219 replies to this topic

[sometimes99er]

Here's another 8 fonts. Merely some nice fonts laying around that I've lost track of.

[sometimes99er]

This time around I'm adding 2 fonts. The first is the standard TI-99/4A font. Lowercase is actually not lowercase but rather small uppercase. The second font is just the same font modified slightly. Most of the smaller uppercase characters have been changed to look like real lowercase.

[sometimes99er]

Here's another little dirty utility. You get to play around with a few fonts and find if they would work for your next project. Change colors, move the cursor around, write some text, change and compare fonts, clear or update the screen. Have fun.

Pineapple

[Opry99er]

How did I completely miss this thread entirely!!! Man, that Pineapple thing is pretty cool. =) I'll have to give er a good DL and runthrough. How many fonts can we come up with? =) 50? 100? I wonder... I'd like to get some of the old NES fonts and see if they translate... I think they're the same 8x8, yes?

[sometimes99er]

Opry99er, on Fri Jul 23, 2010 4:28 PM, said:

How did I completely miss this thread entirely!!! Man, that Pineapple thing is pretty cool. =) I'll have to give er a good DL and runthrough. How many fonts can we come up with? =) 50? 100? I wonder... I'd like to get some of the old NES fonts and see if they translate... I think they're the same 8x8, yes?

Nice to have you back Owen. I wanted an easy way to test fonts with different colors and text. Like what would "GAME OVER" and "SCORE 35261" look like. It's definitely just a "try out" piece of software. You can't alter the characters and you can't import or export anything. Not a design tool as such, but maybe later. You can already do this in Magellan, except having many character sets on screen at once. The secret is a screen kept full bitmap (simulated - with the cursor hovering above).

I don't know why, but the keys with Flash to me are more like the real TI-99/4A than my Scandinavian PC keyboard layout. Generally having problems accessing special characters, even through I'm basically just passing ASCII 32 through 122. I have to research this. Got a similar problem with C# and Strawberry.

While playing with the fonts in Pineapple I discovered a few mistakes on my part, like having a W in the place of V in the Vic-20 set. I'm using many different techniques for extracting a font. Not handdrawing though. *)

I also discovered that quite a few fonts are rather similar. I have to revisit the Atari font and check the lowercase which appears exactly the same as C64. Have to check that out.

50 fonts shouldn't be impossible. The biggest problem is to check if a new font is already in there or very similar to an existing one. Maybe I could align and calculate differences automatically.

Yes, I guess quite a few NES fonts would fit. Try and request one, and I'll see what I can do.



Edit:
*) Ok, I've done that too now.

Edited by sometimes99er, Wed Sep 8, 2010 12:52 AM.

[sometimes99er]

Another 4 fonts making a grand total of 33 fonts !

[retroclouds]

I really like your utility, it's very cool to try some different fonts

... and ofcourse it's great to run it in the browser

Edited by retroclouds, Sat Jul 24, 2010 2:13 AM.

[Tursi]

I was going to comment that a friend of mine, NFGMan, has a whole page of ripped Arcade fonts -- except that I couldn't figure out if you could actually DOWNLOAD them. Although most of the fonts are 8x8, they are pretty much all multi-color so adapting them to the TI, beyond the shape, may be tricky (not impossible for vertical color changes only). Still, it might be interesting as an additional resource for your work, Sometimes?

http://nfggames.com/...aker/lister.php

[sometimes99er]

retroclouds, on Sat Jul 24, 2010 2:12 AM, said:

I really like your utility, it's very cool to try some different fonts

... and ofcourse it's great to run it in the browser

Thanks. I'll be adding a few extra features soon.

[sometimes99er]

Tursi, on Sat Jul 24, 2010 1:00 PM, said:

I was going to comment that a friend of mine, NFGMan, has a whole page of ripped Arcade fonts -- except that I couldn't figure out if you could actually DOWNLOAD them. Although most of the fonts are 8x8, they are pretty much all multi-color so adapting them to the TI, beyond the shape, may be tricky (not impossible for vertical color changes only). Still, it might be interesting as an additional resource for your work, Sometimes?

http://nfggames.com/...aker/lister.php

Excellent. This will indeed be helpful. Thanks.

[sometimes99er]

Another 4 fonts' been added.

Pineapple now allows you to select any one character from the 256 character font using mouse and left click. Cursor does not auto-advance.

