OpenGFX - Graphics Base Set

[Zephyris]

The larger font, as used for headlines looks "scraggly" for want of a better word.

I didn't spend much time on the newspaper font as it is the least used and carries the least useful information. It is also has less issues with legibility due to its size. It needs a full pixel tweak, I have done some, but not to tidy letters so much as make the font 100% legible...

I've always found the small-font in TTD hard to read simply because of its size, but looking at those two, the OpenGFX font (top again) is all but impossible for me to read without bringing my head very close to the monitor.

In short, try and make a small (~5x3) pixel font that is hard to read and doesn't look like the original (to keep all the copyright worriers happy). Even though this is the font you have most issue with I think it is unlikely anyone will try to improve it because of the reasons above; there simply isn't space for flexibility.

though I do take issue with the "a" which looks serif among a collection of sans-serifs

What about it in particular? The double-storey shape or the slight tail on the downstroke?

[FooBar]

What about it in particular? The double-storey shape or the slight tail on the downstroke?

Tail is what makes it look serif to me. Easy fix though.

[Born Acorn]

The small text is rather annoying, but it would need the GUI to give more room for larger texts before it could be done. From what I remember, GUI editing is the worst. Though that might just be petern logically shooting down all my crazy, wacky GUI schemes.

[Zephyris]

I have a feeling the new GUI code would support larger font sizes and automatically resize (most) things. That is definately the case for most GUI sprites, not sure about the fonts.

[peter1138]

Err... yeah...

[Zephyris]

Err... yeah...

So if anyone feels like making larger pixel fonts as an alternative to OpenGFX the possibility is there!

[Born Acorn]

How does it work in lists for vehicle details?

[peter1138]

So if anyone feels like making larger pixel fonts as an alternative to OpenGFX the possibility is there!

I'd recommend just specifying fonts in openttd.cfg.

How does it work in lists for vehicle details?

I don't know, how?

[FooBar]

How does it work in lists for vehicle details?

I don't know, how?

Like so:

likeso.png (4.63 KiB) Viewed 2120 times

I specified Arial as font and set the size to 10.

So increasing OpenGFX' small font height to 6px or maybe even 7px should work without problems. That's still something for the very bottom of the to-do list, as it's easy to specify a font of your own.

[peter1138]

Oh you mean larger fonts in the vehicle lists. Yes, that works well. I still recommend 'freetype' fonts though.

One thing that is 'missing' is larger versions of the window GUI elements... hint?

[Zephyris]

One thing that is 'missing' is larger versions of the window GUI elements... hint?

I have been considering it, just need some time! If anyone is interested in working on this just start posting your sprites!

[Roujin]

Regarding the discussion about funky big and tiny font... I wanted to do something the past few hours, so I had a go and tweaked the big and the tiny font letters.
Unfortunately I don't know what kind of tools I need to compile OpenGFX myself (I'm on windows and the only linux machine here capable of anything more than surfing the internets is in the next room - where someone's sleeping I don't want to wake up - but I disgress ), so I wasn't able to test it and see if it actually is any good... If someone could make a comparison screenshot with some newsletter message and tiny text, I'd appreciate it much.

'til then, here's a kind-of "diff image" I made. green == added, red == removed (pale green/red: made the sprite larger/smaller here)

font_tweak_diff.png (17.33 KiB) Viewed 2039 times

.. and here's the modified .pcx. Based on changeset 296:079ce9b48b67.

If you (OpenGFX guys) like it, feel free to include it, or parts of it, in OpenGFX. Uhm, because it's a derivate of your sprites, which is GPL'd anyway, I have no choice either way, right?

I'm not particularily proud of the numbers.. I started with them and pretty much butchered them up (took all the elegance away), so maybe you'll not want to include them..

[planetmaker]

I don't know what kind of tools I need to compile OpenGFX myself

You'd need a MinGW compile environment, grfcodec and nforenum.

Here a comparison between old an new. I find it extremely hard to judge...

[FooBar]

I think the large font is improved. Much less 'grainy' or how you'd call it.
Hard to say if the small font is actually changed; don't see the difference really.

[Roujin]

Uhm.. most of your screenshot shows the normal (or "small"?) font, which I did not touch. I only changed the big (news) font and the tiny (news date, text in train list, ..) font.

Here's a comparison of the two tiny font texts that are the same in your two screens:

old font

old.png (1.85 KiB) Viewed 1977 times

my new font

new.png (1.87 KiB) Viewed 1977 times

On direct comparison, I think I should revert the reduction of height I did to some small letters (a, u, o...) which I did mainly so that the accented and umlaut letters have a difference between their big and small variant.
However looking at it now, it makes the whole thing look a bit inconsistent.. I'll better make them one pixel taller again.

[FooBar]

Uhm.. most of your screenshot shows the normal (or "small"?) font, which I did not touch. I only changed the big (news) font and the tiny (news date, text in train list, ..) font.

What you call 'tiny' is what I call 'small'.
'Normal' in my book would be either just 'normal' or 'medium'.


Anyways, I agree that the a, u etc. are inconsistent with the e (which improved a lot!). I'd prefer the size of the e. As for umlauts and such: maybe increase the font height for those; it has been proven possible, so why not?

