I am proud to present FontKnox, one of the more popular fonts in GEOS on the Commodore 64. I took a bit longer with this one but it was well worth it. The font is meant to look kind of embossed and metallic, hence its original name.
As it's decorative, I've included only its original characters; I've used the bottom of the semicolon to make quotation marks.
This is some random set labelled "BX_1" from Peter Kofler's web site. I don't know what game or software it's from. I just remember I made a bitmap font of this years ago with "Fony". Now it's a TrueType. Do with it as you will :)
Uridium by Andrew Braybrook for the Commodore 64 (and various other platforms). I've managed to interpret the graphic tiles to reproduce the letter set from the title screen, HUD, high scores etc. as a font. I thought the capitals were too wide but was my imagination (and the screen grab I took of the charset!).
Have done some cool interpretations of punctuation... and a few glyphs for you:
` for Colour
~ for Black & White
^ for Player
| for Joystick
} for Ship Remaining
{ for mystery... try it and see!
One of the more eccentric fonts in GEOS on the Commodore 64 was Elmwood, released in FontPack 1. This was the only font larger than 24 point, clocking in at 36. Figuring it'd be a fairly easy challenge to port over to FontStruct, here it is. (The Commodore charsets can become a bit repetitive after a while.)
Character set from Impossible Mission loading screen on the Commodore 64. Original contained glyphs for A-Z capitals and digits 1984 only.
Have used some of the angular blocks to create smoother characters, while using the original pixelled versions for lower case. This could do with some extra work to improve it, if anyone else wants to have a go then feel free to clone it :)
This is a cloneSecond of two quickies in an hour tonight. BC Bill, from Imagine Software, used this great little character set in its high score table. Given the game it's meant to look like stone scratchings or even bones. Unfortunately even after extracting the charset from the game ROM, I found it's just alphanumeric - I made up a full stop character (yeah like that's a big ask LOL). At some point I'll add extra punctuation, I just wanted to get this out there.
15-minute quickie font. This is from Staff Of Karnath for the Commodore 64. Only characters in the game are presented here, except the comma which I put in so I had something with a descender (and thus some space between lines).
UPDATE 01 Jun 2018.
Turns out the same character set appeared in Blackwyche! I've added a few graphics from that game to various characters. Try entering [{|}] and see what you get! Also added the pentagram from Staff Of Karnath to the asterisk... that took MUCH more than 15 minutes, having to do a stack of composite bricks...
Latimer. Originally provided in GEOS FontPack PLUS. Not one of my favourite fonts back in the day (i.e. when I was 13) but unique enough that it warrants a FontStruction. And it seems to have brushed up pretty well. I've added extra characters so it fills out the base ASCII set.
The original had some quirks: some letters didn't touch the baseline, some uneven glyphs, some below the baseline, lowercase all sat one pixel higher etc. I've tried to correct for these. Lower case letters J, S, U, T are all as originally set, whereas upper case are all corrected.
Galacto Honoris!
This font appeared in Cosmic Cruiser by Imagine Software on the Commodore 64. It hasn't got much in the way of glyphs - I'm going to progressively work on this.
Have tried making the capitals more curvy to match some of the original game's intent (a rotating space station featured heavily) but it fell down on the A, D, K, V and Y (and almost the X). Big problem is trying to make a curve take up 2x2 when working in 1x1, the right core bricks don't exist. You can make a 1x1 brick based on a 2x2 design, but you can't make a 2x2 brick based on a 1x1 design.
Temple of Apshai was the first game published by Epyx, back in 1979 when they were called Automated Simulations. A trilogy of Apshai games came out on Commodore 64 in 1985 and this font is taken from that. Now you can mix 8-bit with RPG.
Etcheverry, a font from GEOS. Named after Etcheverry Hall, UC Berkeley College of Engineering.
