Trickster
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 662
Registered: 07-03-2007
IP: Logged

File: KernBug.zip (2.1 MB)
Downloaded 43 times.
License: Public Domain

mrimer requested that I research and post this bug, seeing as he was not aware that this problem ever existed on Windows machines.

The kerning bug makes scrolls look quite different in DROD 3.3.0.96 versus DROD 4.0.0.108, as my testers first notified me. I was curious when TCB would be updated to correct this problem, so I asked mrimer by PM. He directed me here.

I have attached a zip file that contains screenshots of seven instances of the problem, and a tiny .hold file for TCB that creates these issues on my Vista laptop. The issue exists regardless as to whether you are running in full-screen or windowed mode. If you look closely you'll see this problem exists even when no strange punctuation (with which I am unfortunately prone to drawing pictures) is used: words alone can trip it.

Please don't download this file unless you are a maintainer. The scrolls don't contain critical information, but they might cause a slight spoiler in one or two cases (and it's not that interesting in all honesty).

In case you're wondering why I included the first couple of scrolls which seem to be near-identical: originally these scrolls were much worse, but I edited them down in TCB to fix them in DROD 4 last week. So I had to "reverse-engineer" the disaster, and only managed to get them slightly-off between the two versions.

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skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

I am afraid there isn't much that can be done here - in latest dev build the scrolls look like in GatEB examples. I presume it was caused by an update to a library rather than anything in our code. I've tried both enabling and disabling kerning for all fonts and the result appears to be identical.

Just for lolz I disabled Hinting and that certainly did not help the slightest.

There is also no way to adjust space between characters other than what kerning does (and also I don't think Tom's New Roman has kerning pairs?).

I also tweaked space size and font size and, predictably, things did not become better.

Ultimately it seems this is here to stay and how it looks in TSS upwards is how it will look for the foreseeable future.

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