Consider this:
On your track creator, the font that provides instructions is 12 pixels high. (white pixels only)
On a 42" (106.68cm) TV, this equates to a physical height of less than 6mm.
At 13 feet, this resolves to a perceived height of around 1mm.
Have you ever tried reading a font that appears to be about 1mm high? As a comparison, on a 20" monitor @1680x1050, Arial at 8pts from 75cm is about 1.1mm. Try reading a page of text at that size, from 75cm and you will get an idea of what people have to deal with. I'm pretty sure you won't spend long reading text that small.
There is one fundamental aspect of game design that has to be considered as primarily important. That is "Is the information/content we display, perfectly visible at the optimal viewing distance for the average size display?". In the case of a 42" TV, that is from 7 to 14 feet. (213 to 426 centimetres)There is no excuse for that design aspect to ignored. The world isn't made up of gamers that have 20/20 vision. But a large percentage use their consoles at that distance. If your art director or producer isn't keeping a grip of something that basic, then you have problems.
You are not the first developer to fall foul of this, and I find the increasing frequency very alarming. As a professional games developer, I find a lack of consideration for the gamer, in favour for pure aesthetic content, extremely disturbing. Even more so, when there is no excuse for making critical text that small. I know German can cause issues with text formatting, but priority must be given to readability. If it isn't readable, then it's pointless... and if it's pointless, it might as well not be there. And we all know what a pain trying to come up with universal icons is... so give your text a reason to be there.
It's not even as though your on-screen indicators are in danger of falling outside the safe-frame. Spread them out, put the text on two lines, and make the font readable for the distances people use their consoles at. The text used in the messages isn't much better either.
I use a 19" widescreen, and RGB cables, so if it shows up on that, it's good enough for me.
It's not just for aesthetics though, you should either be using Component or a bigger TV by now. Much of the game would be wasted hard drive space if it had an option to 'dumb-down' the graphics for people still using tube TV's :/.
What on earth are you talking about? I am playing on a 42" Sony KDL-42W829B TV (a 2014 model), connected via HDMI, which is hardly a "tube TV". (I think you might find they're generally referred to as CRT televisions) I am also viewing it from 13 feet away, which is perfectly adequate for 95% of the games I play, because they've been developed properly. It is also within the optimal viewing distance window for that size screen, so it is not too small for the distance.Originally Posted by JolanXBL Go to original post
Incidentally, if you can find someone that has managed to connect their PS4 to a "tube TV" please send us photos, it would be interesting to see how much effort they put into converting a HDMI signal (sometimes carrying HDCP content), to a TV that has nothing better than a SCART socket.
The size of the font used, is too small to be viewed comfortably at that distance, on that size TV, unless you have perfect (or near perfect) vision. A huge percentage of people playing games do not have perfect vision. Or do you think that people without perfect vision shouldn't be playing games? Because I'm sure Sony and these developers have no problem taking money off them.
No offence, but your statement shows why one of us is a software developer, and the other isn't. To tell people they should be using a bigger TV, is not the right of the developer, anymore than a phone developer telling people to buy a bigger phone. People use the size of TV they choose to have (or in my case, can fit in the space available), and developers should be competent enough to cater for the people who don't want to buy the biggest set, just so they can read what's on screen.
It's why QA and testing was invented, so that they could get feedback on problems, and then deal with them *before* getting people to hand over money for the games. It seems some developers are just too used to using the people stupid enough to buy the games as testers these days. Which would be great if they actually gave a damn about the problems people have to live with, after buying them.
As for "wasting hard drive space with dumbed-down graphics"... did you really just say that to someone who developed games for a living??? Trust me, it ain't graphics that are dumbed-down these days.
Perhaps the attitude of "It's good enough for me, so sod everyone else" is starting to rub off on developers. Maybe they need to remember that they don't just develop games for themselves. I have no doubt that they sat in front of their nice big monitors attached to their dev kits and said "Well I can read it from here, so that's good enough". God help people that had phones with a 128x128 screen, if I had that attitude when I was doing J2ME projects.
Clearly I'm barking up an empty tree here. I'll just redirect my problem to Sony, to see if I can get a refund, and in future, this developer can go on the "Buy used games only" list.
Edit: I should have realised, getting a refund on a PSN game is highly unlikely... looks like I've been had this time. Can't wait for these new UK regulations to come in, to put an end to this problem of refunds for digital purchases..
People don't have to buy the biggest set but they shouldn't expect newer video to show up perfectly on older technology. We wouldn't need HD TV's if it was that clear on CRT. To cater to everyone would be costly as the majority of users are using bigger or clearer screens. You would need to include textures that looked clear at both 1200x1600 and 640x480 (or less); that's 2 copies of everything. That's a player with a small TV having to download textures they can't use. Grandma's TV still supports VHS but I don't see them bundled with DVD's.
Tell me what software you developed, and I'll let you know if it runs on my phone. If not then I'll expect a full compatibility update.
To find the optimal viewing distance for an HDTV you would want to select a television based on the following;Originally Posted by Tigerriot Go to original post
To find the minimum screen size for an "optimal" 13' viewing distance we would take the 13', convert to inches, 156", and divide by 3. This leaves you with a screen size of 52" for a "Minimum Optimal Screen Size" for your viewing distance.
To find the maximum screen size for an "optimal" experience at a 13' distance, we would convert the distance to inches, 156", and divide it by 2. This leaves you with a "Maximum Optimal Screen Size" of 78".
For your viewing distance I would recommend an television in the 65" range. Screens smaller than the minimum recommended will be difficult to see details on, and larger screens can cause disorientation.
I bump this.
The font is too small and the color is possibly wrong. When I highlight the text in the properties menu, it is impossible to see what number is shown, which requires me to constantly move the cursor off the sliders to see if I have the correct value chosen.
Please fix this soon as possible!