Semi-transparent background for nametags

[Zughy]

Sometimes reading names is not that easy: we thought about adding a semi-transparent background to increase contrast. This could work very well paired with #10013 . Also, for testing we set font_shadow to false but we did not touch it in the PR

To do

This PR is Ready for Review.

How to test

Spawn a few entities and set a name

[MoNTE48]

Should be settable!

[Zughy]

@MoNTE48 can you name an use-case? Because the idea is to get rid of the shadow behind the font completely (so I'm/we're planning someday to change the chat too), thus names won't be readable at all without a background. As in the first screenshot.

Like, if only it had been the other way around, would you had proposed it? I mean, to feature nametags without a background

[rubenwardy]

I think this is great as an accessibility option, but I'd prefer to have the more subtle names by default

[MoNTE48]

@Zughy, if you want to add something to Minetest, make it an option. Otherwise, it will be accepted... never.

[Zughy]

@MoNTE48 If true, that's bad. As someone who studied graphic design, right now names are simply not readable if they're not pure white. The same goes for chat messages, so it's a pretty big limitation. AT LEAST if it's an option I'd say to use the background as default. Also, where should this option be toggled? Server side via minetest.conf? Client side via settings?

I'd like to hear other core devs opinions

[MoNTE48]

@Zughy, object (player, entity) parameter. So that you can customize this for each player and object.
Then, I am sure, they will quickly accept it, players will like it, but core devs will never turn it on by default. 🧐
Btw, I press 👍, I really like this idea and I completely agree with what you said above.

[Zughy]

@MoNTE48 I think the default option should be the "generally more suited" option. If names are not that readable by default, it's not that well suited and new players will judge it as negative. Show those pictures to five different people who've never played Minetest and if they tell you they do prefer the former (the one without bg when it comes to readability), then I'll be proved wrong. Actually, I invite anyone to do that.

If Minetest is "Minecraft-like", then let's cut the chase and adopt what works on Minecraft and let's improve it (as the PR mentioned in the first post, a feature that Minecraft doesn't have).

[sfan5]

While other improvements often end up with "this should be optional or it can't be accepted", I don't think that's needed for this change and it can be merged as-is.

[Zughy]

Any news? I'm not used to "what happens after a new release", if features must wait a while before getting considered or idk; just, I saw new core devs PRs popping up so I felt asking legit

[LoneWolfHT]

As soon as a release is over from what I'm aware it's time to get features in again

[appgurueu]

Minetest uses font shadow to increase legibility. I notice font shadow being turned off in your screenshots?

[LoneWolfHT]

Minetest uses font shadow to increase legibility. I notice font shadow being turned off in your screenshots?

See the OP and some of the comments

[appgurueu]

I wonder how this looks with font shadow enabled.

[Zughy]

Any news about it? One approval to go and it requires very little testing :(

[luk3yx]

Is it possible to turn off this background for empty/transparent nametags? Yes

[SmallJoker]

Here's a comparison of the current shadow settings.
Left: font_shadow = 0, right font_shadow = 1

In the worst case scenario it is a bit difficult to read the player name, but still far better than without shadow.
The grey box behind text surely helps but at least to me it's not appealing visually. Semi-grey boxes are neutral, but also dull. If you'd put the green loading bar on startup behind names (with font shadows on) it might already look better.

[Zughy]

Bump

Also, I think the bar should be neutral by default. If even, it'd be cool if people could customise it, but this is for another PR (also because I don't have the knowledge nor the time to do that).

Use-cases:

• better distinguish admins/VIPs/whoever in a server
• unlock cool backgrounds
• distinguish teams
• highlight bosses
• probably other things

[sfan5]

I don't get what you mean by "neutral by default" but customizing the tint of the bar sounds like a good future feature.

[Wuzzy2]

IIRC, nametag opacity is already settable, using the nametag color. You just have to do it explicitly in the game for all nametags.

