OpenArena Message Boards

I'm opening a new topic for fonts. There was a discussion in the suggestions for openarena (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3095) topic, but I think it's a better place to talk about fonts.

Schlorri remade the original OpenArena font to be sharper (pulchr's screenshot):

(http://www.pulchr.se/random/sharper-characters.jpg)

And I asked Schlorri to make the font more like the OpenArena logo. He showed me (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3095.msg25726#msg25726) a serif like font which resembles the original OA logo more.

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/oa-fonts-serif.jpg)

But I meant the new logo, which was made by Joshua (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=1748.msg14802#msg14802) and it is used in the official homepage redesign (http://openarena.ws/newsiteproto/protoindex.html). I strongly believe that the next OpenArena version should entirely follow this modern, cool, blueish design. So I was thinking about a font which resembles the new OA logo.

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/oa-fonts-modern.jpg)

This picture is not ingame, it's only a showcase done with GIMP. The font is the Strasua font (http://www.1001fonts.com/font_details.html?font_id=3088), which ain't GPL so you shouldn't copy that. I only presented because it somewhat looks like the new logo. I think the new font should more or less look like the Strasua font, but it should be an entirely new font from scratch with the following features: it should be wide, somewhat bold, the font lines should be simple, more sans than serif, there should be some curves, not entirely sharp corners, all characters should be easily recognisable even if the text is small (the A and W in the Strasua font are a bit hard to read), maybe some letters can be unique (A with a diamond like in the logo).

The problem with hi-res font textures, they'll thrash all the older chipsets and also don't scale down too well (tons of pixel popping in the console)

Not a big problem, we could add a cvar for hqfonts.

Udi: a this one u mean :), this would look better!

Well... I have a suggestion.

What about a Larabie font? For example; this. http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/larabie/good-times/ (http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/larabie/good-times/)

Most Larabie fonts are added to OpenOffice downloads, that's why I started checking them.

Would look good, but i can not find any Larabie-GPL-fonts. You know a site?

Oops... true. Even I remembered it wrong about having it in OOo.

Forget it.

I figured out something about how the engine renders the fonts. The key is that all the important vertical lines should begin on odd pixels (1st, 3rd, 5th pixel from the left). See the picture:

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-rendering-explanation.jpg)

The horizontal position doesn't seem to influence the result, but the vertical position does indeed! Compare the pictures from the console:

On the first all the characters are on even pixels, the result is blurry, unreadable:

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/console-test-blurry.jpg)

On the second all the characters are on the odd pixels, the result is nice, sharp bitmap fonts:

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/console-test-sharp.jpg)

On the third you can see the original font in the console. Not all the characters are blurry but some could be more sharp:

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/console-original.jpg)

And you can compare the test font and the original ingame: test font (http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/ingame-test.jpg) vs. original (http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/ingame-original.jpg).

I think we can achieve pretty good results without introducing a hqchars variable just with the usual 256x256 tga. This font is for testing only, but it has all the characters redrawn, it can be a pretty good starting point. You can download the source package (http://udionline.hu/openarena/oa-testfont.zip), it contains the Inkscape SVG, the GIMP XCF (used for conversion only) and the pk3 for testing (you should copy it into oa/baseoa). Everything is GPL v2.

I've managed to complete the first set of characters, and redraw all the fonts found in OA (except for buttons and other embedded images). The funny thing is, that while bigchars.tga contains monospaced characters, the other two (font1_prop, font2_prop) contain custom width characters, so the fonts made for bigchars are a bit distorted, but it can be improved. All my sources still needs polishment, but I want to show them before I put too much effort into fonts that no one will like :).

Here are some before/after screenshots (sorry for the jpg noise):

Console and chat fonts:
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/console_0.1.jpg)

Frag message:
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/frag_0.1.jpg)

Multiplayer window:
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/multiplayer_0.1.jpg)

Options window:
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/options_0.1.jpg)

Here's the package for testing yourself: z_oafont_udi_0.1.pk3 (http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/fajlok/z_oafont_udi_0.1.pk3) (put it into baseoa).
And here go the sources: oafont_udi_0.1_sources.zip (http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/fajlok/oafont_udi_0.1_sources.zip).
The source package contains all the SVGs, XCFs, a small readme where to find things, a changelog with some more todos, and of course the GPL v2 license. If you don't like the fonts, my sources are still worth downloading, because there are grids for font1_prop and font2_prop which are essential (even some original fonts are off the grid). And I found a font1_prop_glow.tga in the OA packages, I think it is superfluous, there's the real file next to it called font1_prop_glo.tga.