[Roujin]

Uhm.. most of your screenshot shows the normal (or "small"?) font, which I did not touch. I only changed the big (news) font and the tiny (news date, text in train list, ..) font.

What you call 'tiny' is what I call 'small'.
'Normal' in my book would be either just 'normal' or 'medium'.


Anyways, I agree that the a, u etc. are inconsistent with the e (which improved a lot!). I'd prefer the size of the e. As for umlauts and such: maybe increase the font height for those; it has been proven possible, so why not?

Ah, okay, misunderstanding
Well, the tiny (or small) font does not have much space for improvements.. you can only do so much with 3x5 binary (either completely filled, or not - nothing inbetween) pixels.

@heightening umlauts: Well, is it possible to make them bigger towards the top, not only the bottom? I'll gladly change them accordingly, if it is possible. planetmaker, what do you say?


Until then, here's an update. I tried to give the numbers in the big font a bit of their former elegance back, improved the (big font) small u, and the mentioned small letters made 4 px high again for consistency. However I've still let the umlaut versions of the small letters 3 px high to have a difference between the big and small umlauts.
New difference image and actual .pcx (still based on changeset 296:079ce9b48b67) below.
edit: and a difference image of the difference images

[Roujin]

I don't know what kind of tools I need to compile OpenGFX myself

You'd need a MinGW compile environment, grfcodec and nforenum.

I'm currently trying to set that up. Is there a minimum version of grfcodec and/or nforenum I'll need?
Can I just take the latest released versions, or do I have to compile them from trunk or something?

edit: I installed MinGW, MSYS, grfcodec 0.9.10 and NFORenum 3.4.6 (added the latter two to bin folder of MSYS).
I am now getting the following error:

[Generating] ogfx1_base.grf
GRFCodec version 0.9.10 - Copyright (C) 2000-2005 by Josef Drexler
Encoding in temporary file ogfx1_base.new
NFO file missing header lines and version info
make: *** [ogfx1_base.grf] Error 1

Could it be that I need a newer version of GRFCodec? If so, is there a binary of a recent enough version available somewhere?
If not, what else could be going wrong here..?

[Yexo]

If not, what else could be going wrong here..?

Something went wrong while running nforenum.

[planetmaker]

I'm currently trying to set that up. Is there a minimum version of grfcodec and/or nforenum I'll need?

The release versions found in their corresponding threads are terribly out-of-date and you'll need indeed newer versions. Older ones at least give errors concerning the GUI sprites, but certainly also in other places. Simply use the nightlies:
http://www.openttd.org/download-grfcodec
http://www.openttd.org/download-nforenum

Might be a good point adding to the readme - if it isn't in there already.

EDIT: a "rtfm" would have been in order Section 5 "Contributing to and building OpenGFX":

5 Contributing to and building of OpenGFX
========================================

The OpenGFX source is available in a Mercurial repository or as gzip'ed tarball. You can do an anonymous checkout from http://mz.openttdcoop.org/hg/opengfx , e.g. using
hg clone http://mz.openttdcoop.org/hg/opengfx or obtain the tarball from http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/opengfx/releases.

Prerequisites to building OpenGFX:
- mercurial (only when not building from a tarball, available from http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Downl ... ryPackages)
- gcc (the pre-processor is needed)
- md5sum (linux, mingw) or md5 (mac)
- nforenum r2281 or better (available from http://www.openttd.org/download-nforenum)
- grfcodec r2245 or better (available from http://www.openttd.org/download-grfcodec)
- some gnu utils: make, cat, sed
and you might additionally want a text editor of your choice and a graphics programme suitable to handle palettes.

On Windows: we advise to get a mingw development environment, download grfcodec, nforenum and mercurial from the sources mentioned above)
For more detailed instructions see our guide at http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/home/wiki and the very extensive and detailed installation instructions on the mingw wiki at http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started

On Linux: your system should already have most tools, you'll probably only need nforenum, grfcodec and mercurial available from the source mentioned above. For installation instructions concerning mercurial refer to the manual of your distribution.

On Mac: Install the developers tools and get grfcodec and nforenum from the source mentioned above. Mercurial is easiest insalled via macports: sudo port install mercurial

The use of mercurial is strongly encouraged as only that allows to keep track of changes.

Once all tools are installed, get a checkout of the repository and you can build OpenGFX using make. The following targets are available:
- all: builds all grfs and the obg file
- install: build and then copy OpenGFX in your OpenTTD data directory. Use Makefile.local to specify a different path
- clean: cleans all generated files
- mrproper: also cleans generated directories
- bundle_src: create a source tarball
- bundle_zip: create a zip archive of OpenGFX
- bundle_bz2: create a bzip2 archive of OpenGFX
- bundle_tar: create a tar archive of OpenGFX

Given the usual case that you modify something within OpenGFX and want to test that, a simple 'make install' should suffice and you can immediately test the changes ingame, if you selected the nightly version of OpenGFX. Given default paths, a 'make install' will overwrite a previous nightly version of OpenGFX. Mind to re-start OpenTTD as it needs to re-read the grf files.