Smooth Fonts

[Graen]

Small request:
Will the game get support for Anti-Aliasing for Fonts?  Right now if I replace the standard font with something more stylized it looks like ass and is unreadable at small sizes.

Thanks.

[delta224]

It should be easy to do from what I've read about it.  Let me see how it will look then I will report back.

[Graen]

Cool, thanks!

[delta224]

Looks so much nicer, will be part of the next release.
 
Now lets see how the mono spaced font looks.
 
[edit]
looks better not quite there.

[Graen]

Looks so much nicer, will be part of the next release.
 
Now lets see how the mono spaced font looks.

Awesomely-Awesome 

[Dagoth]

Cool.
Might be a good idea to also add a config option where users can disable the font antialiasing if they are running on an old (old) system where it might affect game performance and responsiveness.

[delta224]

That is easy to do.

[Mehzerz]

Would it be completely necessary? How old are we talking here?

[Dagoth]

Would it be completely necessary? How old are we talking here?

Better safe than sorry. I looked into SDL's rendering method and it cautioned that the antialiasing greatly slows it down and it shouldn't be used for text which will need to update often and so forth; I'm also not sure how efficient the game's rendering pipeline is set up.
It works perfectly smoothly on my system, but again, better safe than sorry; if there's a config option to disable it, anyone who did have poor performance (or some other reason to not want font antialiasing on) could change it easily and everyone else could simply ignore the option.
As for exactly how old of a system might notice degraded performance... I imagine pretty old, probably, but it remains to be seen.

[Graen]

As for exactly how old of a system might notice degraded performance... I imagine pretty old, probably, but it remains to be seen.

I've got a ten year old compy I can run the game on, so I'll let you know if it slows down with AA Fonts.

[exodia91]

how about having it set to disabled at default, that way anyone who really cares can change it, and all the people who just grab the game and play and won't know to disable if they have bad performance won't flood the forums with "OMGZZZ I CNT RN T!!!11!!!"

[Graen]

how about having it set to disabled at default, that way anyone who really cares can change it, and all the people who just grab the game and play and won't know to disable if they have bad performance won't flood the forums with "OMGZZZ I CNT RN T!!!11!!!"

I'd rather see it on by default, and I highly doubt it'll be an issue.  If my PIII-450 can handle it, then I really don't think you'd have to worry about the vast majority of people who play the game.

[Mehzerz]

Both sides are valid arguments. I know there's quite a few players with old machines. But I don't see it as being very common for something like this.


But my vote would go have it off by default, just in case something like that DOES happen. Unless the game gets the config screen actually in-game. Where the settings will be less of a problem for newer players.

[Graen]

Unless the game gets the config screen actually in-game. Where the settings will be less of a problem for newer players.

I'm assuming that eventually there will indeed be a config screen in game.  That said, I'd still like to see all the features enabled by default as most people won't be bothered to see if the game can be customized in any way.

[delta224]

I'm not too worried about the slowdown, since all this game has to be is responsive and sdl slow is more you will get half the fps is you use this function over that function.