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Game Design > Lines of text in an RPG

#17707 - poslundc - Sat Mar 13, 2004 12:32 am

I'm toying with the text system for my RPG... the problem with the GBA is the squat screen makes it difficult to display more than a few lines of text. I think I'd really like to manage four, though, which puts it back on par with the SNES RPGs.

Without telling me to get another font (I like this one), have a look at the following two images and tell me what you think:

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

(Ignore the status-bars at the top of the screen; this is intended for the travel mode.)

The first one includes an extra pixel leading between lines for a more spaced-out effect, but means the window takes more space and obscures the bottom quater of sprites at the centre of the window.

The second one is a much less-imposing window (8 pixels shorter), but the lines are forced together much more compactly (no leading between lines). I included a couple of the taller glyphs from the font (the parentheses) so you could see them touching.

Keeping in mind that the window can appear on the upper or lower half of the screen depending on the circumstances, which do you prefer? Or would you just tell me to bite the bullet and go with a three-line system?

Thanks,

Dan.

#17716 - ScottLininger - Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:07 am

Dan,

I say lose the leading. The font seems perfectly legible in the 2nd version. (Although it might be easier to judge with a paragraph of typical text in there rather than "Line 1, Line 2")

The 1st one feels too claustophobic to me.

So when are you going to have a complete demo ready to share? Looking forward to it...

Scott

#17717 - dagamer34 - Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:30 am

The first one takes up too much space. The second seems better for a game.

I would prefer to have 3. It's a compromise.
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#17720 - poslundc - Sat Mar 13, 2004 4:02 am

ScottLininger wrote:
So when are you going to have a complete demo ready to share? Looking forward to it...


Hopefully the demo will be ready in the next couple of months, but I'm not holding my breath.

When the time comes, I'll be posting for useability/beta testers, so you can feel free to keep an eye out for it.

I think I will do the smaller window and see how it goes with the four-line system. I can always reduce it to three if need be.

Dan.

#18262 - sgeos - Tue Mar 23, 2004 6:06 am

I prefer the second one.

-Brendan

#20272 - plasticsoul - Wed May 05, 2004 10:40 pm

why don't you make the text field translucent?


-Maitland

#20275 - dagamer34 - Thu May 06, 2004 2:11 am

^^ He's a smart one!!
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(

#20276 - poslundc - Thu May 06, 2004 2:56 am

Because the effects register is being used to simulate fog (only visible when the camera tilts into Mode 7).

(There is always supertransparency, but I don't know how good it would look with an entire backdrop layer.)

Dan.

#20286 - tepples - Thu May 06, 2004 3:52 pm

F-Zero's fog occupies only the top half of the screen. You could use fog on the top of the screen and translucency on the bottom by using a vcount-triggered ISR to change the blending mode.
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-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#20299 - poslundc - Thu May 06, 2004 7:08 pm

My engine allows arbitrary positioning of the camera (as opposed to Mode 7 games that use a fixed camera pitch and distance), which means I need to be able to show fog on any scanline where the camera is sufficiently distant from the ground.

Even if this weren't the case, there is a need to show much larger windows than the standard "text" window for menus, choosing spells, etc. so I can't rely on restricting the windows to being on the bottom third of the screen.

Dan.

#20301 - sajiimori - Thu May 06, 2004 7:34 pm

Can't you dynamically set the "cutoff point", depending on how high the text goes? Granted, I've never used any hblank interrupts.

#20303 - poslundc - Thu May 06, 2004 7:50 pm

The point is that on any given scanline the effects register can only be doing one thing. If the fog suddenly stops in order to make a window translucent, it would look very awkward.

Also, not all windows consume the entire width of the screen.

Dan.

#20304 - NEiM0D - Thu May 06, 2004 8:28 pm

You can use the 'diagonal' pattern with pixels with palette index 0 for the window, this will make it sortof translucent.

#20305 - poslundc - Thu May 06, 2004 8:41 pm

I personally hate it when games do that. :)

Plus I have doubts as to how good it would look on the GBA's screen.

Dan.

#20306 - sajiimori - Thu May 06, 2004 8:47 pm

I dislike transparent text windows altogether. It just makes things harder to read. Every time I see one of those desktop screen captures of some Linux freak who has like 12 semi-transparent terminal windows open, it makes me wonder how they get any work done.