Author Topic: I created my own font, Crypteuz!  (Read 9555 times)

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Offline TerraEsperZ

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I created my own font, Crypteuz!
« on: October 07, 2016, 06:10:38 am »
Forgive my enthusiasm, but I'm just really happy whenever I actually manage to create something I'd consider artistic, given how rigid and resolutely logical I tend to be. Anyway, I started thinking about making my own personal font when I was in college (so close to two decades ago!) and I was doodling in the margins of my school planner. I then forgot about the idea until very recently when I felt really inspired and just *needed* to get it out of my system.

You can see/download the TrueType file at http://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/bitfontmaker2/gallery/?id=3261 but honestly in that format, it's not that good looking or that readable. I just needed a way to officially state that I created it and that website (BitFontMaker2) was the easiest way to do it. I've attached a PNG file with a cleaner version at the end of this post with multiple sizes and shadows, which is what I'll use if I want to make a signature or something.

The name Crypteuz is reallly weird but it's kinda hard to think of a name that nobody else has come up with already, so I just went with a combination of "cryptic", "obtuse" and "TeuZ", the latter being an occasional online alias of mine. As for the font itself, "cryptic" is kind of appropriate since many letters are hard to decipher. I was more concerned with the geometric purity of everything and I gave myself a set of rules concerning how the letters, numbers and the rest could be structured. Like I said, the intent was more to create something that represents me and how I think rather than making a font that was good looking and functional. You can still comment and/or criticize it of course, this is the Internet after all!

*EDITED 2020/07/19*

Attachments aren't working anymore so here's a slightly updated version:

« Last Edit: July 19, 2020, 09:45:06 am by TerraEsperZ »
Current project that are on hold because job burnout :
-Drill Dozer (GBA)
-Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis)
-Naya's Quest (PC)

Offline JonLeung

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Re: I created my own font, Crypteuz!
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2016, 08:25:04 pm »

Offline Maxim

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Re: I created my own font, Crypteuz!
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2016, 12:38:03 pm »
For your next challenge, make it fit in 7x7 pixels :)

Offline TerraEsperZ

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Re: I created my own font, Crypteuz!
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2016, 08:21:39 pm »
I've actually been trying to do just that for the last few days and I'm almost done! Unfortunately, going from 6 x 16 to 8 x 8 pixels doesn't look as good as I'd like and I had to do two things I was hoping to avoid:

1) I had to alter the proportions of the font, shortening and widening everything. The geometrical basis for it is now somewhat gone.

2) Lowercase letters with a descender had to be moved above the baseline because there's no space left under it. As a consequence, they're harder to read as being lowercase.

Additionally, I pretty much have no idea how to handle everything that's not a letter or a number at that scale. The "rules" for them worked as long as there was a middle point in each segment that I could use for more details, but squashing down means there's now no middle pixel in any segment (it's hard to explain, so just trust me on this).

Bonus time! Since that TrueType font looks really bad (and newer versions of Windows love to mess up all that pixelated goodness), I'm including all three size of Crypteuz for use with BitmapFontWriter, which has been my favourite tool for writing text using game fonts. Just convert the PNG files into BMPs and you're set to go!

(But seriously, this is for novelty only. I'm well aware that nobody would want to use this in any sort of regular basis...)

*EDITED 2020/07/19*



« Last Edit: July 19, 2020, 09:48:56 am by TerraEsperZ »
Current project that are on hold because job burnout :
-Drill Dozer (GBA)
-Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis)
-Naya's Quest (PC)