So I’m stuck in the sewer with the chick and I see a name. I realized that I need to call that name, but its better said than done. I can only read the first name. It says “Francesco” but the last is chicken scratch to me. Can someone read it?
You’ve blocked the first and most important part of the name since the names are sorted alphabetically (first names first).
His full name is Otto Francesco Nauolla.
His phone number is 7298.
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Oh. they looked like bullet holes around an # symbol.
that’s probably why.
I see. This font can be hard to decipher sometimes.
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These threads are interesting for two reasons.
- New people coming to the game via the epic store offer.
- Same old problems as always.
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Yes, but those are the only issues for now.
This means the HintTron 3000™ is working great, @jenn did an awesome job!
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First time I saw it I read: Otto Francesco Nutella
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the chick? I could get you arrested for that. Too much paperwork though.
What’s up with all the feathered *beeping* life stock?!
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Really?
Frankly I’m surprised so many people experimented issues with it.
I’m starting to think it’s not only because of the font, or the fact that it is pixelated. I think it has to do with the fact that some people, especially if they have slight dyslexic traits, have difficulty in reading words which make no sense. Now that I think of it, the vast majority of the names people can’t read aren’t common names as “Mark” “John” or “James”, but peculiar names which could be considered as meaningless words.
And probably this could explain also the fact that, once read on the wall, some people can’t find the name in the phonebook, where it is written in a different, much clearer font.
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There are three different issues we’ve got lately:
- Problems reading the name, which comes down to recognising the individual letters since names can be anything and non-English names are even more problematic.
- Problems finding the name: Not knowing you can flip the pages (multiple pages per letter). This is more of an usability issue (multiple ways for navigating: letters on the right, arrows in the bottom…).
- Problems finding the name: Just overlooking it.
Point 1 is a valid one and something which could be improved by modifying the font.
Some letters are getting quite squashed together, lower case ‘L’ and ‘t’ for instance.
I’ve made a comparison screenshot with increased spacing in this thread:
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Yeah, but what about a subject who can’t read the name on the wall, and when you reveal it, he can’t find it in the book? Two coincidences, you know, make a clue…
I agree with Nor.
Furthermore, the font anti-aliasing contributes in decreasing the contrast towards the wall. The high pixelization for the little height of the letters, the cursive font (non orthogonal grid) make everything worse. Unfortunately the font is sometimes at the edge of readability.
It’s more our brain trying to find a known word to compare to, because the real one is sometimes almost unreadable.
E.g. Nauolla: I cannot say if the second letter is a “a” or a “o”. Same goes for the fourth letter: is it a “o”, or a “e”?
I wonder if it’s somewhat easy to just change the font and its color to improve readability.
Yes, the font is scrawly (on purpose), and paired with its anti-aliasing it’s just hard to read.
The ‘o’ often looks like ‘c’ to me.
I can only read this example for sure by comparing the existing letters, e.g. there are ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘o’ which are clearly those letters and I can match those with Nauolla.
But, like Ema said, this is only possible because I know Francesco is a typical name/word.
Beside increasing spacing we could also reduce transparency and/or change the colour.
When you say so, chances you are an alter-ego of Ron Gilbert pop up highly in my mind for a while
Yes, Ema’s theory is good too, but it goes beyond the objective displaying flaws of the font. I too believe there will be people still having difficulties with a much clearer font, but at least the issues related to the font itself will be solved.
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Excellent. The more you go right and down, the more clear it gets.
1296 ? 
I thought you had to call 911
Anyway, I remember not finding the name initially myself, due to the alphabetical ordering by first instead of by last name. Which is different than just overlooking it.
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You must have missed the argument about this first-names-first-or-last thing back in the blog days.
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Nah, I didn’t. But I think I got a weird name in 3 parts that turned out to be sorted on the second one or something.