What's in a font?

[woootbm]

Hey all!

I'm trying to shake up what my next game looks like, and one of the things I realized needs to be done is I need to use a different font. I've been going through looking at all the options, and I generally trust my eye to figure out readability and aesthetic values. But I always hear people online hating on certain fonts: Comic Sans, Impact, and Papyrus are the ones I've seen people trip over. I don't necessarily like these fonts myself, but I don't understand the ire that people have for them. Are any other examples people can think of? Is there a method to this madness?

I'm also unsure of how to force a font on players in case they don't have it installed. Do I just copy it into the fonts folder in the project?

 

[Shake0615]

Yanfly has a custom fonts plugin but I think you’ll need to check the license on your font to make sure you can distribute it since it’ll have to be included in your build.

As for which one to choose, I say don’t ever pick anything that could be construed as “decorative.” A font should be simple, unobtrusive and should never bring attention to itself. Comic Sans, Impact, and Papyrus do exactly that. They bring the focus away from what you write and distract the eye.

 

[Windows i7]

A font must also be easy on the eyes. If it is straining to read due to the way the characters look, that is a bad font.

 

[Jonforum]

on my side i allow the play select the custom fonts he want.
By default it my game fonts, but sometime people prefer read with classic window fonts.

on my side I'm even worse, my text is jelly animate with motionBlur filter and use a very special fonts to give a cartoon effect.
There will be many people who don't like, but what matters is what you love.

The ideal is to propose an option to customize the readability of the reading, and satisfy as many people as possible.

In html game dev, for load multi fonts, you need to use the @font-face technologie.
ex:

    load_fonts(){
        const fonts = [
            {name:"ArchitectsDaughter", url:"fonts/ArchitectsDaughter.ttf"},
            {name:"zBirdyGame", url:"fonts/zBirdyGame.ttf"},
        ];
        fonts.forEach(font => {
            const style = document.createElement('style');
            style.appendChild(document.createTextNode(`
                @font-face {
                    font-family: '${font.name}';
                    font-style: normal;
                    font-weight: 700;
                    src: url("${font.url}");
                }
            `));
            document.getElementsByTagName('head').item(0).appendChild(style);
            const div = document.createElement('div');
            div.style.fontFamily = font.name;
            document.body.appendChild(div);/* Initiates download in Firefox, IE 9+ */
            div.innerHTML = 'Content.';/* Initiates download in WebKit/Blink */
        });
        let checkFonts =  setInterval(()=>{
            if( fonts.every(e => document.fonts.check(`12px ${e.name}`) )){
                this.fonts = fonts;
                clearInterval(checkFonts);
                this.load();
            }
        },60);
    };

 

[woootbm]

A font should be simple, unobtrusive and should never bring attention to itself. Comic Sans, Impact, and Papyrus do exactly that. They bring the focus away from what you write and distract the eye.

Hm. Maybe I shouldn't trust my taste then. Because all of those fonts don't feel distracting to me perhaps this will be something that constantly gets feedback as I go through each stage of development and show it to different people, heh.

A font must also be easy on the eyes. If it is straining to read due to the way the characters look, that is a bad font.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to when I said "readability." I have some basic text tests I use to determine if this is a problem.

on my side i allow the play select the custom fonts he want.

I tend to remove aesthetic customization a lot. I'm trying to create a specific experience in my games since they're so story-based. That sounds pretentious, I know, but I don't feel the need to cater to everyone. I ain't UbiSoft

 

[Jonforum]

Anyway people can easily hack the file or replace the fonts file in an HTML5 game distributions.

For a story game, be sure you have readable fonts!

 

[woootbm]

Anyway people can easily hack the file or replace the fonts file in an HTML5 game distributions.

Interesting. I did have a single person complain about text becoming garbled or something (I used default font) in my current game. I wonder if he did that. Freaking modders, man.

 

[Shake0615]

There was a pretty interesting discussion with examples on this website. I used it as reference when trying to select one for my game.

