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Creating
a New Font
Replacing
the fonts used in the game isn't too difficult of a process
but if you are going to make a major change in one it might
be best to change all of the main heading fonts. You may want
to experiment to see if the font you want to use will be legible
before you make the entire alphabet.
You
will need an imaging program that can edit and open PNG files
with alpha channel support. Photoshop 5.0 will work but I can't
get alpha channels to show up on opened PNG files with Photoshop
CS. Alpha channels are an absolute necessity.
The
fonts are located in the core/gui/font/ directory
and are as follows:
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spin_large
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Spinning numbers found in Skilldex
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spin_text
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Spinning text; A-Z and numbers, found in calendar
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spin_Small
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Smaller spinning numbers - not
sure where they are used
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fnt_tallthin
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Tall & thin font, upper & lower case
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fnt_Medium
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Regular font, upper & lower case
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fnt_Large
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Main game heading font, upper case only
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fnt_Monitor
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Main text font, upper & lower case
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fnt_Monitor_outline
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Same as Monitor but just the outline
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fnt_Lite
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Slightly smaller version of Medium
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The
first thing to do is to back up the fonts you plan on changing.
Then open the one you want to change in Photoshop. In the Channels
toolbar, turn on the ALPHA 1 channel.
You should see something like this:
 fnt_Large.png
Between
each character is a 1 pixel spacer line that is drawn in the
green channel. The actual characters are not in any RGB channels
and exist only in the ALPHA 1 channel.
Choose your font with a height that is the same and then type
in or copy and paste the text line as shown below:
!"#$%&'()*+,-./123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ{|}~
There
are additional characters for foreign alphabets on the right
side. If you need to use them then feel free to replace them
too if they are found in your font. You can also replace them
with any other needed characters or even with wingdings. For
these characters you may want to create a separate text string
in a new layer. In Photoshop text is automatically created on
a new layer. Use a text color of black for all text.
Now
comes the more involved part. You want to render the layer
by right-clicking on the little "T" in the text layer
toolbar. Some of the characters might overlap and need to be
separated. Cut and move the offending areas, there should be
about 3 pixels separating all text characters.
Turn
off the alpha channel and also the background layer. Select
the Magic Wand tool by hitting the W key and then select the
blank area outside the text. Then go to the SELECT
menu and choose SIMILAR.
This will make selections inside O for example. Go back to the
SELECT menu
and choose INVERSE.
Now make a new channel, select it and hit delete. The text layer
can now be deleted.
Once
the characters are positioned and made into a new alpha channel
then you have to draw all the 1 pixel spacer lines in the green
channel. The simplest way is to draw one and then copy and paste.
Make sure the old lines get deleted before you start placing
new ones.
Then
clean up by getting rid of the old characters you used and the
old alpha channel. Save the file as a PNG with the same file
name as the text you are replacing.
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