Typophile

Lo-res bitmap fonts in videogames

Ray Larabie

When I started working in the games industry, I made games for the Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles. Font designs consisted of bitmap fonts, monospaced in 8 pixel squares. Any resemblance to vector fonts was purely coincidental. When I started making PC games, I could create proportionally spaced bitmap fonts by typing out lines in Photoshop using TrueType fonts. The hinting ans smoothing was done manually by pushing individual pixels. The end result bore some resemblance to the original fonts but not much. The bitmap graphic, usually one long string of 2-8 color bitmap glyphs was saved as a RAW file and processed by a custom tool. The custom tool generated code for a font system, designed specifically for that game. Later . . . in the PlayStation 2 days, there were off-the-shelf tools which could automatically convert fonts into bitmap fonts for use in games. I'm not in the games business anymore so I'm not sure how it works now.

Some font EULAs are specific about low res bitmap use while others make no mention of it. My EULA specifies embedding as something which will prevent the unlicensed user from installing or using a font: a proprietary bitmap format would qualify as embedding.

What are the legal limitations for game designers generating low-res bitmaps for use in game font systems? Is there a difference between manually pixel editing a crude bitmap, a smoother medium-res version or a 256 pixel high embedded bitmap font. Have there been cases of game companies being sued for using fonts to generate bitmap fonts for games?

I ask because people have asked me that question often and I honestly don't know.

Andreas Seidel

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Theunis de Jong

I would hazard that, with those awfully fast CPUs and loads of memory, game designers take the easy road and just add the FreeType library to their code. That's an Open Source package, so there are no software limitations (other than acknowledging its use); but it does mean the game also has to include original, unmodified outline fonts.

At least two games I own come with complete TTFs; one of them is WarCraft 3, with the instantly recognizable Friz Quadrata. Of course, these files are more-or-less shielded against blatantly installing them into the user's system (they are packaged into larger data files), but at least for me it was no problem at all extracting the font. (That was just "to prove a point", as I was wondering if it indeed was an original TTF. It was. I dunno what sort of license Blizzard used.)

FreeType is a 21th century solution, as it depends on a fast computer with a rather high resolution (and ideally, a true color display) -- then again, surely you are not talking about 8x8 bitmap fonts anymore? Fat chance anyone can even tell the difference between Times and Helvetica with such dimensions ...

Si_Daniels

Bitmap fonts still have advantages over outline fonts when it comes to performance in console games. I'm not aware of any commercial font EULA* that allows for the creation and distribution of derivative bitmap fonts, so typically you'd need to get those rights from the type designer. Although I’m sure there are game developers that don't always get the rights they need, but I think the major players will usually do the right thing – pay for the additional rights or use freeware fonts.

In terms of licensing the bitmap-rights cost is typically less than rights to ship the TTF. These days though the game itself tends to be the easy part, there's the Web version, packaging, manuals, translation and localizations.

*Exception may be the new FontFont EULA, but that also has restrictions.

Si_Daniels

My reply didn’t address low/med/high res bitmaps. If the bitmap font is programmatically “derived” from the outline font I don’t see much relevance to the resolution. If the bitmap font is created from scratch (which is no longer the norm), then the standard font redrawing issues apply.

Nick Curtis

I think the major players will usually do the right thing – pay for the additional rights or use freeware fonts

That has been my experience with Electronic Arts, Sega Europe and even a few other minor players. Real professionals practice professional courtesy.

John Hudson

[Off-topic]

Theunis: FreeType is a 21th [sic] century solution...

That was funny. The incorrect ordinal ‘th’ instead of ‘st’ caused me to read this as ‘FreeType is a 12th Century solution’, and my mind was scrambling to come up with an explanation of what that might mean.

Theunis de Jong

I'm sure it tells something about how digits and ordinals are processed by the brain. If only I knew what.

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