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8x8 pixel fonts
Post Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:22 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Sat May 02, 2020 9:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
I'm often on the lookout for good pixel fonts, and I just came across an absolute goldmine:

https://damieng.com/typography/zx-origins/

96 120 font families with 154 207 total variants, all 8x8 and monochrome, in a variety of formats (including PNG), all free to use.

He also has a bunch of fonts ripped from various old computers, many are 8x8:

https://damieng.com/blog/2011/02/20/typography-in-8-bits-system-fonts
https://damieng.com/blog/2011/03/27/typography-in-16-bits-system-fonts
https://damieng.com/blog/2014/07/20/typography-in-bits-other-english-micros
https://damieng.com/blog/2016/08/09/typography-in-bits-for-a-few-pixels-more

I'm trying to figure out how to mirror it now...

Edit: so the only thing forbidden is to re-host the files :( so I guess I will keep my copy offline...
ps1jert-03.png (6.45 KB)
Random example
ps1jert-03.png

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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 12:10 am
A goldmine indeed. Thanks for sharing!
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:13 am
Nice find, that really IS a goldmine!

For my part, last time I needed a font, I used unscii-8, which is public domain.
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:10 am
very nice find!
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:45 am
Excellent. Thanks Maxim !
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:31 am
Came across this book the other day:



https://readonlymemory.vg/shop/book/arcade-game-typography/

I thought it might be of interest
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:14 pm
@Maxim: Some of those are really nice. Thanks for the link.

I do think, though, that creating a new font for your game and trying to capture a bit of its essence in typography is one of the most enjoyable tasks while working on a project, so I would never want to use a pre-made set myself.


@Ian: Very cool book. I think I‘ll have to order that.
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 6:31 pm
Maxim wrote
I'm often on the lookout for good pixel fonts, and I just came across an absolute goldmine:

96 font families with 154 total variants, all 8x8 and monochrome, in a variety of formats (including PNG), all free to use.


Thanks for the kind words!

With regards to hosting all I'm trying to avoid is some site bulk-ripping them and surrounding them with ads (I've had this happen before) - my site is 100% ad and tracker/analytics free (apart from whatever Twitter bundle into the "follow me" button).

If you want to check in the fonts you're using with your source code on GitHub or include it in the zip source go for it. That's fine.

Would be very cool to see some of these in some Master System or Megadrive errr. Genesis... homebrew games.

Somebody else mentioned they like to tailor their fonts to the game. Again feel free to use any of these as a basis - tweak, color, remix them for your game however you want.

I'm going to move some of the more literal conversions off that page very shortly into a new "ported fonts from elsewhere" page to separate original creations and adaptations from straight or almost straight ports.

Here in the US you can't actually copyright font shapes only TrueType or OpenType files as they technically contain "code" so they're effectively public domain.

If there is also a format that works better for Sega systems let me know. I did experiment with bundling z80 ASM defb files and have the tooling to do that. If this would be useful to anyone let me know.
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 7:32 pm
PNG is best for me. I'm likely to extract a subset into my graphics PNG (maybe applying some colours) and then compress the resulting set of unique tiles.

The reference to mirroring is because we are an old website (22 years now) and expect anything we link to to eventually disappear - so taking a copy of the files avoids the link rot.
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:25 pm
damieng wrote
Would be very cool to see some of these in some Master System or Megadrive errr. Genesis... homebrew games.

After I clear a couple other projects (GG2SMS ports, an Echo sequencer to run on the MD), I plan to attempt an original RPG for the MD, and I am definitely not inclined towards making my own font.
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 6:30 am
Maxim wrote
PNG is best for me. I'm likely to extract a subset into my graphics PNG (maybe applying some colours) and then compress the resulting set of unique tiles.

The reference to mirroring is because we are an old website (22 years now) and expect anything we link to to eventually disappear - so taking a copy of the files avoids the link rot.


Each ZIP does also include a png :)

FWIW DamienG site has been around 19 years.

[)amien
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 6:51 am
If anyone's interested, a while back I created a true-type font from the Space Harrier font used in several SMS games. Each "pixel" has rounded corners which becomes more apparent when scaled up. I've attached an example pic.

https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1534491/space-harrier
spaceharrierfont.png (83.09 KB)
spaceharrierfont.png

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Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:29 am
damieng wrote
Thanks for the kind words!


Thank you for sharing your great work with us all! Even if I also think creating a new font for a game is part of the fun, many of us really aren't so good at that (me...) so I'm pretty sure your resources will come handy :D
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2020 7:51 pm
It's been a while since this thread was started so just wanted to pop in and let you know there's been many more fonts added since then - now up to 114 typefaces (font families) for 190 fonts (individual styles).

Quite proud of some of the new ones - a few attached here.

Got a few more in the pipeline but then will probably be wrapping up unless inspiration comes out of nowhere.
byteletter.png (5.69 KB)
ByteLetter
byteletter.png
Riverbank.png (4.38 KB)
Riverbank
Riverbank.png
Reflex.png (2.61 KB)
Reflex
Reflex.png

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