Fonts

This page is meant to provide in-depth explanations about how AGS manages fonts, and how to create fonts for AGS.

If you only want to read the short version, read this.

The most important part: define your needs

Mostly, you need to answer these two questions :

1. Do I want my game to be:

a. In English only?

b. In some common European language that uses most Latin letters? (German, French, Spanish, Polish...)

c. In an alphabet with much more letters? (Russian, Chinese...)

• If the answer is "a", then you're a happy-go-lucky selfish person. :) no need to worry any further. Just import into AGS any font you like, in any format you like, it will always work.

• If the answer is "b", then you need to consider looking for/creating fonts that will allow special characters of most European languages, such as : Spanish (ñ, etc.), German (ö, ä, ß, etc.), French (àâêéèëûîïç). BUT the good news is, they still fit in a character table of just 256 characters. This document will explain how to do.

• If the answer is "c", then AGS wasn't really designed for your needs. There are workarounds, but they are outside of the scope of this document.

Read further to know how to create fonts.

2. Do I want my game to be:

a. high-resolution?

b. low-resolution?

• If the answer is "a", then just import into AGS any TTF font you'll find on the Interwebs. It will be rendered smoothly, and if you're not happy with the quality of the rendering, you can use Calin Leafshade's plugin (2011) to enhance it even more.

• If the answer is "b", then you need a font in pixel-art. Of course, there are the fonts shipped with AGS or with any of the additional templates. But if you're not satisfied with those, then you now need to lurk on the AGS forums, looking for one of those 3 items:

- Either an archaic SCI font (see the "supported formats" section of this document) that would still be around in 201x, and would fit perfectly into your game (you like old things, don't you?) ,

- or an existing WFN font (AGS' internal font format) also floating around somewhere on the forums,

- or an actual TTF font, designed to look like pixel-art (for example this one).

Read further to know where to find fonts of each type.

Where can I find fonts?

We suppose that you want to use fonts that already exist.

SCI fonts

A good place to start is on the AGS website "resources" page. Be aware that the SCI format is a very, very old format. It's kept only for legacy reasons, mostly because it used to be a convenient format to manipulate pixel-based fonts (as opposed to vector-based fonts, such as TTF). The main issue is that it's tricky to extend it to 256 characters (read further to know why).

WFN fonts

If you search the AGS forums properly, you will find resources of WFN fonts collections.

You could see WFN fonts as SCI fonts turned "AGS-ready". Most of them are probably SCI fonts that were imported into AGS at least once.

Note: The only (very) weird thing is that (as of 2013, AGS 3.2.x) there is a bug preventing AGS from importing its own format! The only way to import a WFN font is :

- in AGS, create a new font. Note down its number (e.g. "I just created font number 4"),

- close AGS,

- replace file agsfnt4.wfn with your font (and rename your font "agsfnt4.wfn")

- re-open AGS. Font number 4 should now be your font.

TTF fonts

There are plenty of sites providing free fonts. The only catch is that you should make sure that the fonts are free to use (Respect the work of other people! Check the fonts' licence!)

An example of fonts website: dafont.com