Typewar (By Eldarion)

by twampss • 17 years ago

41 46 17 years ago

How many trivially easy questions do I have to answer before hitting the hard stuff? There either needs to be a way to adjust levels manually or some sort of learning system to put you at an initial level.

johnthedebs• 17 years ago

I understand the frustration, but the purpose is competition (typeWAR). You'll get there.

spicyj3• 17 years ago

Still, but I'm on level 7, have answered all 150+ questions correctly, and I haven't gotten any questions that involve type families other than Helvetica Neue, Times New Roman, and Courier New.

ique• 17 years ago

At around level 7-10 it gets reasonably hard, but you have to login with a twitter account to get past 5.

jtauber9• 17 years ago

we're going to experiment with having easier pairs come up less often. we just need more data first.

audionerd• 17 years ago

I like the idea, it's fun, addictive. Well designed. But it's too easy if all the questions are being answered correctly by 95% of users... I'm at Level 5, 75 points, and all the questions (save one) so far were aced by >95% of players. (For that one question, which 45% got correct, I had to think pretty hard though). And it would be more challenging with more fonts. And up the challenge -- compare more sans-to-sans and serif-to-serif for instance.

antidaily• 17 years ago

Agreed - too easy. I didn't miss one and got up to level 5, 93 points. 3rd-4th level should be comparing sans-serif to sans-serif, not serif to monospace. IMHO. Make it harder! Cool site, though.

kingkilr2• 17 years ago

As you get to higher levels you get more fonts unlocked, plus lower case letters, and other challenges. It gets harder :)

jtauber9• 17 years ago

level 5 is very early in the game and we wanted to err on the side of starting off very easy

mmt• 17 years ago

Agreed. After level 1, it's a bit silly to give a serif and sans-serif choice for a letter, unless it's O.

spicyj3• 17 years ago

Might I suggest always alphabetizing the order that the two family names appear in? It's disconcerting to get the same options two questions in a row, but to have their locations swapped.

jtauber9• 17 years ago

they are deliberately ordered randomly

spicyj3• 17 years ago

At least, when you have the same pair of typefaces twice in a row, can you make sure the positions are the same? If I get two questions in a row with the same choices and with the same answer, then I should be able to click in the same place!

sandrogerbini• 17 years ago

I guess the competition is going to get a lot stiffer now that its out of alpha. I wonder what the world will be like now that so many more people will know the difference between Didot and Verdana.

makeee2• 17 years ago

Nice, did you make this? I could post it to a typography Facebook fan page I run (12,000 fans).. if it's ready for wider exposure / lots of traffic.

kingkilr2• 17 years ago

The site was made by Eldarion, primarily coded by James Tauber (jtauber on here) and Brian Rosner.

jtauber9• 17 years ago

by all means post to the fan page! (do you have a link? I might join)

makeee2• 17 years ago

Just posted it: http://www.facebook.com/typography By the way, if you've got any other projects in the works, definitely think about setting up some related (non-branded, such as typography, music, etc) fan pages now. Great way to drive traffic to a new project.

romanm• 17 years ago

Thanks, good idea !!!

ianbishop• 17 years ago

I scored perfectly and got to the 5th level (didn't feel like registering).

I don't understand how people cannot tell the difference between these fonts! Even Arial and Helvetica I find are easy to differentiate if you look at the angles.

jtauber9• 17 years ago

some letters are easy, like R or G and some (as you mention) you can tell from the angles of the terminals but there are some that are pretty much identical

thingie• 17 years ago

Well. It is nice that is shows success rate of other people, and it's quite sad, that most of questions really are trivial (helvetica vs. times new roman), those with > 90%, and some are basically undecidable (50% -- that is as good as random).

And there are just not enough interesting questions, you are just choosing between courrier and times new roman, even at 9th level. It's boring. But with enough data, you could choose just the interesting ones.

tripngroove• 17 years ago

This is really cool. My only comment so far is that the first 9 levels are REALLY slow. My patience was sorely tried in getting high enough for more fonts to appear.

bradgessler• 17 years ago

Either I'm a huge font geek or this is too easy.

Loads of geeky fun; I hope some more typefaces are thrown in there at some higher levels!

jtauber9• 17 years ago

a new typeface is introduced every odd level

kyro• 17 years ago

I'm always getting stuck on the Courier New vs. Helvetica Neue ones.

jhg• 17 years ago

Courier New is rounded.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

Courier New is the "Typewriter" style font.

ekiru• 17 years ago

Courier New seemed to me to be significantly thinner than Helvetica Neue.

niels_olson• 17 years ago

I think you mean Verdana vs Helvetica Neue. There's no way you got Courier New mixed up with Helvetica.

unalone2• 17 years ago

Because you saw fit to mention your company in your submitted title, I gave your page a look. I'd never heard of Eldarion, but Pinax sounds vaguely familiar. I'd like to make a request, though, and that's for you not to highlight text so obnoxiously it looks like links. The only four links you have on eldarion.com look like they're not links. It's pretty, but it's bad design.

ericwaller• 17 years ago

text-decoration:underline clears things up pretty well

jtauber9• 17 years ago

actually this story was not submitted by me or anyone from Eldarion

unalone2• 17 years ago

Oh, okay. My site criticism still stands.

Andi• 17 years ago

Lol, how easy is this?

matt-kantor• 17 years ago

Fun little time waster. I like the concept and implementation (although it's a bit easy as others have said). My only suggestion is to provide a login method besides Twitter. OpenID would be great.

TravisLS• 17 years ago

Two things that would improve this tremendously: 1) More difficult questions sooner and 2) Force you to start over after N wrong answers so the score matters

Emore• 17 years ago

Really liked it! However, it was too easy, even on level 19 (where I stopped playing). New typefaces should perhaps be released every level, and only give sans/sans or serif/serif alternative answers to each question.

agbell• 17 years ago

I actually found it hard

tptacek• 17 years ago

It's redrawing the screen on every submission, instead of doing the submission in an XHR. This is one place where Ajaxiness would really help, because the only indication you have that you've submitted a score is to look at the browser bar to see if the page is loading.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

Also it wouldn't kill my history/back button

Quiark• 17 years ago

Nice, but I got bored after 7 levels

jedediah• 17 years ago

Given that I know almost nothing about fonts and didn't miss a question in the first 5 levels, I think it's far too easy.

mapleoin• 17 years ago

Is there any difference at all between those two: http://typewar.com/stats/glyph_pair/X/Helvetica_Neue/Verdana... ?

Typewar (By Eldarion)

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