FreeGameDev

HUD rank
During holiday's i made something that is needed for this kind of game: a clear and bigger hud for rank . I based my work on an opensource font (Hand Drawn Shape) that was the greatest i found for this. It is pretty simple to make but takes lot's of time.
I will upload my .xcf package soon and show you some illustrations.
I personnaly think this numbers and letters need a small dark outline
http://www.dafont.com/fr/search.php?q=hand+drawn

It's a good idea but far too massive.

charlie {l Wrote}:It's a good idea but far too massive.

i agree it was just to show the design of this font.

First some little nit-picking : It's :"1st", not "1th"

Second, it overall looks nice if we scale it down a bit, but I see one major issue : translations. People will want to see "1er" in french, etc. I'm not sure how to cleanly resolve that, I'd like to avoid creating yet another irrlicht bitmap font

Auria {l Wrote}:First some little nit-picking : It's :"1st", not "1th"

Sorry for the mistake, this is just an illustration.

Auria {l Wrote}:Second, it overall looks nice if we scale it down a bit, but I see one major issue : translations. People will want to see "1er" in french, etc. I'm not sure how to cleanly resolve that, I'd like to avoid creating yet another irrlicht bitmap font

I can create other letters, i just realize there is a much faster way than what I did at the rate of some letters per W-E (impossible during the week)

Aaah, that's something I mentionned a while ago, and I'm glad you started to tackle this problem
Auria >> when you add an Irrlicht font, do you need to use room for all letters? In any case I don't see why a font would be needed, and you would need to take into account varying sizes for correctly placing the "th", "st", etc... Easier way would probably be to go with some textures and exceptions per language, no?

On the font itself, it looks good to me, though the gold color for 1st looks a bit too much like the color for worse ranks...maybe those ones could use another color? But that's not a big problem anyway

Funto, regarding your idea of "Easier way would probably be to go with some textures and exceptions per language, no?", I think this is a bad idea. The reason : just look at the number of languages we support. We currently have something like 53 languages in STK! I really don't want to start assembling images for each language

Hum maybe...
Note that with a font, you will need to have a way to handle the different colors (think of the "e" in "1er" and "2ème" in French).
Maybe we could handle languages which lack translation with default images with only the numbers? Or maybe just English would be enough...
One should check how this is done in commercial games (although I think generally they support less languages than STK ^^).

Can this be done in this way?



(Sorry for my lack of english and any artistic skill^^)

Note: I like all the info in one side of the screen.

Greetings.

Funto {l Wrote}:Maybe we could handle languages which lack translation with default images with only the numbers? Or maybe just English would be enough...
One should check how this is done in commercial games (although I think generally they support less languages than STK ^^).

I agree and i think this game does need this kind of feature. Maybe 6 or 7 languages are enough, i will look at this this W-E

Totoplus62 {l Wrote}:

Funto {l Wrote}:Maybe we could handle languages which lack translation with default images with only the numbers? Or maybe just English would be enough...
One should check how this is done in commercial games (although I think generally they support less languages than STK ^^).

I agree and i think this game does need this kind of feature. Maybe 6 or 7 languages are enough, i will look at this this W-E

I think we should try to support all languages, since this is basically what STK is already doing by displaying "1/9" - and I can't see a reason why we can't use this here as well (the font needs to be a bit smaller though).

The other issue is integrating this in the default HUD (which includes the speedometer). Trying to remove the speedometer by default was met with huge resistance, that's why we implemented two different HUDs. Still they should be as similar as possible, so whatever we do here should also work in the default HUD.

Cheers,
Joerg

In my oppinion there are only a few changes needed to improve the racing HUD.

• 1: increase the outline width a bit and /or make it darker
• 2: make the font a bit bigger to make it easier to recognize:
  The bitmaps has to be modified. The offsets of each character would change. Is that correct?
• 3: colorize the font of the "place display" according to the players place (golden == 1st place, silver == 2nd place, bronze == 3rd place, white == rest)
  This can be done in-game if I am correct.
• 4: outline the track minimap to make it better visible where the background is bright/white
  I guess that is harder to implement but I am not sure. The minimap is generated in-game if I am not wrong. How much effort would it be to implement this?

In German, ordinals are absurdly simple. Just write the rank number followed by a point. The point stands for the suffix „-ter” or „-ster” of the written word.

„1.” = „Erster“ (translates to “1st” = “first”)
„2.” = „Zweiter“ (translates to “2nd” = “second”)
„3.” = „Dritter“ (translates to “3rd” = “third”)
„4.” = „Vierter“ (translates to “4th” = “fourth”)
and so on, ad infinitum. Please note that the point is not written in superscript.

I think other people should contribute the rules for ordinals of other languages so these can be respected. So far we have the rules of English, German and French (roughly).

Scottish Gaelic (gd):

1st/11th = 1ad/11ad
2nd/12th: 2na/12nd
3rd/13th: 3s, 13s
Xth: Xmh (all other numbers)

No superscript.