Any feedback is welcome.

Hello,

ive tested it a bit: GREAT WORK! The HUD looks better, fragmsg looks better .... everything looks better.
I hope this font will find its way in openarena!

That new font looks excellent.

The 'm' seems a bit narrow, but I'm guessing the "odd rule" you discovered prevents making it wider.

I like this font

You did a big improvement.

Coming from human-computer interaction I like the new sharpness but dislike the type of font you have chosen. It is harder to recognize the new letters. I'd prefer a more standardized, easy readable font. Just my personal taste...

Thanks for the replies, I will go trough all the characters and see if it can be more legible.

The only thing I dislike about this font is the line through the 7.

I think it looks great in the menus, but I'm not sure it suits the scoreboard and the HUD and the console.

As you mention it: my native English teacher talked about that differences between the British and Continental numbers. As a Central-European I didn't realised it is unnecessary, I will remove it.

i usually write my sevens with a dash, but i agree with chaotic here, it looks a bit strange.

but apart from that i think it looks nice. especially the sharp edges.

I really don't like the square fonts. They are sorta 1980ish in style from a time that computers could not display nice fonts.

Fonts should be soft edged and easy on the eyes. The main purpose of the fonts is to give information. I can read the messages in OpenArena with no problem but I know what it says. I have seen the same style fonts used in other games and I found it really bad and hard to read as I did not know what the message was.

My opinions is based on the screenshots only.

the old font is better in the console while the 'new' is better suited in the large texts display in-game.

the contrast seems to be higher in the new font? or is it just the sharp edges?

Well, since in the bigchars.tga all the characters should fit into 16x16 pixels it is really like in the 80'. I'm working on more recognizable fonts, the next version will come soon.


It is the sharp edges, in the original fonts all the characters have some semi-transparent pixels around which makes it look like smooth (some kind of anti-aliasing). The problem is that the bigger characters contain the same semi-transparent noise, that makes the bigger text look ugly. So my idea was to get rid of as much faulty pixels as possible (that's why the characters are square like). Schlorri suggested another solution to introduce a c_var, and use a 256x256 tga for console and a 1024x1024 tga for the bigger fonts (since the high resolution font looks also crappy on the console). And Falkland suggested we use the Freetype support in ioquake3.

I dunno, it kinda adds a bit of coolness to it, the retro flair I mean. OA could use a few stylish makeovers, give it a little of its own personality.

I release the next version before going on holidays. There's not much to tell, everything is more polished.

Botchat and console (left = v0.1, right = v0.2):
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/console_0.2.jpg)

Fragmessage (from top to bottom: original, v0.1, v0.2):
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/frag_0.2.jpg)

Tournament message (from top to bottom: original, v0.1, v0.2):
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/tournament_0.2.jpg)

On the console picture you can see that it is slightly modified, I think it can be read easier but I cannot judge it, I'm too much used to it. The tournament screenshots were missing before, but it is the most problematic font because of its size. 0.2 contains bigger curves, so it will get ugly on that. I think the XY vs. VZ text should be decreased in the engine itself, it is impossible to present satisfying results for small texts like the console and for large texts like the tournament message.

Package: z_oafont_udi_0.2.pk3 (http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/fajlok/z_oafont_udi_0.2.pk3)
Sources: oafont_udi_0.2_sources.zip (http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/fajlok/oafont_udi_0.2_sources.zip)

Yep, these are very different.
I should try these when I have some time between the mapping and my duties.

Another experiment with fonts (playing with Portal boosts my brain activity :) ). I started a new font based on the Liberation Sans font, which is also GPL. Here are the results compared to the original font:

original console vs. new sans console:
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/console-original-vs-sans.jpg)

original tournament vs. new sans tournament:
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/tournament-original-vs-sans.jpg)

You can see that the sans font is easily readable but because of the curves and diagonal lines it is almost as ugly as the original font if it gets scaled.

And here came my idea: Schlorri's high definition font looked ugly in the console, because certain pixels get omitted, maybe this can be solved with the odd rule described in a previous post. Here are the results:

console (from top to bottom: Schlorri's font (1024x1024 tga), new sans at 1024x1024 tga, new sans at 512x512 tga):
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/console-comparison-sans0.1.jpg)

tournament (from top to bottom: Schlorri's font (1024x1024 tga), new sans at 1024x1024 tga, new sans at 512x512 tga):
(http://66.7.209.124/~udionlin/kepek/openarena/tournament-comparison-sans0.1.jpg)

The question is whether we can use 512x512 resolution for the bigchars.tga (I don't think we need bigger than that).

Sources and testing packages next time :).

First i want to say : i like your first self created font more :-) !

So now the resolution Question: In my opinion the goal is not make the font look less crappy, the goal is to make the font look NOT crappy anymore -> so we need high-resolution-tgas. I think a good idea is to make the cgs.media.charsetShader r_mode dependent, so users with high resolution will load an high-res bigchar ...

GIANT_HEIGHT is 48 px on 640x480 and it look bad already,  because we use an 16px/char charset  :) .
You can calculate your real GIANT charheight with 0.1px*screenres_height, in my case 108px ...compared to 16px it looks a bit scary.

So lets look with "trap_Cvar_VariableValue( "r_mode" )" the screenres (r_mode = -1 -> r_customheight ) and register the charset screenres dependent.

schlorri

I don't know if we can introduce such calculations because of compatibility issues. But if we can change the code, than I think it's easier to separate the console,  botchat and the frag message, tournament message font. The first two fonts have 18 pixel height on 1280x800 pixel resolution in game, so nearly the same as in the 256x256 big tga. But the tournament message fonts are nearly 74 pixel high in the game, which is 400% bigger (even in the 1024x1024 big tga you only have 64 pixels for a single character). No matter how you calculate which resolution to use, you will have a huge gap between the small and big characters.

ok better idea ... not resolution dependent -> i can implement it charsize dependent in function CG_DrawChar( int x, int y, int width, int height, int ch ). So we dont have to seperate several messages.

Ok done, modified CG_DrawChar ... there is a test how high the char is on screen (in px), then the right charset is choosen -> no scary chars anymore :)

As you can see here it is sharp on 640x480 too (sorry...i can only upload 1024 kb per post :( )

looks very good!

I'm using z_oafont_udi_0.2.

8 and B look the same ...

It gave the game a fresh look, but the excitment passed I don't know what to think about that font ;)
Except the 8 and B problem, I hadn't any issue to read it correctly.

New releases will come soon. The square like version is ready actually, but I want to release a Liberation Sans based one at the same time, so testers won't be tired of new fonts coming out every week :).

Release time :D! There are two major improvements in the new versions. The first is narrower lowercase letters and narrower numbers. With narrower letters there's more whitespace which helps the mind recognizing the characters, no more endless heap of lines. Because all the lowercase letters were shrink, the relative size of the 'm' is increased, it doesn't looks so small compared to the others. Since the numbers are narrow too, 8 and B can be more easily distinguished. The other improvement is a small bash script which converts the Inkscape exported number png-s straight to 3D looking tga-s with the help of Image Magick. No more applying effects with Gimp to all the numbers (11 of them), it speeds up testing and releasing. The bash script is in both source files, it is well commented and you can also read about it in the readme. In general both fonts are well polished, every string found in the game was checked to look good. I'm quite satisfied with them, so I will move on to something different, maybe textures or other GUI things. But first the fonts:

Digit v0.3
I've named the previous font Digit, so it's easier to refer to it. Version 0.3 is more resembling the 0.1 version, it contains less curves than 0.2, so it looks more smooth, and because of the narrowing described above it can be more easily read than 0.2. The screenshots compare 0.1 and 0.3:

Console and botchat (left: 0.1, right 0.3)
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-digit-03/console-compare.jpg)

Frag message (top: 0.1, bottom: 0.3)
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-digit-03/frag-compare.jpg)

Tournament message (top: 0.1, bottom: 0.3)
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-digit-03/tournament-compare.jpg)

0.3 was kind of finished two weeks ago, and since then I used to the sans font. Today I put this back, and it hit me like "WTF"! It felt totally new, but I got used to pretty fast, so I think it's readable enough to go into SVN. But I'm a wrong judge, so please tell me your opinion about it!

Package for instant testing: z_oafont_digit_0.3.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_oafont_digit_0.3.pk3) (just put it into baseoa)
Sources: oafont_digit_0.3_sources.zip (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_digit_0.3_sources.zip) (GPLv2)

Sans v0.1
I've named it sans because it's based on Liberation Sans. But the font2_prop is made sans-serif like in the OA font. After all the characters were drawn, some characters were freely modified without any reference to Liberation Sans to look good in the console.

Console and botchat (left: OA, right: sans 0.1)
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-sans-01/console-compare.jpg)

Frag message (top: OA, bottom: sans 0.1)
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-sans-01/frag-compare.jpg)

Tournament message (top: OA, bottom: sans 0.1)
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-sans-01/tournament-compare.jpg)

And here comes the real power of the bash script mentioned earlier. With the help of it you can apply any effect to all the numbers in no time, so playing with the numbers is easy. I made a wider version of the numbers (the normal version is in the sources too), just like Q3 numbers were, and added a brushed metal texture to it. The texture was made with some stock Gimp effects (xfc also in the sources). Here's the result:
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-sans-01/numbers-sans.jpg)
I think it looks cool, but you can comment out the texture line in the bash script, and you will find the narrow numbers in the sources, rebuilding the numbers is some text editing and one double click away :).

You can see on the previous pictures that the sans 0.1 renders a little better than the OA font, and because it's actually a standard sans font, no bad words can be said on the readabilty. If Digit 0.3 is not good enough, than sans 0.1 should definitely go to SVN, because it fixes some bugs too (top: OA, bottom 0.1, characters above: []@./\):
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/font-sans-01/bugs-compare.jpg)

Package for instant testing: z_oafont_sans_0.1.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_oafont_sans_0.1.pk3) (just put it into baseoa)
Sources: oafont_sans_0.1_sources.zip (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_sans_0.1_sources.zip) (GPLv2)

So the question is: which font should be the next OA font? Any other suggestions are also welcome :).

One vote for Digit... except that upper curve of the 'c'.

That gives me nightmares... or just simply looks ugly.

Here's digit version 0.3.1, only change is that the funny upper line of the c is removed:
(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/0.3.1-compare.jpg)
Pk3: http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_oafont_digit_0.3.1.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_oafont_digit_0.3.1.pk3)
Sources: http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_digit_0.3.1_sources.zip (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_digit_0.3.1_sources.zip)

The sans font will be part of another package, which is coming sunday to a forum topic near you.

Great!

Now I particularly support that Digit...

Nice job, Udi.

New version looks great!

Thanks for the replies :D!

As I was doing the 2D improvement package I've got the idea setting the transparency against black instead setting it against white. Here's the result:

(http://udionline.hu/kepek/openarena/0.3.2-compare.jpg)

As you can see it got narrower because the semi-transparent pixels which are causing the blurry edges are now much darker. This technique was applied to the sans font released in the 2D improvement package, so here's digit version 0.3.2 with the same technique:

Package: http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_oafont_digit_0.3.2.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/z_oafont_digit_0.3.2.pk3)
Sources: http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_digit_0.3.2_sources.zip (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_digit_0.3.2_sources.zip)

yes, but...

How can i make a font ?

TTF2Font works ?

No, TTF2Font is for the Cube engine, and the Cube engine's and ioQuake3's font bitmaps are different. I suggest you download my latest source package (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/oafont_digit_0.3.2_sources.zip), there are .SVG files. You can open them with Inkscape which is opensource and free and cool, and there you can place your font one by one into the grid I drew.

Hi people!

This is mi first post, i'm new here. I've been working on new HUD numbers and new in-game font.
The font is called "HeadlineNEWS" and it's licensed in public domain at http://www.fontspace.com/reference-type-foundry/headlinenews (http://www.fontspace.com/reference-type-foundry/headlinenews)

(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8616/headlinenews.jpg)
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8486/headlinemenu.jpg)

(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4021/shot0004we.jpg)

And fullscreen screenshot
(http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8537/shot0006f.th.jpg) (http://img683.imageshack.us/i/shot0006f.jpg/)

I attached the .pk3 file, if anyone want to test it.

Im Spanish actually, so my english isn't very good :D

bb!

Hi, and welcome to the forums ;)!

Your original font looks nice, glad it's public domain. But when porting it to the ioquake3 engine as a bitmap, pay attention that it has no anti aliasing. Your bigchars.tga has a resolution of 1024x1024 pixels, and thus it looks great on high resolution and big text. But on the console it is scaled down, and because it lacks antialiasing it will look rough on the edges. Here's a comparison, on the left HeadlineNEWS, on the right the 0.8.5 fonts.

(http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/4063/headnewsconsole.th.jpg) (http://img63.imageshack.us/i/headnewsconsole.jpg/)

Try rescaling the bigchars.tga to 512x512 or 256x256 pixels, maybe you will find the best result. Your package contains a lot of unnecessary images, for the fonts you only need:

• gfx/2d/bigchars.tga
• gfx/2d/numbers/*
• menu/art/font1_prop.tga
• menu/art/font1_prop_glo.tga
• menu/art/font2_prop.tga

The weight of your fonts is closer to the original Q3 bold font and the lower uppercase letters are not a bad idea either. Keep up the good work! Oh, and don't forget to submit your font to the Open Font Library (http://openfontlibrary.org/) ;)!

Freetype support + customizable hud like CPMA SuperHud could have been the best solution ...

The font that i used is not created by me, i dicovered searching deeply, that has been created in 1994 by Albert J.Kim (google dont have much information about this guy). So i'm gonna use a really open font, discarding this font.

Seems ridiculous that one font can have copyright... but this is another topic (or flame).

Sorry for the misunderstanding :D

No! You can use this font, it's public domain, so go ahead and use it :)!


Yes, but OA aims for a 100% mod compatibility, so we need some vanilla Q3 tga fonts. Whether we use them or not thats another question.

There are a few updates with headlineNEWS again, and looks much better in console and menus (still need some work)
(http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/3321/headlinenewsfrag.jpg)

(http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/8486/headlinemenu.jpg)

(http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/8616/headlinenews.th.jpg) (http://img42.imageshack.us/i/headlinenews.jpg/)

(http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/1917/shot0004da.jpg)

The HUD numbers still the same. The .pk3 is attached for download.

BB!

I'm not a coder, so I'll be writing as an ignorant, but... could a cvar for font selection clash with the mod compat?

Bigchars font is defined in the renderer engineside, so no it wouldn't. Video memory though, is another matter to worry about. Too many 512x512x32+ fonts will increase loading times much.

I was talking about choosing among fonts, which could be user-made: in this case, Udi's one and hkn's one.

That's why CNQ3 , Xreal and now also UrT 4.2 engines use freetype : relatively easy font type/size customization - trough cvars or superhud - while preserving memory resources ( because of vectorial fonts ).

why not Sauerbraten's font ? I think it's GPL.
If black outlines not supported, i can delete them.

(How to get a GPL license for a mod i've created (eg) ?)

Sauerbraten is Zlib license. I don't know the layout of Sauerbraten fonts, but the Cube fonts are different and would need to place differently.


Just attach every source you have (C code, psd or xcf file, svg file), and also attach the text of the GPLv2 license (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt).

Careful.  The code is zlib license, but the game media is a whole different story.

Yes, thanks. I misread the code & design line on its website.

Here's the next version of the sans font: 0.3 (0.2 came with the 2D improvement package). The most important change is, that the bigchars, font1 and font2 sources were scaled to 200% and the changes were made at the increased size. The large size enabled to make it bolder and add details so it looks more like a standard sans font. The brushed metal texture is removed from the numbers, but it has still the bevel and gradient effect.

This time I'm releasing three packages: low, middle and high resolution. The low looks fine at 1024x768 and lower, the middle was tested at 1280x800 and high is for HD resolution. If you have time, please test all of them at different resolutions, theoritically the high resolution will look more pixelated in the console, but I think it's a fair deal for an HD font. The source file is the same for every resolution, it is just exported at different resolutions from Inkscape (vector graphics ftw).

• Low resolution: z_oafont_sans_v0.3_low.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/openarena/z_oafont_sans_v0.3_low.pk3)
• Middle resolution: z_oafont_sans_v0.3_mid.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/openarena/z_oafont_sans_v0.3_mid.pk3)
• High resolution: z_oafont_sans_v0.3_high.pk3 (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/openarena/z_oafont_sans_v0.3_high.pk3)
• Sources: oafont_sans_v0.3_sources.zip (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/openarena/oafont_sans_v0.3_sources.zip)
• License: GPLv2 (attached to every package)

Great!

I tested the high resolution font, and looks great in all in-game, as you said, its little aliased on console size.
The HUD numbers looks so great, im running it at 1920*1080px, so they fit perfect