Hello, I consider using TTF files in my games because together with wide Unicode support it should make easier its future translations. I'm not sure which fonts would our graphicans like to use, but I'm sure they will need all the standard: Arial, Times , Impact etc. Also I suppose we'll need special versions of the fonts to translate the games into languages like Japanese (something around MS Arial Unicode) Till this moment everything looks pretty, but now, about licensing issue. Do you know any fonts I could freely distribute with my games? I've found out that in Far Cry data files both Monotype and MS popular fonts are included and I wonder if they had to pay for that. If so does any one of you know how much can cost license for most popular ttfs (Let's say Arial)? I know that most of users have these fonts installed in the os but I'd prefer to be sure that they have particular version of font e.g. with Japanese characters. I really would like to use ttf instead of bitmap fonts in a future projects because it's convenient but I am a little anxous about licensing issues.. How do you handle that? Does anyone here use ttfs in commercial products? Thanks in advance for all replies. Quarx

Quote: Original post by quarx
... Do you know any fonts I could freely distribute with my games? I've found out that in Far Cry data files both Monotype and MS popular fonts are included and I wonder if they had to pay for that. ...

See the Microsoft font redistribution faq. Short answer: You are not allowed to copy, redistribute or reverse engineer the font files without permission.

Quote: Original post by quarx
If so does any one of you know how much can cost license for most popular ttfs (Let's say Arial)? I know that most of users have these fonts installed in the os but I'd prefer to be sure that they have particular version of font e.g. with Japanese characters.

According to Microsoft, Arial and Times New Roman fonts are supplied with every copy of Windows. Their font redistribution faq (link given above) includes several other fonts that can be redistributed and are found on most copies of the OS.

Even if you are unable or unwilling to properly license the font, you can have Windows pick the closest match.

Note how the CreateFont function takes 14 parameters. Find the EXACT parameters of the font you designed for using one of the font enumeration functions, then create a font with those parameters. If they have the font installed, it will be used. Otherwise, it will attempt to find something close to that font.

The font mapper assigns penalties to get the best font. A perfect match has a penalty of 0. A font that is slightly bigger or smaller has a penalty of 1 or 2 per point size difference. If you look up the font mapping penalty, you'll notice that not having the right characters (Japanese, for instance) has a huge penalty of 65000, wheres having the completely wrong font family is 8000, and an unlikely font family is 50 penalty points. In other words, if you request a Japanese font, you are going to get a Japanese font if one is installed. If they have lots of Japanese fonts installed, you'll get something that is somewhat close to what you wanted.

Quote: Original post by quarx
I really would like to use ttf instead of bitmap fonts in a future projects because it's convenient but I am a little anxous about licensing issues.. How do you handle that?

Contact the font foundary. Usually the copyright information is embedded in the font (use the Windows font viewer).

The cost of licensing a font is variable. An indie game might not be able to afford it.

You might decide to license it per-copy sold or per-product. The cost will depend on the font foundary, the popularity and competition of the font, and possibly on your negotiating skills. To give you a hint of the costs, you can look at font foundaries like ascender (they make lots of Microsoft's fonts) or the Adobe Type Library. The commercial price for fonts usually ranges from $1-$50 per license, or even more for obscure and custom fonts. Often the cost for bulk licensing a font is substantially less than the commercial price found on the web sites, depending on your goals and license agreement.

frob.

Or you can search among the thousands of free TTF fonts out there, in places like:
http://www.webpagepublicity.com/free-fonts.html

There's a lot of public domain TTF fonts, though they're not all as good quality as the expensive ones from Adobe, etc. Make sure they've got support for the weirder european characters, then drop back to one of the standard Unicode fonts for Japanese/chinese/korean.

Allan

I've looked over these so called free fonts and they either don't contain any license (which is a little suspicious) or are "free for noncommercial use". My use is strictly commercial so I guess I have three options: use bitmap fonts, use standard Windows ttfs or pay for some fancy fonts. Need to check if the price for commercial use and redistribution together with the game is really around $50 (it's not much as typical game doesn't use tons of fonts) Anyway thanks a lot for your replies.

Kind Regards

The "reverse engineer" part sounds like the boilerplate leaked.

Considering both Microsoft and Adobe document it very thoroughly...