[DFUnity] How to modify Daggerfont to add new glyphs with FontForge
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2021 7:26 pm
Hi translators,
The classic Daggerfall game was done in a resolution of 320x200, when Daggerfall Unity may be played in a much higher resolution. So it exist mods that introduce rebuild menu screens in higher resolution for DFU, the most famous being the DREAM mod that provides menu screens in 1920x1200. The screens are provided in English, so to be able to play DFU in another language, translators must suppress the texts from the DREAM images and write new texts in their own languages.
In other subjects and tutorials on the Daggerfall Workshop forum dedicated to translations, we saw how to clean the DREAM images and how to write texts on the empty screens with GIMP. The texts are written with a font named Daggerfont that was created by Jay Hova in 2018.
The glyphs in Daggerfont are very similar to the characters displayed by the classic Daggerfall, except that the glyphs are full bodied in HR when the original glyphs of Daggerfall were done into 5 pixels wide rectangles max. But the content of Daggerfont has two drawbacks:
• Almost all the accentuated letters are missing.
• The size of some letters seems too wide and produces texts that are sometimes too long in other languages than English.
So the translators must add the accentuated letters needed by their language in the Daggerfont and before that, if possible, shrink a little some letters in order to obtain a more equilibrated font.
The Daggerfont was done by Jay Hova with FontCreator, a leader on the font tools market, but this software is not free. So to modify the Daggerfont we will use the free open source font editor FontForge (fontforge.org).
You can take the file Daggerfont.otf here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16ktgV9 ... sp=sharing
To install the font into Windows, just right-click on the file, Install.
For those as me that never had a look upon font editing, you will discover that this is a technical world that has its codes and vocabulary that you never heard about before. FontForge have a detailed online documentation, alas only in English. You may also find a document named Design with FontForge that exist also in French and Chinese. I really invite you to download and read because it is an excellent introduction to font editing in general and to FontForge. If the world of font editing is totally unknown to you as it was for me, you must read chapters 1 to 5 of this book before going further.
The subject is very technical, so I have written a dedicated tutorial to explain everything with all the needed details.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RmyjhK ... sp=sharing
This is just the beginning of the complete tutorial, but as there are many information and documentation to read before being able to catch everything in this very specific technical domain, it is good to begin to put online what is written up to now.
I will inform you when the tutorial will be updated.
Have a good reding upon font editing with FontForge... for those interrested only and those who know that they will have to extend the Daggerfont to the accentuated letters that they need to write properly in their language.
The classic Daggerfall game was done in a resolution of 320x200, when Daggerfall Unity may be played in a much higher resolution. So it exist mods that introduce rebuild menu screens in higher resolution for DFU, the most famous being the DREAM mod that provides menu screens in 1920x1200. The screens are provided in English, so to be able to play DFU in another language, translators must suppress the texts from the DREAM images and write new texts in their own languages.
In other subjects and tutorials on the Daggerfall Workshop forum dedicated to translations, we saw how to clean the DREAM images and how to write texts on the empty screens with GIMP. The texts are written with a font named Daggerfont that was created by Jay Hova in 2018.
The glyphs in Daggerfont are very similar to the characters displayed by the classic Daggerfall, except that the glyphs are full bodied in HR when the original glyphs of Daggerfall were done into 5 pixels wide rectangles max. But the content of Daggerfont has two drawbacks:
• Almost all the accentuated letters are missing.
• The size of some letters seems too wide and produces texts that are sometimes too long in other languages than English.
So the translators must add the accentuated letters needed by their language in the Daggerfont and before that, if possible, shrink a little some letters in order to obtain a more equilibrated font.
The Daggerfont was done by Jay Hova with FontCreator, a leader on the font tools market, but this software is not free. So to modify the Daggerfont we will use the free open source font editor FontForge (fontforge.org).
You can take the file Daggerfont.otf here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16ktgV9 ... sp=sharing
To install the font into Windows, just right-click on the file, Install.
For those as me that never had a look upon font editing, you will discover that this is a technical world that has its codes and vocabulary that you never heard about before. FontForge have a detailed online documentation, alas only in English. You may also find a document named Design with FontForge that exist also in French and Chinese. I really invite you to download and read because it is an excellent introduction to font editing in general and to FontForge. If the world of font editing is totally unknown to you as it was for me, you must read chapters 1 to 5 of this book before going further.
The subject is very technical, so I have written a dedicated tutorial to explain everything with all the needed details.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RmyjhK ... sp=sharing
This is just the beginning of the complete tutorial, but as there are many information and documentation to read before being able to catch everything in this very specific technical domain, it is good to begin to put online what is written up to now.
I will inform you when the tutorial will be updated.
Have a good reding upon font editing with FontForge... for those interrested only and those who know that they will have to extend the Daggerfont to the accentuated letters that they need to write properly in their language.