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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Please help with Text Not Showing on some computers

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IBOL
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Posted: 7th Aug 2020 22:07 Edited at: 7th Aug 2020 22:09
A small percentage of my steam users are reporting that my game's text isn't showing up for them. The majority have no problem.
Does anyone know if this has been seen before, or know how to fix/work around?
Here's what a user posted:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2188821352



Should look something like the one i've uploaded:

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Loktofeit
AGK Developer
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Location: Sarasota, FL
Posted: 7th Aug 2020 22:14
1) Hope you get an answer for this
2) Congrats on the Steam release!
3) What's the name of this intriguing space adventure?
fubarpk
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Playing: AGK is my friend
Posted: 7th Aug 2020 22:58 Edited at: 7th Aug 2020 23:21
wondering if using your own font placed in the media directory and using LoadFont ( iFontID, szFontFile )
and SetPrintFont ( fontID ) and SetTextFont ( iTextIndex, iFontID ) would help. if your already doing this perhaps
some machines are case sensitive and some are not with the name ie myFont.ttt is different than myfont.ttf
for some or its using a font they dont have installed so by using your own font should help

fubarpk on Itch...………...https://fubarpk.itch.io/
fubarpk on googleplay..https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=fubarpk
IBOL
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Posted: 8th Aug 2020 02:03
Hi, That's Approaching Infinity, launched on steam a few days ago, many years in the making.

I'm fairly desperate to fix that text, I will try messing with the font, thanks.

Others?
Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 8th Aug 2020 02:41 Edited at: 8th Aug 2020 02:50
not much to go on beside 1920 x 1080 from the screenshot.

what are you doing with the text? any alpha settings? any overlays? any way the depth is getting set wrong? are you using SetViewZoom() ?

otherwise, if you can you supply the font and anything else that might be pertinent, we might be able to help.

and, as you well know, reducing it down to a simple code block that reproduces the error is probably the best hope. i imagine there is tons of code but if you supplied the user with a small test app (and us with the code?), it could do wonders.

with that, if you're using something other than the default font, try using it, instead and see if it make a difference?
[AGK Resource Directory] | [TGC @ GitHub]
[My Itch.io Home]
[CODE lang=AGK] Your Code Here [/CODE]
[VIDEO=youtube] VideoID [/VIDEO]
IBOL
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Posted: 8th Aug 2020 18:55
I was hoping this was some sort of known issue. I tried messing with the fonts as suggested here, changing screen size/resolution/window mode and position. varying degrees of success but never 100%.
look at this example if you can.

some words show up fine, but some are missing like half the letters

I'm not using alpha on text, and there's nothing over it. I checked the depths and even changed some, but it "should" be working, and in fact does work for at least 98% of users. but that 2%
I did try switching to the default font, and that is producing the current results in this picture. i just don't know.
Zwarteziel
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Posted: 8th Aug 2020 21:31
Hi Bob,

good luck with the game! I backed it quite a few years ago and was sorry to see the way you/the game were treated by the publisher. As for the font issue: AppGameKit can use two types.. bitmap fonts (image-file with a subimages text-file). and .ttf files. Which one are you using? If you're using the same code-base as before, I think you might have used bitmaps, right? You might want to try an equivalent in ttf.

PartTimeCoder
AGK Tool Maker
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Posted: 8th Aug 2020 22:10 Edited at: 8th Aug 2020 22:14
@IBOL, I read somewhere a while ago while researching OpenGL that there maybe a bug in wglUseFontBitmaps and it would sometimes (very sporadically) fail and had to be called a second time for it to take effect ....

I would open a ticket with TGC on this one, has to be a internal thing.

Edit: Your game looks fantastic BTW, well done.
Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 8th Aug 2020 22:14 Edited at: 8th Aug 2020 22:27
Quote: " some are missing like half the letters "

based on the only known word(s) in the second column (and at a glance), it looks like it's consistently omitting, at least, lower case a,n,e,t (Planetary).

some of those letters should be found in other words in the second column. IE, Navigator, which adds "i" and "r" to the list with issues at that font size (where they appear fine in other columns). or, is that Navigation? i think it is, adding an n vs r? not sure.

is that the case for your normal font? those (same) letters missing? does changing the font size for column 2 help at all?

i know it's not much help but something to look into, at least?

maybe more: are you assigning a float to the text size, by chance? try the nearest integer, instead?
[AGK Resource Directory] | [TGC @ GitHub]
[My Itch.io Home]
[CODE lang=AGK] Your Code Here [/CODE]
[VIDEO=youtube] VideoID [/VIDEO]
Conjured Entertainment
AGK Developer
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Posted: 9th Aug 2020 00:59 Edited at: 9th Aug 2020 01:05
Quote: "maybe more: are you assigning a float to the text size, by chance? try the nearest integer, instead?"