The upper case characters look like Glaser Stencil, but that was produced by URW++ in 1994. Etcheverry was produced and included in GEOS' FontPack PLUS in 1987-88. I wonder if they're both based on an older font? I created this copy of Etcheverry because I wanted lower case characters, which Glaster Stencil doesn't have.
Triad published by Livewire. One of the first games I ever played on the C64 back in 1985, loaded this up off tape - probably the first game I ever mastered and advanced through the levels. And the first place I ever heard Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor :)
Another Commodore character set. From Summer Games II's Fencing event, this is the font that appears on the computer terminal. Upper case, digits and full stop only. It's also correctly monospaced as the terminal is meant to be an early 1980s machine. G and Q will touch adjacent characters, that's by design.
Fell back on this as I want to work with curves BUT they're kind of limited. I work in 1x1 pixel space but I want a curve that can span a 2x2 space. At the moment Fontstruct doesn't let us scale a brick up in size, only downward (i.e. composite bricks)... so the only curves you can do, your letters look like rounded rectangles.
I found a font rip from "Footballer of the Year" and the upper case letters were identical to Gauntlet, so I took the lower case ones and added them. Have called it "Gauntlet Potion" as "Gauntlet Deeper Dungeons" was too long. I don't really care for the lower case letters that much... it's here if anyone wants it for variety.
This is a clone of GauntletCursive font by Berkeley Softworks (17 point). Appeared in GEOS FontPack PLUS. Failing to find a TrueType equivalent - couldn't find the right glyphs, especially the 'r' - I've created this version. Only characters are standard ASCII set. Some kerning needs work, but out of the box you'll get joined letters and running script.
Alternate character set (to standard CBM) from Rolf Harris' Picture Builder. Given Rolf's incarceration for sex offences, I chose to name the font "Wobble Board" after the musical instrument he devised in 1959.
Lower case is pixeled, upper case is me experimenting with the blocks (first time I've used block-stacking). This character set didn't use punctuation, it was designed for building pictures character by character; I've preserved a couple of the graphic characters, but also imagined a few glyphs based on the thick lettering style. I like the look of these thick letters with proportional spacing so that's what we have.
The hash symbol (#) can be used to build a brick wall.
Wizard, platform game for the Commodore 64. This font replicates its pixelled medieval character set at its usual size. After first doing a monospaced version, cloned it to make a proportional font and have tried to set reasonable kerning of character pairs. Some redefined characters in the game also appear here...
This is a cloneStadium, 24-point "banner" font from GEOS on the Commodore 64. Suitable for headings. The original is upper case only, 0-9, and limited punctuation. I've made lower case identical to upper case, and added closing bars to the grave and pipe characters to achieve a couple of effects.
There was no direct TTF alternative to this one, I've been seeking it for a long time, now it's here :)
Recreation of the pixel font from Codemasters' "Dizzy III - Fantasy World Dizzy" (1989) on the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum.
The same font is used in all subsequent "Dizzy" adventure games - "Dizzy 3 and a Half - Into Magicland" (1991), "Dizzy IV - Magicland Dizzy" (1991), "Dizzy V - Spellbound Dizzy" (1991), and "Dizzy - Prince of the Yolkfolk" (1992).
Note that "Dizzy V - Spellbound Dizzy" (1991) uses the "66" style left quotation marks (U+201C) at the start of any speech, while in all other games the "Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark" (U+201F) is used.
"Dizzy II - Treasure Island Dizzy" (1988) already used an early version of this font, but with fewer special characters. One major difference is the single quote/apostrophe character - compared to all later games, which use a "9" style apostrophe, "Dizzy II" used a straight diagonal small one. This has been included in this recreation, mapped to "Right Single Quotation Mark" (U+2019).
Also note that the egg character - used to indicate lives in game - is mapped to "black circle" (U+25CF).
Only the characters present in the game's tile set have been included.
Updated 06/2023: added the apostrophe from "Dizzy II", added the "66" style left quotation mark, and confirmed that this same font is used for the rest of the series, and on all other 8-bit platforms.