Dutch (nl): we have two styles for abbreviating ordinals.

Either the long way, in which you write the latest syllable of the ordinal:

• until 20 all with suffix -de, for example
  2de
  3de
• except for the following:
  1ste
  8ste
  20ste
• then, until 100, all with suffix -ste, for example
  42ste
  100ste
• finally, you use the same suffix for (for example) 23, 123 and 723, so
  723ste
  but well, who drives with 723 karts anyway

Or the short way, just use the suffix -e:

simply
1e
2e
...
20e

Which form to use is just personal style, I recommend just implementing the short form if it is less work.

There is no agreement about whether the suffixes should be written in superscript. I always do so, but I now read on Wikipedia that it is "advised" (but not an official rule) by the Taalunie (Dutch Language Union) not to use superscript.

Let's keep it simple and not use this at all. 1/4 is good enough.

Arthur {l Wrote}:Let's keep it simple and not use this at all. 1/4 is good enough.

Yes, I agree. Seeing the different systems in all those languages, it would probably need a complicated definition file for every language to define the correct format. And I think that "1/4" looks just as good...

If we want something language-specific there (since I don't know if "1/4" would be understood in all languages), we could perhaps introduce a string "%0 of %1", to produce for example "1 of 4"? The "1" could then perhaps be shown in a larger font. However, I don't know if this proposal works in all languages

What? Throw away the entire proposal? Noooo!

The best thing on this proposal is of course this: big numbers! You can’t throw away this!

Oh, and about that ordinal thing: I have a very simple idea to get around the ordinal thing so the poor programmers do not have to write code for every language. I noticed SuperTuxKart allows up to 20 karts. So why not simply add 20 translatable strings instead of adding rules for each language? For each rank from 1st to 20th there is one translatable string (for the short form). That may be a bit redundant for most languages but it will work and is dead simple.
I hope it is safe to assume that SuperTuxKart won’t support more than 20 karts anytime soon.

Big numbers are okay, if we're able to fit it somewhere. Though since people screamed wolf when the minimal race GUI came about, I don't really see how it would fit in the normal one without cluttering things even further. Without the speedometer it's easy to find room.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:What? Throw away the entire proposal? Noooo!

The best thing on this proposal is of course this: big numbers! You can’t throw away this!

I agree

I think i have a great alternative !


This is just an illustration: we can change the size of everything
The number colors can still change with rank; thanks to this solution you don't have to make traductions ! (And you will not have more than 20 players! It can be also 1/8 ^^). We can also make change the size of number depending on rank (1 bigger than 12 for example)

"/20" is not longer than "st", "th" etc...

I also think i have to add a very little black outline.

Arthur {l Wrote}:Though since people screamed wolf when the minimal race GUI came about, I don't really see how it would fit in the normal one without cluttering things even further. Without the speedometer it's easy to find room.

This is simple: Just do like in W-Disney Magical racing tour:

Add an option in the menu for "normal" gui that make you choose between the map and the speedometer !

Totoplus62 {l Wrote}:

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:What? Throw away the entire proposal? Noooo!

The best thing on this proposal is of course this: big numbers! You can’t throw away this!

I agree

I don't think anyone wanted to throw the whole idea away - just (as I have written before) we don't want to support a ... let's say too-language-specific hud design. Using "Laps: 1/9" and "Rank: 19/20" works fine in all languages. Not sure if 'Laps' etc is needed (though probably it is). Perhaps in case of number of karts even the '/X' might not be necessary, e.g. "19/20" or "Rank: 19" would both work fine.

The big fonts do have a space problem (that's why I designed the minimal gui originally). Seeing that a lot of people like the speedometer, I have to admit that removing it is not really an option. And using another key to switch between map and speedometer is out of the question, and I don't like the idea of a menu setting.

As a brainstorming idea: what about alternating the display? E.g. one second we display Lap, one second the rank?

Cheers,
Joerg

I think alternating would quickly get annoying and attract too much attention

Even if a key for switching between speedometer and map is a question to discuss - I don't agree with this idea but will prefer that it be a setting in menus - a display alternating will be a big mistake, I think.

For example : there are those who prefer have a look on the map and those who prefer keep an eye on counter.

And, in my opinion, 'cause STK doesn't have a custom mode - customization would be fun for history mode, and selecting kart design a minimum in all modes - STK players much look at the map …

Just put the nitro bar on the speedometer like in many games ( And don't touch the nitro bar for the minimal race GUI)
So the speedometer will be more usefull !
Then put the number of laps under the minimap

Now you have space on the top right and the whole HUD is more clear.


Nfs hot pursuit for example

Then what do you think of this solution for translations (2/20 on this picture for example) --->

[quote=hiker]Perhaps in case of number of karts even the '/X' might not be necessary, e.g. "19/20" or "Rank: 19" would both work fine.
[/quote]

I think it will be useful to know how many players are in a online race(someday ).