Alternate font for the games

[Dominus]

Based on previous work by Kanto, the Italian and SI-French teams, I made a patch FONTS.VGA for English *AND* the localized *official* releases.

See our download page at the bottom for the download.

Place this file in the patch folder of your game. It is *NOT* a replacement for the real FONTS.VGA file in the STATIC folder, as it only holds the yellow conversation and red Guardian/Earth Serpent font. Placing it in the patch folder will make sure that it only replaces those two in the game and nothing else.

I'm not entirely happy with the German "ß" but it'll have to do (and the kerning is not perfect in general, as well).

Screenshot of the German Black Gate


Screenshot of SI



And why should you care? People are annoyed by the original fonts. If you were already using an alternate font, you don't need to care about this one. This one is good because it doesn't use the copyrighted material of the original and is also good for the international releases.
It's *NOT* useable for the original games.

[Crowley]

And I was just making a cleaner version of the regular game font. What a coincidence.

[Dominus]

I only did it because I got my daughter interested in playing and she had problems with the old font.

[galneon]

This and the other gothic but simplified font should both be available on the Downloads page. (Looks a lot better without xBR/HQx or whatever that is you're using.) The stock font really hurts accessibility for new players I feel.

[SirJohn]

Hi everybody,

I have reworked the the offset kerning of the modern font by Kanto and Dominus and think it looks somewhat better now compared to Dominus' original version.


Screenshot (with kerning problems running with EXULT):



Screenshot (with corrected kerning, running in DOSBOX):




I'd be grateful, if you could find the time to test it and let me know of any flaws you might encounter.

@Exult Team: If the tests go ok and the font works as it should, please feel free to put it up for grabs if you want.

I will upload the Font to my site tonight

John

New Readme (as enclosed in the archive):

This FONTS.VGA replacement is based on previous work by Kanto, the Italian and SI-French teams. It's for English *AND* the localized *official* releases.



Place the FONTS.VGA in the patch folder of your game. It is *NOT* a replacement for the real FONTS.VGA file in the STATIC folder, as it only holds the yellow conversation and red Guardian/Earth Serpent font. Placing it in the patch folder will make sure that it only replaces those two in the game and nothing else.



I'm not entirely happy with the German "ß" but it'll have to do (and the kerning is not perfect in general, as well).



Two screenshots are in the src folder.



And why should you care? People are annoyed by the original fonts. If you were already using an alternate font, you don't need to care about this one. This one is good because it doesn't use the copyrighted material of the original and is also good for the international releases.


It's *NOT* useable for the original games.



In the src folder are the two shp files (0.shp, 1.shp) and a script for expack (one of our tools) to build FONTS.VGA with those.


-
Dominik Reichardt, 15th May 2016

Addendum:
I have corrected the kerning of the font and enclosed three screenshots of the new look.

I also modified the "script", so it hopefully works now (the old ones resulted in an error for me) and enclosed expack.exe, in order to provide everything you need to modify the fonts yourself.

- SirJohn, 2nd May 2018

[Dominus]

HOW DARE YOU!!!

I'll fix the links to the images etc tomorrow, I'm off for Avengers in a few minutes

Looking forward to a fixed kerning!!!

[SirJohn]

Cool, thanks! Seem to be unable to guess the right tags :-/

Do enjoy the flic. Have a MARVELous time (scnr :-p)

[SirJohn]

Archive is up for download now at https://sirjohn.de/ultima-7/

[Dominus]

image links corrected. I will upload a general fonts.vga when I return from Berlin next week

The kerning looks so much better now!

[SirJohn]

I have modified the special character "ß" (SZ) to see if the rounder/softer design looks any better than the flat roof top.

Please do speak your mind: What do you think? Is it better than before or did I make things worse?



For what it's worth: I have created a full version of the FONTS.VGA for BG - and while I was at it, one for SI as well

[SirJohn]

Sorry that my posts and infos come as little by little as they do.

Good news is: I should be done now

I have managed to put up a full fledged version of modern FONTS.VGA for Serpent Isle, too now.

This version runs in vanilla installations as well as under DOSBOX and does not need Exult to work. If you feel like using it, please do so.



