Prerelease/Expans 2.001Q (3 ship classes, .NET 2.0, font+, balance+, planet gfx)

[x4000]

Yes, I can confirm that. Steam only has issues with updated executables if the developer uses their drm, so far as I know. At any rate, with ai war it is not an issue. But, the steamworks features will not work in the prerelease versions simply because they are not compiled for that. That's the only issue.

[Spikey00]

I don't know if I'm more oriented towards a general "professional" look, but I find Arial far more easier to read (in general and aesthetics in formality).  At this current moment, a lot of the unit descriptions (judging from the lobby rollovers) are cut at times instead of being on the same line (1280 res);

ie. Z Elec Bomber Ship Cap: <new line>
25

Some of the text is cut off, eg. "Click a circled planet to select your starting position and bonus ship (right-click deselects).  Leave" ...  along with some other minor cutoffs, such as with the AI personality name (AI - Random Harder Non-Tech...).

[damador]

Right so, a question; Can I apply this directly onto the steam version, or will I need to install a non-steam version.. Or will steam automatically update?

or you can dig up the serial from steam and go to the AI website download retail version with serial from steam no more troubles

thats assuming that I have an issue with steam. On the contrary, I love steam. Besides the fact that its awesome, its also a DRM I understand. Not the mention the whole steam community bit..
Anyway, i actually did download the release version from this website, but as stated, I like steam too much, and so I never got around to installing it.

Now, an actual question in this post; I know that steam has issues with changing the exe file or associated files (for instance, you cannot use the beta patches for x3:terran conflict because of this). However, the exe file in the update .zip I downloaded and the one in the steam directory are different sizes..
Can someone confirm that all I need to do is paste over all of the steam files?

yes - also in X3 tc steam you can paste lates 2.6b1 patch over steam - it doeasnt use any protection since fina 2.5 release

[I-KP]

I prefered the old font.  This one just looks 'cluggy' and the kerning is off; difficult to read which is a serious drawback for a game like this.

I still think it would be a big help to have the planet names in team colours for at-a-glance galaxy map handiness.

[x4000]

Well, if someone knows of a free or cheap font that they can recommend as preferable, I am all ears.  But in general the old font was hated by most people (not most people here, but most reviewers and general commentators), and it's not something I can legally use anyway in the way I need to, so it's a moot point either way.  I don't mind spending even a few hundred dollars for a font if it's really good, but bear in mind that the vast majority of "free" fonts have strict clauses saying that they cannot be redistributed.  When you call to ask how much those are, typical quotes are then $2,000 to $10,000.  I'm not looking to spend that much.

In general, I much prefer the new font anyway.  There are a few issues with spacing and such, but I think those can be worked out.

[x4000]

Oh -- by the by.  The source of this font is here:  http://openfontlibrary.org/

It's one of the few truly free font libraries around.  There are many other fonts there beyond this one, by various authors.  If anyone has suggestions on fonts they would prefer to use from that repository (if those take tweaking or not), then feel free to speak up.  You can easily "mod" the game to use any font using the files in the Fonts folder of AI War, so it's easy to test how it looks in the actual game.  I had wanted something with a sci-fi look to it, but I'd settle for something ultra-clean and professional looking (and a hair more unique than Arial).

Depending, I could even mix and match the two fonts, with menus and other noncritical elements being more sci-fi looking, and the main ingame buttons and text being another font.  I'd experimented with that (literally, I spent 3.5 days working on this stupid font stuff), and this was by far the most readable and usable font I'd come up with... and even that took some heavy editing on my part because the line spacing was off, and certain other spacing issues, etc.

[Spikey00]

Reviewers didn't like the font...?  What?

All I want is a more "clean" looking font, I am more of the legible than creative; though, please if it takes too much of your time, I wouldn't mind the new font.

[x4000]

Yes, the font was specifically criticized in a number of reviews. Noting that it makes it look like a spreadsheet, etc. I am fine with having a more clean font, but even if I could use arial he way I need to, I would be very reluctant to do so given the amount of flak I have gotten for that in the past.

[eRe4s3r]

Mhh, i think readability comes before text style..

