Font Notes
Some Notes on my Fonts
Installing and Using these Fonts - A Note on Font Sizes - Characters and Accuracy/Improvisations - How these Fonts were Made
Installing and Using these Fonts
Installing a font:
At the bottom of this page is a list of my font downloads. The three rightmost columns are download links - click one, and say yes to any prompts to save it to your computer. See the paragraph after this list for help choosing where to download from, but it's recommended you choose from the "Download Here" column.
The file you download is a .ZIP archive. You must unzip it - on Windows, this is done by right-clicking and clicking "Extract All", and hitting OK on all windows. On Macs, all it takes is a double-click of the ZIP file.
To install the font on Windows XP, select the TTF file and drag or copy/paste it into C:\Windows\Fonts. On Windows Vista or Windows 7, simply right-click the font file and click "Install". On Macs... Er, this should help.
If the font won't appear in a program, try restarting the program after installing the font. In some cases, you may actually have to restart your computer before new fonts can be used.
To choose which site to download from: You need a FontStruct account to download from FontStruct (where I made the fonts), but this version is always the most up-to-date. Downloading the font from this site instead is recommended, because I usually keep it as up to date as the FontStruct version, and you don't need an account. The MediaFire link does not need an account, but I usually lag behind on updating it because MediaFire doesn't let me update old uploads, giving me a bit of hassle.
Using a font in a graphical program:
Most graphical programs, ranging from Paint to GIMP to Photoshop, have a Text tool, usually denoted by a capital T or A icon. I won't go into specifics, since you can just Google how to use the tool in your program. But there are some tips I'd like to give for graphical program users:
First, each font should be used at the correct size. The chart has a column on Font Sizes to help, but only one of the sizes listed is the correct one in any particular program - see the next section for details, but it should be pretty clear when a font is at the correct size in most cases.
In MS Paint for Windows Vista or Windows 7, you'll notice that after you're done typing, the text becomes "fuzzy". In most screenshot fakes, this is not good. You need to turn off Font Smoothing/Cleartype temporarily if you do not want this to happen (believe me, it will ruin fakes and make them hard to fix!). I have made mini-guides on how to do this for Vista and Windows 7 - you just might want to turn Font Smoothing/Cleartype back on after you are finished! An alternative to going through this trouble for every single MS Paint fake you make is to simply use an older version of Paint (Source Site) - it thankfully ignores font smoothing settings!
If you are using a program such as Photoshop, GIMP, or Fireworks, please turn antialiasing off! It creates similar unintended fuzzy effects, but thankfully can be turned off within the program. Look for an "Antialias" or "Alias" checkbox, or a dropdown menu with a setting such as "No Anti-Alias". These usually appear in the Text tool's settings, or the settings of a text object, depending on your program.
Most instances of text in RuneScape have a singe drop shadow that is identical to the text but black in color. It is one pixel down and to the right of the text. You can fake this in Paint by typing/copying your text twice, once in the color of the text, and once in the (almost always solid black) shadow color, and then carefully placing the colored text over the shadow (make sure Transparent selection is turned on - or, in older versions of Paint, "Draw Opaque" under "Image" should not have a checkbox next to it). You should zoom in to help place it accurately - remember, the shadow should look one pixel down and to the right of the normal text. This effect can be done in many other graphical programs with a "Drop Shadow" filter, but you have to be careful to get the settings right - the shadow should have no blur, should be solid-colored (not transparent), and should be exactly one pixel diagonally (in some programs' filters, you have to say 45 degrees and 2 pixels, so just make sure the shadow looks the same as what you see in-game).
In fake custom interfaces, look where a font has been used in the past and use that to aid your judgment for where you want to use it. For example, the font used in the Friends List, Ignore List, and Clan Chat tabs is not used anywhere else, so it's safe to say it should be limited to lists of players' names (e.g. an addressbook?), while the Small font seems to be used just about anywhere, so you could use that in any interface without it looking out-of-place. However, the Large font would seem pretty misplaced if you used it for anything besides an interface's title! So it helps to keep in mind where a particular font will look good and where Jagex would have used it.
Using the Chat Bold 2 Font for Faking Overhead Text in Adobe After Effects:
In the Character Panel: Font: RuneScape Chat Bold 2; Type: Regular; Size: 32*; Color: FFFF00; Scaling: 100%; All other settings should be 0 or off, and there should be no outline.
Add a Drop Shadow from Effects and Presets. The Drop Shadow settings are: Color: 000000; Opacity: 100%; Direction: 0x +135; Distance: 3.0*; Softness: 0.0; "Shadow Only" should NOT be checked.
*The Font Size can - and often will - need to be different. While the font's default size is actually 16, 32 is likely to be more legible in a 720p video. However, if you put fake text alongside real text, you may want to get the font size as close to the real text as you can. While you can freely change the font size, note that you have to change the shadow's distance to compensate. A general formula for the best Distance of the shadow is Font Size divided by 10.6666…. For example, at size 32, the shadow should be 3, at size 16 it should be 1.5, and at size 64 it should be 6. You can use a calculator to get other sizes, or you can just approximate it - if it looks good enough at 100% scale, it should be good enough to realistically fake the text.
Using the Chat Bold 2 Font for Faking Overhead Text in Sony Vegas:
Under the Edit tab: Font: RuneScape Chat Bold 2; Size: 12; NO Bold or Italic
Under the Properties tab: Text Color: 255, 255, 0, 255; Tracking: 1.111; Scaling: 2*; Leading: 1
Under the Effects tab: Draw Shadow: Feather: 0.000; X Offset: 0.020; Y Offset: 0.020; NO Outline
*You can actually change the scaling, depending on the size/resolution of the video and the source videos you used. If you are using real and fake text in one video clip, of course, you should do your best to get them to be the same size as each other. If you have a particularly high-resolution video, you probably will need to make it larger for it to be legible.
