AuthorTopic: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts  (Read 4981 times)

Offline thetooth

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Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

on: November 13, 2011, 01:39:28 am
Hi, i'm working on a project thats being released on a handful of embedded devices, it contains a lot of text so a decent font is required.

What i'm looking for, is a collection or pointer to some __pre anti-aliased__ bitmap fonts. As i don't have the option to implement a full blown freetype renderer i need the fonts to be pre-rendered as a fixed width table.
Heres and example of what i mean, from the grafx2 project:


I'm pretty sure these were done by hand, as i've fond it impossible to render any fonts at this quality. So where can i get more like this, or how would it be possible to convert aliased fonts to a much smoother variant?

P.S. to be clear i'm looking for small(6x8 px) fixed width fonts that can be used in a console as well as normal screen text.

Offline Kasumi

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #1 on: November 13, 2011, 04:11:01 am
A homebrew Game Boy tracker called LSDJ has three different fonts that are antialised by hand: http://www.littlesounddj.com/lsd/

You can view them in the free version of program. It doesn't do lowercase, though.

Your post leads me to believe you don't want to just lift something from somewhere (else you would just use the grafx2 fonts), but all these may be helpful to study from for anyone who wants to help you. Most are not antialised, but at least a few are, and someone could possibly just hand antialias whichever ones you like.

8x8 fonts:

http://pics.pineight.com/nes/8x8s.png

http://orangetide.com/nesdev/gamefonts/

That's all I got, unless I can find a link to the third collection I'm pretty sure I found.
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline thetooth

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #2 on: November 13, 2011, 06:21:32 am
wow! i never knew LSDJ had AA, its very subtle, which i like.

Thanks for those links, i really like game fonts, i suppose i should just suck it up and do my own AA, and yeah i don't just want to rip stuff, i am using the font from grafx2 at the moment, but because its a texture i can't use it in any image editors as a font. and using something so unique is going to raise questions if i start using it all over the place without licensing(grafx2 is free and all but i doubt the artists that made those resources would be too impressed).

i think i'm going to have a go at AA'ing "Amiga Forever"

Offline yrizoud

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #3 on: November 13, 2011, 01:26:07 pm
If your project is to be licensed GPL, there's no problem using the grafx2 font, otherwise you need to ask its original author. PM me if you need his e-mail.

6x8 (including horizontal and vertical spacing) is pretty rare. On the other hand, it's very small so painting a font at this size is pretty fast. How many distinct colors are available ?

Offline thetooth

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #4 on: November 13, 2011, 11:36:47 pm
If your project is to be licensed GPL, there's no problem using the grafx2 font, otherwise you need to ask its original author. PM me if you need his e-mail.

6x8 (including horizontal and vertical spacing) is pretty rare. On the other hand, it's very small so painting a font at this size is pretty fast. How many distinct colors are available ?
Yeah, 6x8 would be ideal, but i started working on a 8x8 font, once you add the AA and shave the edges off it looks much cleaner like 6x8 tend to.
Also the constrains aren't so much in display capability's, its just limited processing power. the target is android and iphones, so 16bits color with up to 32bits of alpha blending(which is what i'm using, its much better than pallet indexes :P).

The code is BSD, but i'll be selling it non the less...

Offline blumunkee

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #5 on: November 14, 2011, 04:38:39 am
I belive Ilkke made that GrafX2 skin. Maybe you could just ask him if you can derive the fonts for your own project.

Offline yrizoud

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #6 on: November 14, 2011, 11:13:27 am
It can be complicated when several people contribute, but here I'm certain that Ilkke didn't change the small "help" fonts at the bottom, they are still the ones drawn by X-Man for the original MS-DOS version. I only made tiny changes, like adding characters … and ⌘

Offline Martyr

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Re: Hand Anti-Aliased Bitmap Fonts

Reply #7 on: November 14, 2011, 06:17:50 pm
Use bitmaps with anti-aliasing against a black background, and do some additive blending?