Font Choice

[MicroDragon]

I have no idea if this idea has been tossed around or not, so please forgive me if I'm bringing up a dead topic.

I love Ultima 7 and SI, however, I *really* dislike the font that Origin used for all of the text. I find it difficult to read--especially when there is so much text in the game.

Suggestion: Please provide an option (read: choice) to change the font style. I am not saying that the original font should be completely removed. I am only saying that I would like the option of choosing a different font.

(Heck, give me the original Font graphics and I'll make a new font inside a new file that's easier on the eyes.) If implemented properly, other fonts could be created and added after Exult is "complete".

From an ol' Dragon whose eyes don't appreciate the fancy fonts...

Micro Dragon.

[wjp]

Sounds like a good idea. The font is indeed kind of hard to read.

It would be great if you could produce a cleaner font!

Is there any particular format you'd like the current font in? It's (IIRC) stored in static/fonts.vga, stored as a shape with a single character per frame. This can (relatively) easily be edited using the Gimp (linux) and/or Photoshop (windows) plugins. Alternatively, it can be exported to .pcx using the shp2pcx tool. (which would produce one image per char.)
If you need any help with any of these, let me know.

-Willem Jan

[nadir]

I committed some code last week to make it somewhat easier to read text by putting a tinted background behind conversations. It's in the Gameplay Options.
Obviously, having additional fonts would be cool too

[Colourless]

It would be very easy to set a different fonts for the conversations and things. Question just is what font do you want to use?

Something like what I did in the following shot was very easy to do.



-Colourless Dragon

[hoeksma]

I prefer good ole fashioned U7 font myself, I never had any trouble with it. Then again since all changes would be optional...

[suraimu]

The U9 font was a lot easier to read, in my opinion. Whatever you do
with the font though, make sure it's an option, as this is VERY much a
matter of personal taste, and personal eyesight.

[Stephan]

Yeah, I have to agree. Personally, I never had any problems with the U7 font - in fact, I think it looks great.

[Darkstar]

I mean no offense but IMHO this screenshot up there looks like crap
Or like C64 graphics.
Compromise:
Make an option of creating an alpha-blended text window where the background will be darker (or lighter) behind the text making it easier to read.

--Michael

[Colourless]

Michael, read the original post. The person quite clearly stated that that they don't like the normal font. I showed an example that it's easy to change the font.

It also appears that you haven't exactly checked out Nadir's latest changes with the font backgounds. It's exactly what you have suggested. Duh.

What I did has nothing to do with that at all.

-Colourless Dragon

[funcrusher]

I have noticed that in the intro screens to SI and BG, "Lord British Presents", that the font is different for "with help from the exult team." BG to uses the U7 font and SI uses one different. Any particular reason for this? COuld this font be simply implemented?

[Darkstar]

Well I merely wanted to point out that the original font can't be _so_ bad that the font in the image would be an improvement
I ocassionally have trouble reading the original font, too, but I would never want to replace it with *that*...
And since you'll be making it an optional feature, I guess I won't have to.

And yes, Colourless, you were right, I didn't check out the latest snapshot *duh*

--Michael

[Lord Rat]

Can I recommend Verdana?

[Microdragon]

Wow! I didn't expect this much of a response! (Cool.)

Sorry for my delayed response, I've *just* gotten a chance to check in on this topic.

Choice is good. I'm glad to hear that an optional font choice may be offered.

Are you planning on making bitmap fonts (easier to work with) or create an "on-the-fly" font renderer (Too much work, I would suspect)?

Verdana is a *very* easy font to read (capital I's, lowercase l's and number 1's all appear differently with Verdana vs. Arial.).

Colourless Dragon's font appears to be the standard 320x200 font used by many games of that day. This is fine for me. (I'm easy to please. If it could be anti-aliased, that would be much better. (Yes, it's blocky and not very pretty but it doesn't have all those frilly things that make the "standard" font difficult for me to read.)

Other choices? Verdana is great, Arial is good.

Thanks for looking into this for me!

Micro Dragon