A single line is bent on itself to trace letterforms in 5x5.
This is part of my "IVO" series (Inline Versus Outline) wherein inline and outline elements are split, merged, and altered to make them ambiguous and to allow new styles to emerge. They may look like maze fonts, but they have a different design methodology altogether.
A multi-outline design with intentional aliasing.
At the original size, it looks nicely textured. The illusions become more harsh as one zooms in.
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Original size: 12.75pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
My 200th Fontstruction! :^)
This font, especially the "M", has been kicking around in my mind for years. I wanted a design that looked "kinda like a Metroid". Then, I tried to Fontstruct it. That brings us to the present.
(This font has nothing to do with the "Gods Will Be Watching" video game. I just think the name Xenolifer has the right ring to it.)
See also: Xenolifer Pixel
An extension of ideas present in "Gehenna".
SPOOKY GHOST FONT. A work in progress. Getting the right spooky apparition look is pretty intensive, but I managed to finish the basic character set before Halloween. :D
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This started as a 5x5 design. After realizing S and Z would look far better if I made them 1 square taller, I converted the whole font to be roughly 5x6. At this low resolution, it's hard to get the degree of irregularity which I think makes these letters look ghostly... but, the idea is certainly present!
This design seems like it'd fit in with a lot of horror and science fiction stuff, too. Apart from the "smoky"/"ghostly" look, it has a "melted" one which suggests a hot place or maybe immersion in acid. It also looks a bit like slime, and finally at smaller sizes it has a glitch-esque appearance.
An experiment in subtle asymmetry (it's most evident in the upper case).
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Version 1.7 (14Sep2018) - ExtL-A added, GFB completed, Greek started
Version 1.6 (18Aug2018) - Changed name from "RC Badwolf" to "Badwolf"
Version 1.5 (15Aug2018) - altered 2357,ð
Version 1.4 (14Aug2018) - altered space width and mw
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See also:Navajo Deco
A simple 16x16 terrain tileset. This is designed to work in color AND in monochrome.
In making this, I condensed all known biomes (terrestrial, aquatic, air, space, manmade, transitional) into 26 tiles. This allows a given tile to define multiple different types of areas/terrain, and it allows you to come up with your own meanings for these tiles, rather than having to memorize a legend. Some of the tiles are obvious and some are not; this is by design.
A-Z, a-z = terrain
0-9, 0-9+SHIFT = map borders/frame
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Original size: 12pt
Map Template:
.0123456789
!,,,,,,,,,,
@,,,,,,,,,,
#,,,,,,,,,,
$,,,,,,,,,,
%,,,,,,,,,,
^,,,,,,,,,,
&,,,,,,,,,,
*,,,,,,,,,,
(,,,,,,,,,,
),,,,,,,,,,
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See also:Donjon 16, Gremlin Skins
An experimental design using 1/8 weight lines alongside 1/16 ones. The 1/8 lines are the smallest that can be accurately nudged. Centering them is still a problem at times, and I need a few impossible composites to perfect the glyphs ABEFHKQRXYijkx34789, but overall I'm quite fond of how this doodle turned out.
I think I could use some intensive compositing to get rid of the central dividing line in glyphs like A and H. I'll give it a try when I can.
A doodle made with Brick Basket.
This has many uses! It works as a pixel font or a high-res one, and can generate a surprising range of visual effects.
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See also:Psycho Wave
Just doodling!
It breaks up clusters of words wherever punctuation appears. This might help with reading it out loud, by showing how long a sentence is at a glance and making it very obvious where to pause.
Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ
Welcome to Tridisaster. It's ALL TRIANGLES, ALL THE TIME. Welcome to Triangle Channel.
Mathematical operators have a distinctive "open" look to help set them apart. There are few exceptions (like ^) because these symbols are used in many non-math contexts.
The only one I'm not sure about at this point is the comma, which works fine for my purposes, but probably makes this font a pain for anyone who tries to read/write at length with it. XD
All Basic Latin is kerned for both cases! Use a mixed case to create weird alien scaffolding! Inverted ",." can be found on "µ¶".
Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲ Δ ▲
Experimental mosaic... or maybe a new mineral species?
This one started as a doodle. I began placing circles to see what kinds of complex shapes I could make, and this was the result.
It achieves a new visual effect at almost every size up to the original. Also try slowly moving the zoom slider for some interesting animations!
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This font is now nearly 1MB in size! I guess it has to do with the intrinsic complexity of circles.
Original size: 15pt
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A font which has a spurless, sans-serif, pixelated polygonal look which is somewhat reminescent of fonts used in VHS technology.