MS Sans Serif all the way for me ;p But that said - there is no good free font to my knowledge.. so aside from saying which font i like i couldn't really tell you which one to use

Verdana is still the best mass text font and MS Sans Serif is the best dialog/console font... imo Computer applications shouldn't divert from these font styles at all.

Test Test MS Sans Serif for president HOME - 1040 - Tis Arial
Test Test MS Sans Serif for president HOME - 1040 - Tis Tahoma
Test Test MS Sans Serif for president HOME - 1040 - Tis MS Sans Serif
Test Test MS Sans Serif for president HOME - 1040 - Tis Verdana

(Notice how MS Sans Serif condenses text better , and how Arial and Tahoma is the most condensed) (Tahoma is the sequel font of MS Sans Serif)

Sword of a Stars uses a font thats very similar to the windows font (it probably even uses some windows font to begin with) .. i think you should just ignore the reviewers, they are paid to criticize but players need to be able to read things first, they don't care about font style, unless its unreadable

[quickstix]

Personally, I like the font. Feels like I'm at a real sci-fi ship control terminal, which is the way it works for me. I would say it still needs a few tweaks here and here in terms of individual character sizing, but I find it fairly readable.

I should say though, that I've been obsessed with WipEout my whole life, especially Wip3out (or WipEout 3), so I'm very used to reading odd fonts, like this for example,

[eRe4s3r]

Wipeout does require 0 reading while in-game as part of its gameplay though...

If someone misreads a % Value in the strong vs. / weak vs. Tab then that has huge implications in AI War - so better a clean font than a fancy font.

The current font isn't all bad for some things but for small things its horrible (numbers and stuff with limited pacing)

Notice how Arial has the narrowest spacing, every font used to replace arial thus needs EQUAL spacing/condensing of text. The font that replaced arial is about the same wide as Verdana - which is why nothing fits anywhere. This is not a font size issue (there is little different between 10px and 8px font size when it comes to width)

Or to be very blunt

My posts point was to demonstrate the spacing and why replacing Arial with anything is going to be problematic. Arial is one of the most condensed fonts there is. Every other font has further space between each letter or letters with 1-2px more width as my post demonstrated. This means you can not replace arial with a font that has wider spacing, the GUI sizes were not made for it.

(Ie, stuff like the icon width and core-game stuff like button sizes!) Also - for international game the font needs to be something that supports unicode and displays it clearly ..) like ÖÄ öäü éè ô ´  etc. (french and german..)

Addition Heres the old font with font sizes.xml modified by me for 1280x1024 attached.

[quickstix]

That makes sense. I don't know much about fonts, so I just went for my subjective opinion (and I call myself a philosohpy student ). With that info in mind now, that pretty much explains the sizing issues. I do like the font, as I think it suits AI War, but it looks like compatibility with the GUI and readability seems to be the burning issue. Gah, a dilemma! I might have a squiz at openfontlibrary, see if anything catches my eye in there. I will admit, I get a bit sick of Arial sometimes.

[I-KP]

Can understand if (good) new fonts cost too much to acquire.  

Can't understand why people objected to the old font - certainly no-one who plays the boomin' game did!  

Legibility should be king in this game, as we all know, but this font fails the 'quick scan of the eye' test, alas.

This new font looks okay for the larger text items.  Something clean and clinical for the 'detail' elements of the game would be grand.  This way you get to keep your 'sci-fi' feel font for most items but the detail items aren't compromised (but do display neatly - besides, the smaller the font the less visibile stylisation will be anyway so the 'sci-fi' feel won't be lost on these small items).

[eRe4s3r]

You can revert it yourself - if you get the fonts.rar i attached some posts above.. it includes the previous font , you just have to overwrite the ttf files and adjust the sizes how you like them (i changed the xml for a 1280x1024 res)

I too realize a professional font is beyond paying ability of any indy game , i browsed open font library but didn't find any clean unicode font otherwise i'd have said something...

Best bet is to simply use Tahoma or Arial ie. some Windows System Fonts

[I-KP]

eRe4a3r, cheers for the nod.  I'll be reverting back, me thinks.