Observations of the Fox

Would anyone be interested in a step by step tutorial showing how I turn my handwriting into a font? ...or any other glyphs into a font for that matter?

I've been promising to create this for years, but now that I'm thinking of handwriting this spirit game I figured it was probably a good time to finally generate up a font of my handwriting. It's not going to be as authentic as actually handwriting the game, but if I make any errors then it's going to be much easier to delete, add, and edit any changes in a word processor rather than manually using liquid paper and re-inking paper. I'll probably still draw titles manually, to ensure a bit more variety in these elements that will be more prominent. As I write this, I've done upper and lower case letters, I've still got to add in numbers and punctuation. Then I'll tweak things like kerning until the lettering looks like my naturally written handwriting.

When I wrote Catacomb Quest , the aim was to create a pocketmod by literally hand wtiting and illustrating the whole thing on an A3 page, then to reduce this sheet to an A4 page. As an idea, it worked reasonably well, but after writing up half of it I made a mistake, and then there was another mistake made towards the end of the manual illustration part of the process. These were all fixed up in post, using Photoshop, but I basically decided that if I were going to do this kind of thing again, I'd draw up the eight pages of the pocketmod separately, or maybe as 4 double-page spreads. In this current spirit world project, I could re-use spreads that are common across different pocketmods, and if I stuff up a single spread I can just redo it rather than needed to redo the whole pocketmod. Yes, I can just make changes in Photoshop again, but this modular approach feels better for the project. I think it might also be time to finish developing a font from my handwriting too... mayb...

I love it when I run across someone who collects links for interesting fonts. That happened tonight, and I thought I'd share some of their links. 30 Font Pack or these Ah...I won't bother showing them all, just head across to the site... here. It's funny looking through sites like this and seeing what other people refer to as "Roleplaying".

For those who were interested in the Dungeon Fonts that I've been putting up for sale over on RPGNow/DrivethruRPG, I've decided that I'll bundle together the first few as a discounted pack. Instead of $5 per font, you get the base font and each of the first three expansions for a total of $10. That's 50% off the total cost. Link to the Bundle Pack Once I've created another three expansions, I may bundle them together in the same way (Core set + 3 expansions). But if I'm going to follow this model, I will try to ensure that the three expansions bundled together follow some kind of standard theme, perhaps urban enviroments, natural environments, traps and pitfalls, or a group of sci-fi glyphs. I don't know, we'll see how things go.

For those who are wondering what can be done with my dungeon creation font, here's a few samples...one using just the core font, and one each using a single expansion with the core font.  Core Set +Expansion 1 +Expansion 2 +Expansion 3 I'm having trouble uploading these to G+, that's why I've done another blog post. There's still plenty more font work to explore in this area, and I'm gradually working my way through producing ranges of different glyphs and compiling them into fonts. If anyone else has examples of the Dungeon Font in action, I'd love to see them. 

The fourth part of the dungeon font series (and the third expansion to the core set), has just been uploaded onto RPGNow/DrivethruRPG. These have seen a steady stream of sales, and hopefully this new addition to the series will see a few more people interested in what the series has to offer. This time I've focused on furnishings and doors, which will make a wider range of underground environments possible.

Just letting everyone know that I've managed to get down to the local library (where there is a decent internet connection), and have finally managed to upload the dungeon creation font that I've been working on. You can find it here Not only that, but I've also managed to upload the first expansion font as well. Thanks for your patience.

Here's the first batch of glyphs for the Dungeon Font I've been working on. Certainly enough to get a dungeon designer started, but there are a lot more to come.  I'm compiling the glyphs through the font editor now, so hopefully the final product will be available soon.