A lot of applied science went into this design. It's designed to remain legible on all media in all use conditions, provided that one uses the original size or a multiple thereof. Numerous technologies and mediums were employed to realize this objective.
"Diaspora" was tested and refined for use with/on/against:
• CRT, LCD & e-Ink screens
• image formats & compressed imagery (GIF, JPG)
• printers (inkjet, bubble jet, laserjet, & thermal)
• analog video & multi-generational copies (VHS, Super 8)
• digital video (AVI, MP4, MPEG, WEBM, WMV)
• 3D and voxel models (Blender, MagicaVoxel, POV-Ray)
• dynamic scaling hardware (game consoles and capture devices)
• imagery plugins & filters, including image degraders
• image scaling/interpolation hardware & software
• image recognition hardware & software
These all have traits which degrade, distort, compress, glitch, or otherwise alter imagery in various ways. This design aims to minimize the loss of legibility from these effects and to attain the best scores possible in various forms of imagery analysis. So far, this has proved extremely useful, as it can remain fully legible even when extreme JPG or video compression are applied to it thousands of times.
A piece of software I helped write, called the Marinan Imagery Deconstruction AI System (MIDAS), is being used on captured images of this font. The end objective is to realize the design which has the best all-around Marinan Interpretability Value (MIV) for all the tested platforms - the design which is considered by MIDAS to be the most legible in the most media under the broadest range of use conditions and quality levels.
MIDAS uses a set of considerations made with both humans and computers in mind, so a high MIV does not necessarily equal a better font - it just means one that the system thinks is easier to visually interpret. Note the use of the phrase "visually interpret" as opposed to "read". MIDAS tries to determine how well people and computers can tell what shapes are, not how much enjoyment they'll get from reading or how much strain they might undergo while doing it.
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VERSION HISTORY:
1.0.0 - initial release.
1.0.1 - More Latin support added.
1.0.2 - First batch of tests run.
1.0.3 - gjy5&ßẞ were improved, some glyphs added.
1.0.4 - Second batch of tests run. Space width reduced.
1.0.5 - Experimentally converted to a rounded spurless design, then converted back to a plain spurless after testing. A few new ligatures were added.
1.0.6 - Cyrillic and Greek enter development. Many of these letters must be altered to be distinct from their Latin counterparts.
1.0.7 - Some spacing values changed to increase internal consistency. More difficult tests are being devised. However, since only I seem interested in this type of work, this project is going on hiatus for some time.
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See also: AMFA, a font built with similar considerations in mind
A medium-res pixel font I designed in 2017 for printing the text of "The Story of Book" (TSoB), a tale which began life as an imaginary joke story and then was actually committed to paper.
TSoB is woven from my and my friends' whims, flights of fancy, in-jokes, and intentional idiocy, as well as contributions from several AIs. The resulting story changes tone, style, mood, and context at seeming random, and is subversive toward its media and reader beyond insufferability. All this was done just to make Trap Farmer Brer Brah slightly more interesting to the very few people who will ever bother to get and read The Story of Book in-game. So this font is based on an Easter egg.
Welcome to Orwellian Barcode Prison, antithesis of Chicken Wire. The only thing to do here is squint.
Font from the ingame marquee display of Barcade Brawl, a 2015 game by yours truly. This was made to look similar to the system fonts from old arcade boards, PC microsystems, etc. You've probably seen the fonts I'm talking about; they're everywhere and many people refer to them singularly as "the arcade font" or "the NES font".
This is 7x7 with no wasted matrix, but it looks better without monospacing since not every glyph is the same width. It also makes a decent terminal & chat font, at least for those who don't care about the case of the messages they read and write.
Feel free to use this in your games, etc.!
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Original size: 5.25pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
A bricks experiment in which the bricks are made of bricks. (Yo Dawg.) The name comes from a Duck Game map created by my amazing friend, Star. It seemed fitting. :^)
Original proportions are reached at sizes that are multiples of 21pt! Use 21pt, 42pt, etc. to get them.
Best with antialiasing turned off, although you can do smooth stone, gel, or gem-like looks with different antialiasing modes in your graphics software.
Latin alphabet in an Ashrian style, mostly using a 2x3 grid, and using only stacked triangular bricks. Capital letters represent the full letterforms and lowercase letters represent the truncated letterforms used in Ashrian printing and computer systems.
Ashrians are the inhabitants of Planet Ashr in my RPG video game "Seven Candles". Their signmakers, carvers, and woodworkers used triangular gouges for millennia to make their letterforms.
