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Author Topic: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts  (Read 37063 times)

Offline Hythlodaeus

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[UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« on: November 08, 2013, 03:48:07 pm »
Took me ages to finish this, but I'm finally done. I've successfully recreated and expanded the fontset from the Amiga and PSX versions of X-COM for use in OXC.

For those who have no idea of what I'm talking about, the Amiga/PSX version of Enemy Unknown featured a fontset that was considerably different from the PC versions fonts. These fonts were originally part of the (not-so-pretty) Amiga 500 port, but were later incorporated in the Amiga 1200 and PSX ports as well, with various changes and modifications. They were essentially more heavily stylized fonts with bigger, more readable characters, but also sharper contrast, and no anti-aliasing. They were used to give a more serious look to the UI, but weren't without their own flaws; whereas earlier implementations suffered from a limited character set, later ones had poor readability, in brighter backgrounds, due to the lack of proper shading.

What I've done here is not a 1:1 recreation, but rather a polished version of the best aspects of every version of this fontset. Aside from no longer suffering from poor readability, I've also expanded it to include both Cyrillic and Greek alphabet characters, as well as its respective diacritics. All diacritical marks were also optimized to be perfectly distinguishable even in the small set.

I'd appreciate everyone to give this a try, especially if you're either Greek or from a country which uses a Cyrillic-based alphabet, as I really want to make sure I made no big mistakes.

Here's a small preview, if you're curious:

English:



Greek:



Russian:



Romanian:



Portuguese:




HOW TO INSTALL:

Download AmigaFontsMod1.4 from this post. Extract the "AmigaFonts" folder from the archive, and place it in ./OpenXCom/standard folder. Start the game, and load the mod from the mod tab.

I'd like to thank the people of the English Amiga Boards for helping me rip the needed characters from the Amiga 1200 version,
and all the folks in #openxcom who helped with the testing.

Hope you all enjoy this mod.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 01:33:19 pm by Hythlodaeus »

Offline cort

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Re: Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2013, 09:22:16 am »
This is really nice. I like the sharper text, it's especially usefull when playing in higher resolutions.
Found a bug though, and marked where i think the error lies. In the screenshot, it is used "Reïncărcare" instead of "Reîncărcare".
« Last Edit: November 09, 2013, 09:24:39 am by cort »

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #2 on: November 09, 2013, 11:56:56 am »
Hey man, thanks a lot for the feedback. Thanks to you I actually detected two small spacing errors with the same letters, and an extra letter on the line above I accidentally forgot to remove. Reuploaded the fixed version.

Offline Ishmaeel

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Re: Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2013, 01:54:02 pm »
Awesome job. Especially loving the big font. There was a spacing bug with the uppercase Ğ character due to a stray pixel. Other than that, I'm happy to report that Turkish characters are flawless!

Fixed version attached.

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2013, 02:02:04 pm »
Thanks. Updated.

Offline Mr. Quiet

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2013, 04:24:50 pm »


See the resemblance? Anyways, this font is not for me. Reminds me of hippies.

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2013, 05:04:44 pm »
*UPDATE* Added version 1.1 to the  first post. Changes are as it follows:

- New characters: º ª ´ ¨ and ° are now available in both fontbig and fontsmall. This means that this font has actually surpassed the original PC font in terms of available characters!
- Fixed many pixel gaps
- Fixed a few spacing bugs
- Improved outlines on some accented characters
- Tweaked some russian and greek characters
« Last Edit: December 07, 2013, 05:07:16 pm by Hythlodaeus »

Offline kkmic

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2013, 09:47:01 am »
First: Excellent job! I LOVE the fonts! Mind you, I play the game in English (and I will continue to do so), but I was still waiting for a character set that will look better in my native language (Romanian).

Second: Can these fonts be distributed with OXC? I mean, since this is some sort of derivative work, are there any copyright issues?

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #8 on: December 09, 2013, 01:36:40 pm »
Second: Can these fonts be distributed with OXC? I mean, since this is some sort of derivative work, are there any copyright issues?

It's a legal gray area, but then again, we're already distributing the original PC version fonts in the main package, so it's about the same.
Getting these into the main package is up to SupSuper and whether or he'll code a little option to pick your font type.

Offline kkmic

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2013, 08:43:02 am »
Considering that Julian Gollop gave his for the project, that Micropose is kinda gone, and the fonts are not used to create another game or to make a profit, I'd say it's worth including them.

SupSuper, what's your opinion?

Offline SupSuper

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #10 on: December 11, 2013, 02:26:10 am »
I don't have a problem with the fonts, just the option, since the UI is fairly hardcoded. A setting to point to different Font.dat's would probably be simplest.

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2013, 02:47:14 am »
I don't have a problem with the fonts, just the option, since the UI is fairly hardcoded. A setting to point to different Font.dat's would probably be simplest.
Perhaps it would be best to have more UI customization options to make something like this worthwhile. I was thinking that maybe having different window frames to chose from would be nice as well. Either way, that's something to think about post 1.0.

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #12 on: December 25, 2013, 07:32:27 pm »
Updated version. Fixed three characters on fontsmall.

Offline Hythlodaeus

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #13 on: May 29, 2014, 03:00:39 am »
Updated to ver 1.3. Latest characters implemented characters in the default fontset now added.

Offline Ishmaeel

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Re: [UI] Amiga/PSX Fonts
« Reply #14 on: May 30, 2014, 01:09:18 am »
I have no business with the new chars, so no new feedback from me.  ;D
Just posting to say thanks and still lovin' it.

Edit: spoke too soon. Everybody has business with at least the infinity symbol. Which is gorgeous.  ::)
« Last Edit: May 30, 2014, 03:43:52 pm by Ishmaeel »