Simple Font Enhancement

[eddieballgame]

For those struggling to read the the 'fine print' in some cases, here is a simple fix...depending on your resolution & monitor size.
Inside the Shadow Empire main directory is a 'fonts' folder & there are many font files there.
What I did was take the 'small5' font file & place it in a folder named 'originals' in the 'font folder'.
I, then, copied the 'ARIAL' font file & renamed it 'SMALL5' (caps work & lets me know I did something).

For me...it worked very well & here are some pics to compare.

Sadly, I had to shrink the pics to upload them, but there is a difference...trust me.[:)]

[eddieballgame]

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[pauls2271]

copied the 'ARIAL' font file & renamed it 'SMALL5' (caps work & lets me know I did somethin

Thanks for that.

I too found the default font a little hard to read.

I tried Arial for awhile but I found I could download Space Grotesk font and rename it to SMALL5 and the game uses it.

[Tanaka]

Nice tip thanks!

[TinyFrog]

The clearer font is very much appreciated (because of bad eyesight). Thanks for helping!

[TitusGroen]

I tried Arial for awhile but I found I could download Space Grotesk font and rename it to SMALL5 and the game uses it.

Which Space Grotesk did you use? I tried with regular and I don't think it took effect because the 1 is still the original. I can definitely tell a difference when renaming ARIAL like someone else did.

[pauls2271]

If I preview small5.ttf in the fonts directory of Shadow Empire
It says:
Font Name: Space Grotesk Light
Version: Version 2.000
OpenType Layout, TrueType Outlines, OpenType Font Variations

Where I got it, I don't remember.

[TitusGroen]

If I preview small5.ttf in the fonts directory of Shadow Empire
It says:
Font Name: Space Grotesk Light
Version: Version 2.000
OpenType Layout, TrueType Outlines, OpenType Font Variations

Where I got it, I don't remember.

Thanks! That helps

[DoxaLogos]

Thanks for these tips! I recently installed mine through Steam on Linux and the opening font was atrocious. I replaced it (04B_03B_) with Space Grotesk SemiBold and the small5 with Arial, and it's 100% better.

[rivak1]

Hey, I don't mean to necro a thread, but this is to let you know that I used it and it does work, not as good as I'd like, but better than trying to use a microscope. Thank you!

I saw a link to this thread on the Steam discussion page of the game, fyi.

[Tanaka]

Thanks for these tips! I recently installed mine through Steam on Linux and the opening font was atrocious. I replaced it (04B_03B_) with Space Grotesk SemiBold and the small5 with Arial, and it's 100% better.

Ohh the Space Grotesk Bold is a fantastic upgrade nice!

[tonechild]

Hey! This is awesome. Wanted to point out that small5 is a monospaced font, so using arial can have some unusual consequences. I'd recommend replacing small5 with a monospaced font instead.

the benefit of monospace fonts is the text stays within a column. Most of the time these are best in code editor / IDE, but in a game this can be much more legible where spacing matters. Arial will have different spacing around each character (including the space char itself) and might cause weird spacing issues.

your system comes with monospaced fonts (windows, mac, linux) but if you're feeling lazy and don't want to manually copy one of your system fonts, you can find ones on https://fonts.google.com/?query=mono&cl ... =Monospace


Windows comes with a few (Lucida Sans Console, Consolas, etc) osx and linux also have a ton already.

[summ1t]

Hey everyone, just got the game a few hours ago after eyeballing it for months. It looks awesome, but I was dismayed by the tiny fonts and blurry scaling options at 1440p. After a quick search I found this thread and tweaked the fonts mentioned above. That did indeed help, but I was still straining to read the screen... and I have slightly severe ocd when it comes to bitmap scaling because of the inevitable blur.

I was about to give up on playing when I remembered this app I got a few years ago called "Lossless Scaling" so I could solve the same issues with Stellaris. It's not free, but it's cheap and It will make the game look pretty much perfect at 2k resolution. You just need to edit the windows.txt file mentioned in this thread https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... p?t=350723 I edited the file so SE would launch in windowed mode at 1920x1080 resolution then I launched SE.

Next, Alt-Tab out and launch Lossless Scaling from Steam. Select GDI under the Capture API dropdown. WGC may also work, but DXGI, at least on my system, caused the cursor to become very choppy. I also chose Fullscreen under Scaling Mode to suit my preference. Click the blue Scale button in the upper right and then select the SE window. After a few seconds upscaling will happen and the universe will return to focus. Open the attached screenshots in a new tab to see them full res. Hope this helps someone.

Maybe not the appropriate thread for this post, but it's the first one I stumbled on. Feel free to move it. Now I just need to learn to play

Cheers,

[Tortuosit]

Maybe not the appropriate thread for this post, but it's the first one I stumbled on. Feel free to move it. Now I just need to learn to play

You are my hero. This application is a life-saver, SE now looks absolutely awesome. I'm on 1440p and as you recommended, I now upscale 1920x1080. This kind of upscaling should be builtin, but however, the application is easy to use.
Using GDI is probably important, it was set to something else before - atrocious performance.