 

[Lady-J]

A good font is a readable font. I also thinj certqin fonts go woth certain genres. I tend to think serif fonts in games look weird outside of a gothic context. And i like rounder fonts in fantasy and blockier fonts in sci fi

 

[Romanticist]

For games, people love sans serif fonts for some reason. I hear a lot of praise for Helvetica amongst graphic designers in general, though it looks like every other sans serif font to me

 

[Wavelength]

Ignore the Font-Haters. Fonts like Comic Sans are awesome. Just be careful about where you use them - they're probably not appropriate as the main dialogue font in a text-heavy game. They're better for labels, titles, short cuts of text, etc. For font that you'll use all over the place, especially where it's meant to be dialogue, choose a nice, simple font that shows a bit of personality but most importantly has perfect readability.

 

[Bone]

Look at games similar to yours and try to find similar fonts. Don't try to go for a crazy super unique font cause it will most likely just cause a strain on your players eyes, they will always appreciate readability over anything.
For years now I have been defaulting to Verdana for personal projects and marketing ads for clients. Its simple and clear to read. Its kinda like the poor mans Futura.

 

[Aesica]

Another thing to be wary of is font size. I've seen some games try to really scale down the font size in the dialog box so they can fit more on a given page. Please don't do this. The default size used by MV's dialog engine is on the larger end of "just right" because it lets the player consume the dialog in smaller, bite-sized chunks rather than having to read huge, intimidating multi-line walls of paragraph text.

I generally only stick to 1 sentence per page, so the sentence full stop coincides with the dialog box's full stop. It also lets me work in little animations, balloon icons, and other such things to make more than just Person A showering Person B with an entire pot of word stew.

For games, people love sans serif fonts for some reason. I hear a lot of praise for Helvetica amongst graphic designers in general, though it looks like every other sans serif font to me

For what it's worth, serif fonts were (originally) designed to help guide the reader's eye along, making text easier to read quickly. While studies behind this are somewhat inconclusive, I find it to hold true for myself so I tend to use serif fonts for body text. Sans serif makes for better labels and headlines, though.

Ignore the Font-Haters. Fonts like Comic Sans are awesome. Just be careful about where you use them - they're probably not appropriate as the main dialogue font in a text-heavy game. They're better for labels, titles, short cuts of text, etc. For font that you'll use all over the place, especially where it's meant to be dialogue, choose a nice, simple font that shows a bit of personality but most importantly has perfect readability.

Be careful with "ignoring" what people think about Comic Sans. While you might not mind it, the meme/herd mentality that drives others to dislike it could lead to unnecessarily unfavorable first impressions of any product you use it in.

 

[woootbm]

There was a pretty interesting discussion with examples on this website. I used it as reference when trying to select one for my game.

Reading this is making me incredibly cynical. Not only because it sounds like a bunch of elitists discussing things no normal person would ever notice (I feel like there's got to be a word for this...) but because there's such a lack of consensus; there's no right answer!

Another thing to be wary of is font size. I've seen some games try to really scale down the font size in the dialog box so they can fit more on a given page.

This is flat out insane. Why would someone try to increase the feeling of a "wall-of-text"?!

I generally only stick to 1 sentence per page, so the sentence full stop coincides with the dialog box's full stop. It also lets me work in little animations, balloon icons, and other such things to make more than just Person A showering Person B with an entire pot of word stew.

You're preaching to the choir here, heh. Not only do I try to capture succinctness into bite-size chunks, but also how to break up those longer dialogues so they feel like they have natural and/or dramatically timed breaks. Well... try. Exposition dumps happen >.> I'm actually prototyping my chat system to try to give it some kind of comic book feel; guide the eye around, keep things active and interesting. I'll see if I can do it without it being too visually distracting.

Be careful with "ignoring" what people think about Comic Sans. While you might not mind it, the meme/herd mentality that drives others to dislike it could lead to unnecessarily unfavorable first impressions of any product you use it in.

That's exactly why I brought it up. I'm not gonna die in battle for comic sans and try to get it over. Nor do I want to accidentally cause an uproar. Like, fonts don't matter that much. Yeesh.

I have found a font I like, though. It's highly readable but with just a small hint of style to give it some flavor. I'll post screenshots when I have something appropriate to show (probably not in this thread) and I'll see how people react.

 

[Jonforum]

there are people who may have difficulty reading text too large on a TV, or will lost when there is too much line or rounding fonts!
On my side am for let people choose the fonts, width and height of text.

It's not complicated to code and especially people notice your effort.
It is also the same debate to offer a color mode in the game for the colorblind.
However for this problem there are special glasses.