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The Unicode bitmap font from Minecraft, also known as GNU Unifont. The game has a font priority system called "providers" that looks for bitmap data for a specific character in the non-Latin European character set first, then in the accented Latin character set, then in the game's low-res default font, then finally here, in the high-res Unicode character set. You can override this priority system by going into Options... > Language..., then setting "Force Unicode Font" to ON.
The game stores this font in images containing 16 rows and 16 columns of characters. Each character is 16 pixels wide and 16 pixels tall, totalling 256 characters per image. Each image represents one Unicode codepage, and there are 256 pages, which covers characters U+0000 to U+FFFF. Control characters and most CJK characters are omitted here, because FontStruct doesn't officially support them.
The font is not monospace, however, so the effective widths of each character are stored in a separate file called glyph_sizes.bin. Information for each character is stored in one byte, and the upper and lower 4 bits of this byte represent the start column and end column with a number ranging from 0 to 15, where 0 is the leftmost column of the character's allotted 16x16 space, and 15 is the rightmost column, respectively.
Knowing all of this allowed me to automate most of the steps involved in creating this recreation. I did not use the FontStructor to make this, I instead used a program to directly interact with FontStruct's API. It is possible to add unsupported characters to a font with this method, but I chose to stay within the limits of what is officially supported.
Just doodling. Copyright 2019 Doug Peters (DP of Symbiotic Design). CC0 License (Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication) freeware.
PayPal donations (to encourage my continued design efforts):
https://paypal.me/sitedesigner
https://www.Doug-Peters.com
https://Dougs.Work
https://SymbioticDesign.com
https://www.Font-Journal.com
https://w3n.us/DPFonts
https://w3n.us/logo
https://Worthful.com
https://Worthful.net
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
Calculator font with a 7-segment display. This should bring many of you back to school, but in a good way, I hope.
This one belongs to a small family called Calculatrix.
I've allowed "MWmw+" to break the grid because they were impossible to render otherwise...
Did/do you ever use oldschool calculators to write funny messages? Post your best calculator words in a comment! :D
An exact pixel-by-pixel copy of the font from the HeartGold/SoulSilver games.
I will add some original characters once the font is done for a more complete font file.
There's only the Japanese characters left to do!
UPDATE (2017-11-10)
> Fixed spacing on a LOT of characters
> Adjusted heights on some characters
UPDATE (2017-11-11)
> All English/Latin characters done
> Added all the random symbols and arrows