Screenshots

[Sara-chan]

Gah. I'm trying to read the text box, but my eyes are actually getting distracted and I keep jumping. WHAT TRICKERY IS THIS?!

Yeah... Though it may be less the font and more the sheer lack of space between lines.
Which I suppose can't really be helped, though, so maybe a thinner font would make it more readable.

[BRPXQZME]

It's both.

Here we have a font that makes letters look a bit too uniform (so we need to do a bit more work than usual to determine individual letters), and line spacing that makes it difficult to tell where ascenders and descenders stick out (so we can't tell the shapes of words). At least with what I believe about readability personally (N.B.: it's not exactly a settled science), it's really best to have both for body text. That and proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation when applicable.

It's not as bad if you blow it up to a screen size appropriate for an NES game, but personally I would still revise that.

[Paul Jensen]

I noticed a typo: "their" should be "there".

HTH

[justin3009]

- Boredom.

6 PC's in the menu.  Removed the 'ST' line in hopes of creating symbols instead to display your status.
6th PC works in menu in every area.  Redid some code as well as the PC X/Y coordinate code was so horribly bad.
Working on this somewhat in battle.

[FlamePurge]

Looks pretty awesome! Say Justin, if you ever come across the text table and/or the menu font(s), would you send them my way? Not going out of my way to request them but just letting you know that I'd appreciate them.

[Klonoa]

Eh not much new my romhack is stuck on a Laptop I can't seem to find the charger was toying with Kuwanger's stage x___x;;

[Gideon Zhi]

Good news, everyone!

WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN

Anyway, buggy, heavily WIP, crashy, font not final, hard to read, poor color choice on the part of the original programmers, not above mucking with palettes, etc, etc. But mostly seems to have solved the whole rom expansion issue. At least, for now...

VWF code courtesy of LostTemplar from IRC

[Gemini]

I would suggest not using my old crappy Chrono Cross menu font. Replace it with a bold font (maybe Verdana? I think that's the font face I've based it on) and make it slightly shorter, it should definitively help readability. In alternative, make the border black and the actual character pixels grey.

[Gideon Zhi]

That's actually the intention. It looks fine when the developers were reasonable about their palette choices:


I went with that particular shot because it's not the very first string that appears in-game.

Edit:

Alternate font:

[yuka]

RS2! Can't wait! 

[Garoth Moulinoski]

I can read this one. The one left to it, not so much.

...if you wanted an opinion. ._.

[Gideon Zhi]

The one left to it, not so much.

I have absolutely no control over what color the game decides to paint its text boxes at runtime >_<



I'm very tempted to try to hack the palettes so that the box colors are uniform, but I don't know what side-effects that may end up having.

[BRPXQZME]

I think that's why Gemini suggested the thicker font, but hey, hacking also works.

[Garoth Moulinoski]

I have absolutely no control over what color the game decides to paint its text boxes at runtime >_<

Oh. Eww. :/ So that's what you meant in your other post. Why would they do that?!

[Gemini]

I would answer "KONAMI KRAAAAACK!" to that question but the game doesn't seem like it's coming from Konami. If a bold font isn't an option as it takes quite a lot of room on screen, I'd suggest to go and kill the stupid dither effect used to simulate a transparent dialog box. Something like a proper transparency effect should work way better (using a HDMA channel for that shouldn't be much of a hassle, I've seen other hacks taking this route) and improve readability at the same time.

[LostTemplar]

I tried that a few years ago, but I had troubles with sprite priorities. Some sprites were just always displayed in front of the dialog box.

[DarknessSavior]

I would bold that font. When it's white, it's perfect. When it's black, it's still pretty hard to read.

I also can't wait for RS2.

~DS

[BRPXQZME]

I would answer "KONAMI KRAAAAACK!" to that question but the game doesn't seem like it's coming from Konami.

Doesn't matter. Nobody should ever forget that Konami Crack is a thing.

[cj iwakura]

Endings are in!

[Spikeman]

Image on the left is generated by my program. Image on the right is from the game, for comparison.

Making progress here.

Edit:

(link to larger image)