Some fonts don't like certain sizes.

I have had some custom ones act weird in the past when set to certain sizes.


Quote: " I tried messing with the fonts as suggested here, changing screen size/resolution/window mode and position. varying degrees of success but never 100%."


Did you try a different font?


Quote: "I read somewhere a while ago while researching OpenGL that there maybe a bug in wglUseFontBitmaps and it would sometimes (very sporadically) fail and had to be called a second time for it to take effect ....
"


Calling it twice would be a simple enough fix, so that would definitely be worth trying.
Quote: "
I'm not using alpha on text, and there's nothing over it. I checked the depths and even changed some, but it "should" be working, and in fact does work for at least 98% of users. but that 2%"


2% is not that bad, but that is enough to get negative reviews and such

It only takes a couple people to bring a good thing down, so I hope you get it sorted out.

Coding things my way since 1981 -- Currently using AppGameKit V2 Tier 1
IBOL
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Posted: 9th Aug 2020 15:34
Hi everyone, and thank you all for your suggestions and kind words. Yes we're using bitmap fonts. I suppose i could try switching to a ttf...

@fubarpk thanks to you i checked the case, but sadly they were matching... not fixed yet.

@Zwarteziel Hey thank you! I'm reconnecting with lots of folks from those days

@parttimecoder great suggestion, I wil try setting the font more than once.

@virtual nomad, yes, i tried to figure out which letters were missing too, SO WEIRD!
i'm shocked! i would never assign a float size to a text. (lol)

@EVERYONE: thanks! I'm releasing an update later today and we'll see how those people fare.

Bob
PSY
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Posted: 9th Aug 2020 15:39 Edited at: 9th Aug 2020 16:16
Just being curious....did you compile with Classic or Studio?

And CONGRATS for releasing man...been a long way and you finally did it!


PSY LABS Games
Coders don't die, they just gosub without return
SFSW
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Posted: 9th Aug 2020 23:59 Edited at: 10th Aug 2020 05:54
When I've run into similar issues, both with DBPro and AppGameKit, they generally tend to fall into one of the following:

- Memory limitation, video and/or system RAM (capacity doesn't really matter, it's about how much consecutive memory is available for the required image operations).
- Some other third party display related program running in the background that blocks or otherwise interferes with the video memory needed to generated the bitmap font.

When a user sees some letters but not all, this reinforces the possibility that AppGameKit was not allowed to generate all of the required image indexes for font characters that it needed (that is, it was not allowed to access the video resources needed to generate the characters in memory in the background). They may see the same missing letters or the missing letters may vary every time they launch the game. Or the game may work fine for a while, then run into the problem later on as new memory limitations may occur on their system. Unfortunately, there can be a few possible causes which can vary from system to system. Insufficient or intermittently blocked memory tends to be a primary baseline cause though. And although I can't say for sure, it seems to be more frequent on systems that have integrated graphics architecture (ie Intel HD) where system memory is consumed for use as video memory, sometimes resulting in limitation problems for either memory pool or both. The way in which text characters are generated in memory seems to be particularly sensitive to that kind of limitation. It can be an early warning indicator of other memory problems later on as they play where crashing may occur.

For further troubleshooting, it can help to know what version of Windows they are running (and with 10, what build number), what specific GPU make and model they are using, and what specific display driver they are using. Knowing what other software they are running in the background can also help in some situations. If anyone is running GeForce Experience, ask them to turn that off entirely, then try again to test for changes. Likewise with any other display related programs (video recording, display enhancement, etc). If they are running an integrated system, shutting down other programs running in the background may help further. The goal is to maximize available memory resources and prevent interference.

There may be some kind of internal flaw in AppGameKit with how it generates text images relative to the display resolution being used, but if the problem is intermittent and/or gets better when a lower resolution is used (hence lowering the display/buffer memory used), that could indicate it's just out of memory. If someone is running a low resolution of something like 1366X768, this can indicate they are using some pretty old and likely limited graphics hardware that may have too much of a limitation on memory resources for your game. If so, the only solutions for them would be to sort out whatever interference problem may be in place, free up more memory resources, use a lower resolution, and/or reduce detail settings to use smaller core images for less memory overhead (if available in your game).
IBOL
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Posted: 12th Aug 2020 14:13
@sfsw i suppose this is both good and bad news. it's not my fault, but it sounds like there's nothing i can do about it, if this is the case.

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