Get it here: https://sirjohn.de/ultima-7-pt-2-serpent-isle/#SI_Font

all the best,

John

[bawpie]

Really like the font guys, is there a straightforward get this to work with the Keyring mod which I'm currently using - the patch folder seems to get ignored when running that mod? I mean, I managed it by opening up Keyring in exult studio and swapping out the shape files, but I feel like that might have been the less than direct method of doing this?

Regardless, thanks. VII is still one of my all time favourite games, and it's great to see people still adding nice tweaks like this.

[Dominus]

Yes, just add the fonts.vga file to the keyring mods files.

[SirJohn]

As it took me almost two days to find a rather obvious issue, I think I'll note it down here just in case anyone else is as stupid as me (hardly...)

Problem (Serpent Isle):
Dialogues with too many answer options are not displayed correctly. E.G. half of Standarrs wares are not available for purchase.

Solution/track down:
The frame sizes of BG and SI fonts differ: BG uses frames sized 18x20, SI fonts use frames with only 14x20 in size.


This results in the lines spacing being too large to display the later answer options:



On a related note:
I have now customized the original font again to have German special chars. Problem is: Capital letters looks like crap because the normal AOU's use all the height already and I had to move them down 1px to free some space for the dots above:


What's worse:
from a first glance, adapting the antigua font accordingly will be even more complicated.

John

PS: if I managed to screw up the imgage links yet again, please feel free to fix them :-/

[Dominus]

huh... is this with the original as well?
So, if I understand correctly we do need a different fonts.vga after all for BG and SI?

fixed the images links (it's a link between "["img"]" and "["/img"]" tags - without the quotes but hard to show it here )

[SirJohn]

Thanks for the fix...I'll try to remember BBCode instead of HTML

Forgot to include a second font sample, so I can test the bbcode now.

Here is what the capital German Umlauts look like atm (being off the line by -1px):



Short answer is yes. If you want to use the Antiqua font in Serpent Isle we have to re-do it in 14x20 size. As it is now it works for 95% of all dialogues (educated guess only), though

[SirJohn]

To round it up: here's some screenshots from the original version (Dosbox) using the modern font. As you can see, the same problem occurs here as well: due to the bigger line spacing, the last two rows of purchase options are missing.

[SirJohn]

I REALLY need a preview button....

Sorry ((

[Gotcha!]

I'm not sure what you're sorry for?
I doubt there's a need to be, anyway.

[SirJohn]

Gotcha: this was directed at Dominus who needed to fix my image tags in my recent but one post yet again (3rd time today, if I'm not mistaken)

[Dominus]

Nah, only had to do it twice

[Gotcha!]

The hardships of a lone moderator.

[SirJohn]

I have reworked the Antiqua Font to have as little line-spacing as possible. Hence, it now should run under BG and SI AND display the longer dialogues / purchase options ok:

Black Gate:


Serpent Isle




In addition, I found means to make the German Umlauts look ok-ish (at least when compared to the Gothic style font posted above:


If you deem it ok and fit for use as well, do not hesitate to let me know, where to upload it / send it to.

SirJohn

[Dominus]

Send it to me and I'll see to uploading it to the download page. Many thanks for fixing this, it looks really good now

[Knight Captain]

Are there any places in the English-language version of SI+SS where the font causes problems?

[SirJohn]

KC: yes, at least for Standarr (this is where I noticed it) there a pruchase options missing, if you use the (existing) modern font. You wouldn't notice, becuase there are still plenty things to buy.

See my post from 01-11-19 18:55
Old font lists all purchase options, modern font ends with "two-handed sword"

@Dominus: will do so tomorrow. Thanks.

[Knight Captain]

I don't believe I've stumbled on any others like that, likely because I'm using 3x scale so plenty of words fit on the screen.

Previously I noticed the way Exult handles long sentences is different from the original. This is mostly noticeable in the Silver Seed area.

[Dominus]

FINALLY uploaded Sir John's enhanced work
On our download page you can find only the replacement Antiqua Font, but Sir John also reworked the original font somewhat. For his full work visit https://sirjohn.de/ultima-7-patches-and ... pent-isle/