Ingame Text is broken (Mac)

[zorro300]

On Mac Os x Lion the text ingame is broken on the latest build 183.

http://i.imgur.com/xuKjP.png
http://i.imgur.com/pu3hp.png

Is this also happening on other OS ?

For me it happens on the .dmg build for mac and on the .jar build

[godleydemon]

its because some had the bright idea to put the text into unicode. Which broke it pretty much. Because its not broken in Win7 but it looks horrid.

[Daniel-Griffiths]

I am also getting the same issue

[ervilsoft]

Yea, lowercase chars are not displayed correctly and on Win7 they look awful

[zorro300]

Please fix it then :)

[danielduner]

This is a bug in Mac only: the awt colors work differently for some reason.

The Windows thing is expected behaviour. Just change texts.properties to use uppercase if you don't want the game to use the fallback font.

[danielduner]

I would consider this a bug in the Mac implementation of Java/AWT. But I have no way of testing how this quirk/bug works, as MacOSX is a non-free operating system that runs on specialized hardware. I will be able to create a work around, but it might take some time (a day or two). For the time being: make sure to change texts.properties to upper-case text where it should be uppercase, which will hide 99% of the problems.

[Daniel-Griffiths]

The best solution is to run Mac OSX in a virtual machine. That way you can at least test it without having to go out and purchase a Mac.

[mkalam-alami]

A related issue: I noticed encoding problems for special chars (French translation for instance). Impressive work on these fonts anyway, congrats @danielduner

[danielduner]

See #518 for the quick fix of making text upper-case again (by changing texts.properties)

@BubblegumBalloon
I'm not going to pay money for a non-free operating system. But I know how to solve the problem. I'll simply generate the character and shadow on different bitmaps and then merge the two pictures, after I have added the gradient on the main character. It should be very easy to fix once I get the time and it will result in more readable code.

@mkalam-alami
Thank you for noticing :)
I've put quite a bit of work into this code, to really try to imitate the original fonts. There are a few bugs and oversights left to hammer out, but when I started I never thought it was going to get this good.

Could you create an issue for the encoding problems? It might have to do with not using latin-1 encoding for the .properties files (.properties files are stupidly enough defined to use latin-1 instead of UTF-8). But it's hard to tell without knowing what the problem is.

[mkalam-alami]

Encoding issue: #521

[Daniel-Griffiths]

@danielduner Ops sorry I totally forgot you would have to buy a disk of the OS before running it in a VM and I totally dont expect you to go out of your way to do that!

Also I really appreciate you taking your time to fix this bug. :)

[danielduner]

@BubblegumBalloon
It's not just a matter of me going out of my way, it's actually against my principles to economically support non-free operating systems :)
But no worries, I will be able to create a work around anyway - thanks to your images.

[Daniel-Griffiths]

If it was up to me I would primarily and probably only use Ubuntu. However I rely on a lot of software which doesn't exist on linux or there is not an equal alternative so thats why I have to use Mac and Windows.

One of the main reasons I use Windows is actually for games. If all the games that ran on windows ran on linux (without the use of something like wine) then I would probably never use it. Thats why I always support the humble bundles, to try and push more games to linux.

[danielduner]

Sounds good, hopefully you can move to Ubuntu over time :)
Anyway, this is a cross platform game and I will do my best to support all platforms!

[godleydemon]

I really don't like the lower case characters. I'd rather see them upper case in game. But I think I know why its done this way, for better support for other languages. :p

[danielduner]

@godleydemon
The game shows what is entered in texts.properties. Right now all that text is lower-case, so the game shows lower-case. This will be fixed by: #518

[danielduner]

The problem with the bad Mac font may be solved now in SHA: d6dc4e6

Could someone with a Mac check this?

[Daniel-Griffiths]

Its not fixed but it is improved. :)

[danielduner]

Thank you. I will keep working on it.

[danielduner]

I have identified the problem.

I am using the default SansSerif font, which is different for different operating systems. It looks great on Ubuntu (11.04), like crap on Windows and horrible on Mac. I will simply have to set the font to something more specific than "default sansserif"

This is what I get:

[danielduner]

@BubblegumBalloon or @zorro300 or some other Mac-user
Can you check if the Mac problem is solved now? And post a picture?

I have added font-files to the project (from the Ubuntu font family), instead of relying on the operating system's fonts.
SHA: 34e641c

[Daniel-Griffiths]

Somehow it still doesn't work sorry, im not sure if it looks better than in the last pic. I think its the same.

[danielduner]

I.. I.. I don't even..

Do you have the project up and running in Eclipse? Can you run some test-code for me?

[Daniel-Griffiths]

Yeah sure. :)

[danielduner]

Can you use the change in this commit:
SHA: a1268d7

Then run the game (just the title screen) and paste the System.out output here

[Daniel-Griffiths]

This is what I got:

Map info added: /levels/level1.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/AsymeTrical.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/CataBOMB.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/Siege.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/TheMaze.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/Circular Shapes.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/BlackHole.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/RailRoads.bmp(vanilla)
Map info added: /levels/DevMap.bmp(vanilla)
Looking for levels: /Users/Daniel/Library/Application Support/mojam/levels
Found level: . DS_Store

Starting up SoundSystem...
Initializing Java Sound
(The Java Sound API. For more information, see http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/sound/)
JavaSound initialized.

t: Ubuntu-Bold
a: Ubuntu-Bold
r: Ubuntu-Bold
o: Ubuntu-Bold
s: Ubuntu-Bold
i: Ubuntu-Bold
n: Ubuntu-Bold
w: Ubuntu-Bold
p: Ubuntu-Bold
l: Ubuntu-Bold
y: Ubuntu-Bold
e: Ubuntu-Bold
v: Ubuntu-Bold
d: Ubuntu-Bold
x: Ubuntu-Bold

[Daniel-Griffiths]

I even tried manually installing the ubuntu fonts afterwards and trying it again but it still didnt work. :/

[danielduner]

Thank you. The font seems to be loading correctly.

I'm at a bit of a loss. I'll see if I can think of something later. In the mean time, we'll have to prioritize #518

[Daniel-Griffiths]

No worries, at least the font is readable now. :)

[danielduner]

Okay, a final attempt for the night. Can you pull Maescool/master and see if the problem is solved. Or at least if something looks different?

[Daniel-Griffiths]

You are a genius you fixed it! :)

[danielduner]

(anti-aliasing was turned on by default in your Java version but not in mine)

[danielduner]

Aw, crap, the shadows are still a bit off. But we're getting closer!

[Daniel-Griffiths]

Ah yes your right! The priority can be knocked down now since the text is perfectly fine but its slightly 'off' compared to how it looks on other OS's

It actually looks like the font is a little different too.

[danielduner]

Good idea! Priority set to low.

The font is new, so it should look a bit different. I will rewrite the shadow system and then post an image of what it looks like for me.

[danielduner]

Try it now?

It's not perfect for me, but pretty good:

[Daniel-Griffiths]

Heres how it looks now


The shadows have definitely changed, I would say it looks better.

[danielduner]

Now it looks better on Mac than on Linux facepalm
For some reason things are still rendered differently on the different platforms.

But mission accomplished! Thank you for your excellent and speedy assistance!

[Daniel-Griffiths]

No probs Daniel. Thanks for making the font better. :)