[sometimes99er]

Pineapple now defaults to standard TI font. This includes "lowercase" for those who started out typing but didn't see anything on screen. Some browsers and settings might even have you click the application window before it's active (/focus) though. Since most fonts are being only uppercase, they will of course need Caps Lock to be active (or if you prefer to hold Shift down a lot).

It's now possible to "draw" pixels on the screen area. Not very useful I guess, but I have to play around with bitmap mode (/bitmaps). If anything is identified as the current background color, then it's left unchanged, otherwise it is treated as foreground color and changed to current foreground color. This takes a little time to get used to. Also you're not actually drawing but rather plotting. I think I'll make it connect the dots with lines soon. Also I'll look into tabulator, delete, insert and few other practical bits and pieces.

Edited by sometimes99er, Sun Jul 25, 2010 10:30 AM.

[sometimes99er]

Thanks to Tursi for link to nfggames.com. There's about 70 fonts, and they have all been arranged in ASCII order and saved in image format. Makes it easier for me. Here's 4 fonts from the collection ...

[sometimes99er]

4 more fonts ...

[sometimes99er]

sometimes99er, on Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:54 AM, said:

I also discovered that quite a few fonts are rather similar. I have to revisit the Atari font and check the lowercase which appears exactly the same as C64. Have to check that out.

Confirmed from different sources. C64 and Atari800 have the same lowercase. Surprise.

Edited by sometimes99er, Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:40 PM.

[sometimes99er]

4 more fonts with lowercase !

[sometimes99er]

Pineapple's been updated. You can now use the delete key.

One more font added. Bringing it to a total of 50 fonts.

[mäsäxi]

Good looking fonts.

Also, I wanna know about screenshot in post #23 in this topic, which game on which machine?

Edited by mäsäxi, Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:29 AM.

[sometimes99er]

mäsäxi, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:28 AM, said:

Good looking fonts.

Also, I wanna know about screenshot in post #23 in this topic, which game on which machine?

That's the game Blagger Junior from 1985 on the Commodore 64.

Edited by sometimes99er, Thu Jul 29, 2010 10:17 AM.

[mäsäxi]

I thank you sometimes!

I have never heard of such game. Those bats´ colour blocks looked like Commodore 64 style, but I wasn´t sure. I guess this is some homemade game, since graphics doesn´t look/feel like they did in Alligata´s Blagger, or should I say graphics doesn´t have Alligata look, me thinks. But I like those graphics. I will try to find that game to test it, someday.

[sometimes99er]

mäsäxi, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:57 PM, said:

I thank you sometimes!

I have never heard of such game. Those bats´ colour blocks looked like Commodore 64 style, but I wasn´t sure. I guess this is some homemade game, since graphics doesn´t look/feel like they did in Alligata´s Blagger, or should I say graphics doesn´t have Alligata look, me thinks. But I like those graphics. I will try to find that game to test it, someday.

More info on the Blagger games at gamebase64. Same programmer, Antony Crowther, apparently ...

Edited by sometimes99er, Thu Jul 29, 2010 1:10 PM.

[sometimes99er]

I'm reducing the number of colors with many fonts for use with the TI. I'll update Pineapple later to take advantage and/or showcase the possibilities of bitmap - namely more colors within each character.

When reducing the colors of a font, I sometimes find an alright outline font. Like with this one being added today.

Edited by sometimes99er, Fri Jul 30, 2010 3:48 AM.

[sometimes99er]

Pineapple's been updated. You can now use the backspace key.

One more font added.

[sometimes99er]

Now here's another funny one. It's actually a 8x16 pixel font.

The uppercase character codes contain the top part of the character patterns, and the lowercase characters contain the bottom part. This is how you use it. Activate Caps Lock. Type a message (using ordinary letters) on one line. Deactivate Caps Lock. Go to the next line and type the same message. Voila, you got a nice 8x16 pixel based message. Digits are a bit more challenging, but they're there.

[retroclouds]

sometimes99er, on Sun Aug 1, 2010 5:58 AM, said:

Now here's another funny one. It's actually a 8x16 pixel font.

The uppercase character codes contain the top part of the character patterns, and the lowercase characters contain the bottom part. This is how you use it. Activate Caps Lock. Type a message (using ordinary letters) on one line. Deactivate Caps Lock. Go to the next line and type the same message. Voila, you got a nice 8x16 pixel based message. Digits are a bit more challenging, but they're there.

Very cool