Black text on white background…

[stan]

I find all these "choose your adventure" text games with black text on white background really really ugly, in addition to hurting my eyes due to the white… Can’t you do better?

Won’t subscribe to this thread because I’m sure stupid 12 year old trolls will reply. Just wanted to voice my opinion… I don’t know if I would buy your games if they weren’t black on white, but I certainly click "not interested" as soon as I see how they look.

[Wraith_Magus]

Speaking as someone who does enjoy these, having options about font size or color choice are perfectly reasonable. A 150% zoom and green text on black background option would make thigns easier on the eyes at night.

"Stupid 12 year old trolls," for that matter, are attracted to threads about whether games should exist or not. There would be no reason such comments would be attracted if you don't provoke such things.

[DrMcCoy]

If this game is like any other ChoiceScript games on Steam (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), there is an easy-ish workaround for this. But only if you're running GNU/Linux or Mac OS X. There you can modify the "style.css" file. It's a normal cascading style sheet, as you would find accompanying normal HTML websites.

On GNU/Linux, the file is in the root directory of the game installation; on Mac OS X, its in the Contents/Resources/deploy/ directory within the .app (which is a normal folder).

On Windows, unfortunately, IIRC, the whole game contents is within a zip file stuffed into the resource fork of the EXE. This is much harder to access, and also harder to put back into after modifying. On Windows, PE Explorer can do that, as far as I know, but that's a commercial tool that costs money.

[headholo]

Try PE Explorer trial version.

[Sapheire]

I've replied to something simlar about CoG's games before, but in the interest of CoG possibly seeing this, I agree.

I am an older gamer. These types of games harken back to choose your own adventure-style novels of my younger years, but the black text on white screen is very hard on my eyes. I've got eye floaters that I barely notice on colored backgrounds, so the option of changing the color to ANY darker color would be amazingly helpful.

[psychocygnet]

Seems reasonable, although I don't know what they'd have to add to the engine to make this possible. If you can change the contrast level on other pages and programs, why not make it possible on text-based games like this?

[KEV1N]

It is an ugly game. The Fighting Fantasy ones made an effort.

[α E-MAN-cipation Ω]

I just click *not interested* whenever I stumble opon these so they'll hopefully never show up in my steam again.

[Zoopy]

Originally posted by scavenge:

I just click *not interested* whenever I stumble opon these so they'll hopefully never show up in my steam again.

And then you go to their forums anyway?

Logic is not to be had here.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by psychocygnet:

Seems reasonable, although I don't know what they'd have to add to the engine to make this possible. If you can change the contrast level on other pages and programs, why not make it possible on text-based games like this?

Changing font and background are literally just a couple lines of code, which would take more time just loading the file and saving it than making the change. The only thing that would take effort would be adding another button and a couple options as a part of the GUI.

[Infected Mushroom]

Well clearly the other color backgrounds, and text color's will be paid dlc... AH HAH!

[Guilty Man]

Just wish to add my own desire for this functionality, it is a known fact that people can suffer strain from black on white or other colour combinations especialy when backlit, surely an option to change 2 RGB values can't be to hard to program?

Otherwise I would just like to add my appreciation that these simple text adventures are being made, I look forward to seeing more. Maybe group all of them under the "Choice of Games" publisher tag to make it easier to locate them on steam

[Roadie]

Originally posted by KEV1N:

It is an ugly game. The Fighting Fantasy ones made an effort.

This is exactly my thought.

For another comparison, look at Down Among the Dead Men on iOS. It's exactly the same UI (set of text, pick a choice), but it's both very thematic for the actual game, and it's much easier on the eyes.

Even the generic "black text on white background" could look much better, and would be far easier on the eyes, by coping the styling of reading-focused websites like Medium.com.

The current version just feels lazy, like the dev is just dumping a poorly made default CSS file into every CoG project.

[bb]

Originally posted by Roadie:

like the dev is just dumping a poorly made default CSS file into every CoG project.

fairly sure it is. on some older CoG games on steam, (iirc) you could edit the css file in installation directory directly. at some point they patched it to remove this ability tho (not sure why, people are always asking for colour/zoom changes on CoG steam games).

[mpeijzel]

So far, I have had no problems reading the text on the black/white screen.

I agree that it should be easy to implement a feature where the viewer/reader can choose between several background colours and several text colours.
This way, people who like the black-on-white can keep it as it is, but people who have trouble reading this, have an option to change it.

People who do have trouble reading the screens in this game, might be able to adjust the contrast and brightness on their computer monitor. If the brightness hurts your eyes, then just lower the brightness of your monitor. That might help.

[Rwelk]

I do like games like these. Have to agree on the background/ text stuff mentioned above, but this game is really cool, and I've been liking it a lot. Boycotting a game simply because of the design choice seems kind of silly. I still kind of wish they would put more effort into design them, though, like adding that changable text/background, or even adding a voice option. That would be cool.