[Wuzzy2]

Oops. Please forgive me! I have completely misunderstood the purpose of this. I take back my complaint 100%.
I support this now.

[Zughy]

According to comments here and things said on IRC, I'd like to recap and propose a new approach:

• put a text outline instead of the semi-transparent box and remove the font shadow. Ie. Among Us
• implement somewhere down the road a server toggleable background (per player too) via API to do things like this (Maple Story 2). Background will be disabled by default

Now, a problem could be the colour of the outline: as you can see in the first screen, a dark colour makes the text kind of unreadable if the outline is always black, so the solution adopted by rubenwardy for the box colour might be applied here too

What do you think about it?

[rubenwardy]

Yeah, that makes sense to me

[Zughy]

A week passed, almost nobody said anything, I'm still more convinced of the outline and a core dev approves too. I don't have the time to work on it as for now, but I'll try eventually. Closing this one

[Wuzzy2]

WTF?! Please don't kill a PR that has already been approved by 2 core devs.

Personally, I have no strong perference, but I like the background idea slightly more.

[LoneWolfHT]

These backgrounds are fine and can be improved later if necessary anyway

[Zughy]

Well, I guess there is some feedback now. Reopening ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(this could be modified when/if the outline PR gets done. Please someone merge it)

[paramat]

As long as a good implementation is found, i do not think making this optional is necessary.
Contrary to claims above, core devs have often opposed making something an option, i have many times.

According to comments here and things said on IRC, I'd like to recap and propose a new approach:
put a text outline instead of the semi-transparent box and remove the font shadow

the solution adopted by rubenwardy for the box colour might be applied here too

Cannot tell for sure until it is tried, but i think an outline is preferable to a background box, just as effective but less obtrusive.
But i do not object to this box implementation being merged for now.

[appgurueu]

The box implementation is inconsistent: What about waypoints, chat and other HUD text elements?

[Zughy]

Cannot tell for sure until it is tried

A couple of weeks ago I tried understanding whether an outline was doable through CGUITT font or not, but I had no luck. That's probably me not being good enough though

What about waypoints, chat and other HUD text elements?

Think about this as a testing ground and - possibly - as a transition. Also because chat had already been discussed (#10372 )

[SmallJoker]

The outline could be done using the current shadow effect, but repeated four times around the text using the offsets x±1 and y±1. However, doing that as an emboss effect in a shader would be way faster and probably look better than manual calculating.

[Zughy]

Bump. This only needs to be merged

[ghost]

Regression. Please, make the background disabled by default or optional instead. Now they are lot of distant player nametags in the servers not only visible but also more visible with a gray background.

[Wuzzy2]

If alpha is set to 0, the background disappears. I tested this.

[appgurueu]

If alpha is set to 0, the background disappears. I tested this.

Yes, but this requires servers to upgrade to mods which actually set alpha to zero.

I still consider this as breaking backwards-compatibility, as a space-only nametag " " used to work, as well as an empty one "" (which has to be set using set_nametag_attributes and not set_properties, however!). Both now draw a small empty, annoying box. This might be worth filing a bug report.

Additionally, consistent and more subtle display of nametags is now unachievable - every other text element, including waypoints, does not have a background. I agree with @runsy that this should definitely be configurable.

[sfan5]

Note that formally backwards compatibility is only broken if the non-working behaviour was documented.

The old docs make no explicit mention of this.
Question here is is it reasonable to assume that rendering an empty or whitespace nametag would not render anything?

[LoneWolfHT]

In ~0.4.17 you could make nametags invisible by setting their alpha, but older clients didn't support that so the nametags would just be black. The way to fix that was to set the nametag to whitespace

[Wuzzy2]

Question here is is it reasonable to assume that rendering an empty or whitespace nametag would not render anything?

Empty: Yes.
Whitespace-only: Maybe.

[ghost]

A blank space is a char per se:
https://emptycharacter.com/
So it should be treated as it.