Suggestions please around windows/full screen mode/fonts

[Implode]

Hi all,

I have been thinking a lot around what I want to do with the graphics in the MoM IME client in future, and looking for other folks views/input on this. Currently its fixed in 640x480, so it'll either run in a window with fixed size 640x480 or run full screen in 640x480. There aren't many windows in the game as such, because nearly all the screens take up the full 640x480 in size.

I definitely want to be able to resize the window, to see more of the map. Each terrain tile is 20x18 pixels, so a regular 60x40 map is 1200x720, so lots of people have big enough monitors now to be able to display the whole map at once, which would be awesome.

Now, first problem. At that resolution, some of the MoM fonts (which were designed for 320x200) are really small and hard to read. Already I've increased the size of the fonts on many screens - there's 6 main MoM fonts of increasing size, and often I've used a larger of the MoM fonts on a particular screen than the original to make it readable at modern resolutions. The two smallest fonts I don't even use, and the largest is the gothic fancy font used on e.g. the options on the title screen, and the places where this is appropriate to use are limited, so basically I've only got 3 fonts to use. What I really need are true type fonts that look identical to the MoM fonts, so I could scale them to any resolution. However one thing I've always tried to stick to is keeping MoM IME with the exact same look & feel as the original MoM. Using different fonts, even if they're pretty similar, is going to look noticably different and so I'm not entirely sure I'm happy about that... so wondering what you all think.

Comparisons against the closest True Type fonts I've found are here. Large is a great match. Medium less so but its still not bad, if you look at where the serifs (pokey out bits) are on each upper case letter, they are actually quite close, and the lower case letters look quite similar. Small is so small the font is basically featureless.
Large
Medium
Small

Secondly, as you can resize the window larger, and use fullscreen modes bigger than 640x480, its going to get annoying that the windows are in a fixed location, e.g. that the spell book or city screen always opens up smack in the middle of the map - you want to be able to drag these around, or even if you've got a 1200x720 window for the map but your resolution set to say 1920x1200, drag these other windows out on their own entirely. To do that, I've got two choices, actually create them as separate windows, and let MS Windows handle the dragging/resizing/etc of them, or hand write it all and have to draw all the window borders and resizing widgets myself (like they did with Battle Isle 3). Obviously I'm not very keen on the idea of hand writing/drawing it all, because its going to take so much time. Splitting them into separate windows would actually be really useful, since then only those windows which actually need animation (like the map/combat/city/change construction/spell book screens) would actually need to use DirectX, the boring screens (process of creating or joining a game/message box popups/magic distribution/alchemy) would just use standard controls, so would make my life a lot easier (and probably make the game a little faster). But going this route is going to mean I can't support full screen - you just can't have multiple windows running full screen, you can only do this if you hand write your own windowing mechanism.

So my take on it is:
1) Abandon full screen. Being able to move the windows around is far more useful. After all, you'll still be able to Maximize the window which is basically full screen.
2) Do a couple of test screens using true type fonts, to see how much it makes it feel un-MoM like.

So thoughts anyone?

Implode.

[Hal9k]

Fist though:
The large font is a really good match. I wouldnt even notice its not the original MoM font. The second one is ok, probably the difference between the two would appear to be smaller if you put it in a MoM background graphic - I dont think it would take otu much of the feeling.

Without intending to demotivate you: Full screen is a rather different matter for me... I think the original nostalgic feeling of MoM depends more on fullscreen than on the exact fonts - but I'm not so sure about it. If its the only way you should do it anyway.


You're doing a great job by the way - and there's no other game atm I'm waiting so eagerly for than MoM with an AI (so its still some months ahead, but I'm dreaming of conquests already;) )

[Virm]

If you can stand to wait for another week or two, I'm building you TTFs for close remakes of the small and medium fonts. I'm getting pretty close to done on the small font, and will post it when I'm done.

Unless someone has an objection, I personally think that the current replacement for the large font is a fine match, and I'm not planning to try rebuilding it unless requested.

[Implode]

Wow... thank you... I wouldn't have a clue where to start on creating TTFs from scratch! And yes, no hurry, I was only posting about this because its something I've generally wondered about what direction I take MoM IME in. Although there is some stuff planned for 0.9.3 this is very relevant to ;)

So that would be awesome if you could produce those!

Implode.

[Virm]

This is a rough first revision of the small font. Any comments or suggestions are welcome, but try to remember that this is just a first revision to provide something to work with.

MoM Small font

The link is hosted off my server, so if it doesn't work let me know so I can restart the server.