UTF8 ready pixel fonts

Started by eri0o, Sun 05/06/2022 15:59:15

Previous topic - Next topic

eri0o

Hi, I would like to invite people who have pixel fonts that are UTF-8 ready to share here!

I made a repository to stash them here: github.com/ericoporto/pixel-utf8-fonts
You can see fonts in the engine web build here: ericoporto.github.io/pixel-utf8-fonts/










NamelDownloadLicenseCompletenessHeight
k8x12j🔽📜Incomplete12 px
Lana Pixel🔽📜Almost Complete11 px
Pixel Locale🔽📜Incomplete9 px
Pixel Operator🔽📜Very Incomplete16 px
Pixel Operator 8🔽📜Very Incomplete8 px
Pixel Unicode🔽📜Incomplete16 px
Unifont🔽📜Complete16 px

This is probably not the appropriate place in the forum, so if there's a better place for it, please move it!  8-)

Crimson Wizard

What about the "Modules, Plugins & Tools"? It already has a WFN fonts thread. We need to ask Gilbert or Dualnames if that's okay. Maybe even sticky it there.

On the other hand, why are these called "pixel fonts" if they are TTFs?

eri0o

I was thinking more about a new board for assets, like characters, backgrounds, music, and things like that.

Not sure I understand the question on pixel fonts though. They look pixel art? The format is not the point at all, it's the looks and being utf8 compatible.

Gilbert

I think "Modules, Plugins & Tools" is fine, as fonts may fall in the "Tools" category. Well, technically they're assets, but fonts are not "more creative stuff" like graphics and sound, etc. but are something more or less integral to the backbones of adventure games (unless you make a game without text). Especially since the recent name change of that board.

A separate board for posting assets could be nice, if we're as active a community as years before. I wonder how much content there will be nowadays. I'll expect this therad and Eric Matyas's nice stuff could belong there, but what's more? Probably too thin in content to dedicate a whole board for.

That said, IMO this is also fine to stay here in Engine Development, as game production aside, these fonts can also be used for testing the Unicode functionality of the editor and the engine. I think if there is no technical difficulties (for this I mean something like having to add more licenses to the package) we may even include them in the AGS package (or have links in the manual or even in the editor itself for people to download these files, especially when there are license problems) so users can start right away.

js

#4
Hello, at first thank you for the font gathering.

I'm doing a game in (so-called) hi-resolution (640×360 !) and AGS  3.6.0 which supports TTF and UTF-8.

I've tried some TTF fonts, and it's very frustrating to find the optimal size (import / change size / load game / retry…).

Is there a trick to find quickly the optimal size ? And why is there an optimal size btw ? Shouldn't TTF fonts be rendered nicely whatever the size ?

I've just found with your fonts that i can use a multiple of the base size you give. For example, « pixel operator », which you recommand using at 16px , can be used at 32px (but not on an intermediate size like 24px).

EDIT:  Reading more, it seem there are font editors plugins (see the end of the page) which can be used as viewers : https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/Fonts
(dammit it's for WFN fonts)

EDIT2 : On discord discussion , Laura Hunt has given me this link : https://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php . You have the resolution indicated !

eri0o

#5
Sorry, I don't understand the question exactly. Is the noted down height (last column in the table) incorrect? I copied these from each font readme, and tested in the test game to verify it.

js

Quote from: eri0o on Wed 24/08/2022 03:02:09
Sorry, I don't understand the question exactly. Is the noted down height (last column in the table) incorrect?

The height is correct. I was wondering if there were a trick for having this value, instead of trying font sizes until finding the good one.


Quote
I copied these from each font readme, and tested in the test game to verify it.

Ah. I see, it's the trick  :-D

Laura Hunt

One thing you need to consider is that the nominal height will not always (in fact, almost never) reflect the actual total height of the font when descenders and capital letters with accents are taken into account. For example, if you take a look at this font, which has a nominal height of 8px, you will see that characters such as "å" or "Á" are actually 9px tall, so if you have a word such as for example "Álgido", the sum of those 9px plus the couple extra pixels below the baseline from the "g" will add up to an actual height of 11px or 12px.

This means that if you're designing elements such as text boxes that will display text in languages other than English you will have to account for this extra height, which AGS usually resolves and displays correctly on import. Line spacing will also need to be adjusted in most cases, so that there's no overlap between a line that has for example an "Á" that happens to fall right below a "g" from the line above it.

Here is a fantastic comment that explains it super clearly: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/4035/what-does-the-size-of-the-font-translate-to-exactly/8964#8964. In short, you never quite know what a font designer is taking as reference to indicate the size of their font: it could be from the descender to the caps height, or from the descender to the ascender, but in most cases they won't take accents and other diacritical marks into account.


js

Thank you for the additional informations. I didn't knew those subtilities. I was suspecting them with some interfaces which does not embedded well letters (letters exceed their allowed zone).

As the first language of the game is french, at least the GUI should be ok for western-languages (as the accents have quite the same ascender height for german,french,spanish).

Anyway i will keep in mind to test the GUI with the maximal size range (from descender to ascender) with some well chosen words (Éh Fthagh'n !).


abstauber

This font is also quite complete, apart from asian languages.

https://font.gohu.org/
https://font.gohu.org/GohuFont-TTF.zip

Here's also a nice selection, but I haven checked the unicode support
https://github.com/Tecate/bitmap-fonts

abstauber


eri0o

@abstauber thanks for the recent fonts! I haven't had a chance to test them in AGS with utf8 + checking out the licenses, but will get to it soon.

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk