Castle Paradox

Moogle1 · Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject: Fonts for YOU

http://gilgamesh.hamsterrepublic.com/wiki/ohrrpgce/index.php/Where_can_I_find_fonts%3F

I just uploaded three fonts I made. Hopefully someone will find these useful! They are yours to use for free.

If you have a font that you'd like to put up on the wiki but you don't have hosting for it, let me know and we can make arrangements. I like having these sorts of resources available.
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Rya.Reisender · **Snippy** Joined: 18 Jan 2008 Posts: 821

I personally always am annoyed by custom fonts in OHRRPGs because they are usually hard to read.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Moogle1 · Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 12:47 pm Post subject:

That's... nice.

Edit: just so this has a chance of being a productive conversation, which of those fonts do you find hard to read?
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Rya.Reisender · **Snippy** Joined: 18 Jan 2008 Posts: 821

I found it hard to read in all OHR games that used a custom font even those I worked on myself (but wasn't involved in the font). Basically I remember FUABMX (the version with the custom font), EOTE2 and Sword of Jade. All hard to read. ^^'
And I think the ones you posted are hard to read too, I mean the NES one is actually okay, but the caps lock only makes it harder to read again. Oookay...

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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

The Drizzle · **Who is the Drizzle?** Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 432

I agree with Rya in this situation. Custom fonts do nothing but slow down your reading speed and just cause general frustration. It's a principle of typography that blocks of text should be simple sans serif fonts to be effectively read without annoying the hell out of the reader. Complex fonts should be reserved for short titles. It doesn't even have to be that they're super difficult to read. Just slightly harder and significantly more annoying.
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Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

The NES font would look great to replace the capitals, but keep the lowercase letters. The Scary font would make an awesome italics addition.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

Moogle1 · Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject:

Tell me that would look as good with a standard font. (Hint: it wouldn't and you are lying to yourself)

If your game is a long RPG with lots of text, I agree. Your font should be optimized for readability. If it's a shorter game with less text (such as Castlevania or most other NES titles), who cares if it takes you 10 seconds instead of 7 to read the text box?

Or, to use a different approach, why aren't you all using Arial for your title screens? It's much easier to read, you know. The point is, sometimes you use a different font because it fits your game better.
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The Drizzle · **Who is the Drizzle?** Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 432

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

Moogle1 · Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:26 pm Post subject:

Ah, no, I wasn't talking to you specifically. CV3's font isn't the most readable, but the game wouldn't have felt the same if it had used a standard font.

There are fonts that aren't the default font AND aren't hard to read, though. Slight alterations to the default font are more distracting than anything, but giving your game a different readable font can make it look distinctive. IIRC Missing had a custom font.
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Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

Anyway, I just realized that a solution to the NES font lacking lower case letters would be to take them from a game with a terrible password system, such as Metroid. If you do that, then the NES font becomes the most unreadable of the three, heh.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?