer feedback delivers a better product, and my feedback is make such changes 'optional'.
CCP Punkturis
C C P
C C P Alliance
#42 - 2011-09-20 13:10:36 UTC
Vyktor Abyss wrote:
For the love of God, please when you go changing things like this, give us the option to keep the old setting.

I hate the look of that font compared to the old one, and don't understand why you can't just give us a checkbox/drop down selection in our options to choose the font we use.

It is subjective whether it is better or not; I generally don't have an issue differentiating between the 6G& etc to be honest and when you make changes like this you should consider those who like or are used to the old way of things.

Make subjective changes OPTIONAL.


If you read the "All about it" section of my blog, you'll see that the two fonts don't render together, so it's not possible to have the option of choosing. Sorry.

♥ EVE Brogrammer ♥ Team Five 0 ♥ @CCP_Punkturis ♥
noise
Space Defence Force
#43 - 2011-09-20 13:11:19 UTC
Myrhial Arkenath wrote:

PS: I agree it would be nice if we could control fonts more individually, and I like the idea of allowing us to choose from a series of fonts or to be able to use our own. Barring that, perhaps leave the old font available for a while and track usage statistics?


Most would probably switch back to the original font just because that's what they are used to (Or their bot is programmed to read the old font).

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Ravcharas
Infinite Point
Pandemic Horde
#44 - 2011-09-20 13:15:33 UTC
Finally!

Also, +1 for small caps in labels and stuff.
Noriko Mai
#45 - 2011-09-20 13:16:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Noriko Mai
Just a question: Why design a new font insted of using a free one like Linux Libertine or some other?

btw. good work with the fonts, ships spinning and turret icons stuff. Three good news in a row Big smile


I have a prob
CCP Punkturis wrote:
it has been fixed now!
Big smileBig smile

"Meh.." - Albert Einstein
Vyktor Abyss
Abyss Research
#46 - 2011-09-20 13:22:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Vyktor Abyss
CCP Punkturis wrote:


If you read the "All about it" section of my blog, you'll see that the two fonts don't render together, so it's not possible to have the option of choosing. Sorry.


I read it but as a non-techie kind of reader that isn't obvious.

Please expand on why you couldn't have a client setting for one font or another? I'm not talking mixing them up for different windows, but like graphic settings where you restart your client.

What stops you doing this?

thanks.

Edit: I'd like to also just point out I'm not resistant to all change just because I'm used to the old way and am stubborn, but I believe change should result in an great improvement for all concerned. Lately a lot of CCP changes have been half-arsed and I hate to say it but I'm going to include this one too because potentially this should be part of a much greater UI re-design/fix.

Xeen (a UI developer in real life) I think it was had a long running features and ideas threadnaught (major changes that I supported!) on the old forums regarding improving the UI which was largely ignored/ducked by CCP for years. Now they change a font without doing the rest. It is like trying to fix the massive leaky hole in your houses' roof by changing the colour of the guttering.

At least an optional approach to subjective changes like this, turret icons, hangar view etc etc that might take slightly more effort to begin would benefit those who prefer the new look and not upset those who dont.

Hope that makes sense.
Krispy Dingo
The Gold Angels
Sixth Empire
#47 - 2011-09-20 13:23:24 UTC
I'm suer there has been some hue and cry about a properly scalable font (who has time to read all the responses), and while that would be nice, I think what he has forgotten is the reason why the fonts currently only scale to a certain point, and that is so they can all still fit properly within the UI windows.

While it may be slightly out of the scope of this particular blog, I think in some ways these do go hand in hand.

When playing on an exceptionally large screen, like a hi-def television, the current font becomes unreadable; while it does appear that the new font will help with some of the readability, none of us are getting any younger and I can only cram my nose so close to my screen.

Certain other less fun MMORPGs use a UI Scale that allows all elements of the UI to be increased/decreased in size with a slider, which allows text to still fit within the boxes since the entire UI size has been increased.

Are there any future plans to move towards something like that, since it would definitely be a boon for everyone playing?

I know, this is a font blog, but since CCP Punkturis is everyone's favorite UI programmer, maybe fishing for an answer might work

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Swipth Sancroix
#48 - 2011-09-20 13:27:34 UTC
I like the change with a couple of caveats. First, I prefer Helvetica Neue - but pay no mind to that, I'm no typographer. Second, I'm going to need to get use to the font-heights. My observation from your screen captures is that the old font is shorter and gives the illusion of extra font-weight and importance. I'm sure I'll grow accustom to all of this but I think I'll miss that meaty and blocky quality of the original Eve Sans.
Rees Noturana
Red Rock Mining Company
#49 - 2011-09-20 13:29:16 UTC
noise wrote:
Most would probably switch back to the original font just because that's what they are used to (Or their bot is programmed to read the old font).


For a bunch of sci-fi futurist types there sure is a lot of resistance to change. The again, I'm the guy on my project that dives in and breaks everything.

_ _
Kwa Zulu
The Graduates
The Initiative.
#50 - 2011-09-20 13:29:33 UTC
While I endorse the intention, the new font is ugly
Flynn Fetladral
Tempered Aggression
Seker Matar
#51 - 2011-09-20 13:32:25 UTC
This is a win for four-eyes like me with high-res screens the world over!

Oh and we used a little officer mods. KIDDING! We used a lot of officers mods, A LOT! Because we don’t :censored: around in low-sec.