VERSION HISTORY:
16 Mar 2018 - v1.0 released.
A font made to reskin a particular roguelike game. This is made to look cold and slightly insidious. I accomplished this by using a 6x6 grid which, apart from being a slightly odd size, gives the forms asymmetry and makes their enclosed parts look as if they're squinting or sneering. Best seen on letters like ABKPRVY.
Monospacing helps give the whole thing regularity and reinforces the clinical/overly-serious feeling.
The game this is made for has very few ASCII glyphs. But, I will expand this to support all ASCII characters soon. I know many games (CDDA, DCSS, DF) support new tilesets so maybe I'll optimize this for those kinds of games...
See also: Nobody's Treasure
Another of my many doodles. Fun to make!
Finally, a design where all the diacritics blend in and look natural!
Version 2.6
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Inspired by a comment by jonrgrover.
I built diamonds sized according to the Fibonacci series, then made a segmented display out of them. The design was then carved away to make the glyphs you see here. I used the members 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. These sizes proved most feasible to work with in this sort of arrangement.
I gave the terminals a flared appearance which I think makes the glyphs look slightly Celtic. The design also makes me think of beach sand and things found on the beach - shells, pretty rocks, and so on.
Public transport & travel related icons. Most of these are designed to leave room above/below themselves for text while still fitting into a square canvas. So, they can more easily be used to create actual program icons, signs, etc.
This was my first icons font so it doesn't conform to the 10x10 standard I established later for fonts like Donjonikons...
A - Airplane
B - Bus
C - Cable Car
D - Dirigible
E - Escalator
F - "Phone" Sign
G - Gondola
H - Helicopter
I - "Parking" Sign
J - "Lost & Found" Sign
K - "Luggage Claim" Sign
L - Locomotive
M - Maglev/Monorail Train
N - "Infirmary" Sign
O - Ocean Liner
P - APC/Armored Car
Q - Bus (front view)
R - Rickshaw
S -Sailboat
T -Trolley
U - Riverboat/Ferry
V - Van
W - Taxi
X - Boxcar
Y - Bike/Scooter
Z - Zeppelin
Fontstruct's first vacuum tube font!
This is a design inspired by Nixie tubes. Since these "tubes" are iconographic, they could theoretically represent 12AX7s, 6L6s, KT88s, or whatever tube/valve you wanted. Feel free to clone and build on this concept.
A stencil design in which diagonal cuts are used to imply angles and curves. It does not quite obey the rules of a segmented display, but it tries its best!
This is inspired by some text I put on the side of the Sheepslayer Mk.2, a flying dragon car piloted by Lyll "Hatch" Soretti in my game Seven Candles.
Military and wargame related icons. The 4 stars are meant to represent a player number. Erase the stars to make pieces for Players 1, 2, and 3.
Got a request or idea? Let me know. Feel free to use these in any games you're creating!
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A - Tank
B - Anti-Aircraft Gun
C - Jet Fighter
D - Stealth Bomber
E - Battle/Explosion
F - Big Explosion/Nuclear Explosion
G - Missile Truck/Mobile Launcher
H - Flying Cross Medal - for distinguished aviators
I - Strategic Map
J - Military Convoy Truck
K - Bullets
L - Shells
M - Bombs
N - Strike Zone
O - Sm. Helicopter
P - Surface-to-Air Radar
Q - Surface-to-Surface Radar
R - Infantry Section
S - Civilians
T - ICBMs
U - Radar/Comms Coverage Area
V - APC
W - POWs
X - Opposing Forces
Y - Navy & Marine Corps Medal - for noncombat heroism
Z - Communications Satellite
a - Reconaissance Satellite
b - Weapon Satellite
c - Satellite Array
d - Patrol Boat
e - Frigate
f - Destroyer
g - Aircraft Carrier
h - Submarine
i - Mines
j - Depth Charges
k - Artillery
l - Artillery Division
m - Mechanized Infantry
n - AWACS/Early-Warning Aircraft
o - Fortifications
p - Trenches
q - Terrain (Road)
r - Terrain (Woodland)
s - Terrain (Mountain)
t - Terrain (Mountain Range)
u - Terrain (Calm Seas)
v - Terrain (Rough Seas)
w - Terrain (Desert/Sand)
x - Terrain (Wetlands/Mud)
y - Terrain (Hills)
z - Terrain (Lake/River)
. - Falling Bomb
, - Transport/Cargo Plane
0-9 - Stencil Numerals
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See also: Donjonikons, Travelicons
Some puzzling boxes, indeed! These are named for Lemarchand, maker of the puzzle box which appeared in the movie series "Hellraiser".
This design has a variety of textures and optical illusions up its sleeve. See the sample for a few of them.
Original size: 47pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)