@flynnfetladral on #tweetfleet
HaVoK023
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#52 - 2011-09-20 13:42:40 UTC
Readable but Ugly dont fit well with this game.

o7
Salpad
Carebears with Attitude
#53 - 2011-09-20 13:43:41 UTC
It's great to get a better and more readable font, but what about font sizes? Is EVE still limited to size 13 or less?

I play on a 1280x800 display so size 13 is actually too big for me (IIRC I use 11), but for players with big screens, the tiny font is a serious problem. Yet this dev blog does not address the font size issue at all.
ORCACommander
Obsidian Firelance Technologies
#54 - 2011-09-20 13:45:12 UTC
i see what you mean about the font riding high and ya it does look a bit wonky to me. i have always preferred electra or new caladonia though.
Mr M
Sebiestor Tribe
#55 - 2011-09-20 13:53:05 UTC
What? A readable font in my Eve? That we can have! *rabble* *rabble*

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Mar Drakar
LDK
#56 - 2011-09-20 13:53:42 UTC
Vyktor Abyss wrote:
Mar Drakar wrote:
Vyktor Abyss wrote:
For the love of God, please when you go changing things like this, give us the option to keep the old setting.

I hate the look of that font compared to the old one, and don't understand why you can't just give us a checkbox/drop down selection in our options to choose the font we use.

It is subjective whether it is better or not; I generally don't have an issue differentiating between the 6G& etc to be honest and when you make changes like this you should consider those who like or are used to the old way of things.

Make subjective changes OPTIONAL.


every optional thing for you means TWO supported possibly clusterfuxed hacks, and another option to store... and to read... and be aware while doing anything anywhere in the code.

so no, bye old font, welcome future.



It is idiotic attitudes like this (well you are a goon so...) that would have all old buildings bulldozed and have us all living in modern luxury cargo containers....Why? because its the future!!!!111elev..11! Deal with it!!

Just because it requires *slightly* more effort to upkeep does not mean it should not be done. Are regression tests checking a font with automation after each new release so hard? No. It is about quality of service.

This game is customer service driven don't forget, and upsetting long-standing customers for the sake of a little effort is generally not good business sense. And I'm not talking just this specific change, but CCPs other recent changes, like hangar view, turret icons and forums. Responding to customer feedback delivers a better product, and my feedback is make such changes 'optional'.

this is not *slightly* more, it is ALOT more.
suddenly for every label in every place you need to write TWO use cases using different rendering libs, and hell knows what else.
Also rendering was moved from python to c++ , so that makes TWO UI tests for different languages, that are bound to be run against different libs...
I bet they don't have ONE suit of test cases, so I'd give it to them if they built ONE suit, but once you didn't start with TDD it's helluva hard to get on this train.

oh and 2008 called, told me to tell you that "calling someone goon" belongs to them and they want it back .
Nonnori Ikkala
Love for You
#57 - 2011-09-20 14:02:07 UTC
I dance on the grave of enforced all-caps!
Ciar Meara
PIE Inc.
Khimi Harar
#58 - 2011-09-20 14:18:37 UTC
Myrhial Arkenath wrote:
As someone who wears contacts for Myopia (that's nearsightedness, or not being able to see well in the distance) I can't thank you enough. People who suffer from this will know that their contacts or glasses scale things down, making small text harder to read. It effectively means I have the font currently set to expanded, have have to bump it up twice from the default size to be able to read this. Have to admit, I play EVE on 1920*1200 because I enjoy my internet spaceships in all their splendor, but still. I hope with this font I don't have to tweak every conversation window or channel that I open and be able to just read everything without squinting. The screenshots are promising already.

PS: I agree it would be nice if we could control fonts more individually, and I like the idea of allowing us to choose from a series of fonts or to be able to use our own. Barring that, perhaps leave the old font available for a while and track usage statistics?


Dear god, you make wearing glasses sound like some kind of terrible affliction, really. Its good that there are fonts, but don't go crying about how wearing glasses makes your life so much worse. I wear glasses and contacts and I have never seen the world shrink before my very eyes.

I do like that eve now has a bigger better font, people will get used to it, change we can believe in!

- [img]http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/corp/janus/ceosig.jpg[/img] [yellow]English only please. Zymurgist[/yellow]
Aerilis
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#59 - 2011-09-20 14:23:52 UTC
Hey Punkturis, you misspelled front--oh wait, I see what you did there Big smile
Alexandra Alt
Doomheim
#60 - 2011-09-20 14:31:33 UTC

After a small twitter talk with CCP Punkturis, had to bring the subject here for several reasons, mainly due to character limitations but also for proper feedback channels regarding this specific feature.

Wouldn't it be beneficial in the long term the implementation of a dynamic window handling based on font size instead of having to change statically windows (most likely I'm guessing, margins/padding etc) to accommodate the new font ?

I do realize this isn't something you guys would be doing in the future often, or at all, but by implementing a dynamic window handling of font size would allow the adding of new and quite welcome features like font sizes on the whole UI.

I would think probably the addition of scrollbars for textareas would be the best option if text exceeds the window size instead of resizing the window, and for headers/titles etc that would need to be resized (with the whole window resize being the last option if text width exceeds the window size)

p.s. : I'm really not a fan of 'static' settings, it increases the work require in the future for changes involving related stuff and increases the probability of breaking something as static stuff tends to be spread out along several files/code

Best regards,