A Note on Font Sizes
For Font Sizes (px, pt, BBc), these represent the font's 100% size in different font measurement units. Different programs use different units to measure font size, so I provided the three more helpful units (note that the em measurement is 1 for all fonts except those which have a px size of 32, which have 2em). Px is a pixel measure, and applies to the majority of graphical programs - most notably, all Adobe software (although some give the choice to use other measurements as well). Pt is point measure, and it is used in most things by Microsoft, such as Paint and Word, as well as Sony Vegas and various text and web editors. BBc stands for "BB code", and is the closest approximation font size for most IP.Board forums, in case you wanted to use the font in your posts (note that only other forumers with the font installed will see it! Other people will likely see it in Times New Roman, depending on their browser settings).
Characters and Accuracy/Improvisations
Each font contains at least 209 characters, covering all characters which may be said in RuneScape (including every valid alt code), as well as ∞, …, and the twelve TzHaar Numerals. Some fonts also contain alternate quotes an apostrophes: ‘ ’ “ ”. You may use these special characters by going to Character Map (Windows) or the Character Palette (Mac), or by using alt codes or copy/pasting them from somewhere and changing the font. The Character Map/Palette is recommended.
The infinity symbol (∞) was once briefly used in the Small font to represent shop quantities after the personalized shop update, before stocks became limited. To use the infinity symbol from my font, use the Trademark Sign (™), because the editor I used (FontStruct) does not have a slot for Infinity, and RuneScape does not use the Trademark sign.
The Horizontal ellipsis (…) has been used in RuneScape for the Friends List font, when a name is too long to fit.
The twelve TzHaar Numerals appear in a note in the TzHaar Tourist Guide. Of course, these characters are made-up and exist only in RuneScape, so I had to use some other unused slots for them: ƀƁƂƃƄƅƆƇƈƉƊƋ, which are the numbers 1 through 12, in order.
The left and right apostrophes and quotes, ‘ ’ “ ”, have never appeared in RuneScape. I merely made them for the sake of completion. They do not appear in most fonts, with the exception of the old Chat Bold font, because many programs auto-format normal quotes into these (in most Adobe software, you cannot force the program to use normal apostrophes and quotes at all, unless the font lacks these characters. Even alt codes and copy/paste will not work!). Because of this, I have left such characters out of the fonts which are used in faking, to prevent unintentional uses of the fake characters.
The column 100% Accurate Characters represents all characters in the font which are completely accurate to the corresponding character in-game. Some characters are not 100% accurate because I have not yet seen them in that font (I won't make claims that a character is accurate, even if I have noticed a recurring pattern in similar characters. If I say it is 100% accurate, it's because I actually saw it in a screenshot and know for a fact how it looks. If you see a character in a font in-game, and I have not listed it as 100% accurate for that font, feel free to PM me a screenshot so I may make it 100% accurate). Some characters may not even occur in a font, so it is obvious I had to do quite a bit of improvising.
Note that all fonts, with the exception of the RuneScape Large Font, are spaced absolutely correctly for every 100% accurate character in that font. Doing that was a painstaking task in some fonts - most notably the original NPC Chat Font, in which I literally spent several hours testing the spacing of the font until I could get it to be 100% accurate to the font which appears in-game.
How these Fonts were Made
(and how you can make your own)
I made these fonts with the free online modular font creator, FontStruct. Because FontStruct is made in Flash, and is not a standalone program (you use it in-browser, and it doesn't run on a computer), there are some difficulties in working with it. Namely, you cannot copy/paste from external sources (you can copy/paste within the program, however), meaning I had to re-pixel each and every letter in each of these fonts from scratch. To do this, I took/found several hundred screenshots of various characters in use in RuneScape for each font and carefully recreated them in FontStruct. Getting the screenshots was trivial for the Chat, Chat Bold, Friends List, and Small fonts, of course, as we can type our own characters in these fonts in-game. However, for fonts like the NPC font, I relied on in-game books, NPC chat, and skill guide interfaces. Other fonts which are less used, such as the Large font, left me scrambling to find any usage of them (book titles, quest names, random interfaces, etc.). For any character for which I simply could not find any usage of in-game, I had to improvise. I tested letter spacing several times (for both the new and old NPC chat fonts, I even retyped several books from RS) to make sure it is right for every character I've seen in-game. Fortunately, making small changes to individual characters in each font is very easy, meaning keeping the font up-to-date is very trivial as Jagex rarely changes more than a few characters at a time.
Some things I did to make these fonts more easily included "cloning" previous fonts, allowing me to make the Chat Bold and Chat Bold 2 fonts directly from the original Chat font. I also later used a program called Windows Alpha Blender, a free Windows-only software allowing me to make some windows partially transparent. This made recreating RS fonts easier by allowing me to make my FontStruct window translucent, allowing me to see the original font image in another program beneath it, and thus directly pixel over it.
Note that if you would like to make your own edits to any of my RS fonts, or you would like to update them yourself in the event that Jagex makes a large change and I'm not here to update them, I have placed my fonts under the "Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike" license, allowing you to Clone them and make any edits you wish, and to distribute your fonts just as freely as I can mine (note that it will say in the license.txt file that I have created the font you have cloned from, so I still get credit for the original regardless. And yes, FontStruct's TOS requires you to provide the license.txt and read me.txt files along any copy of the font :p ). Of course, you do need to register a FontStruct account to download, clone, or create fonts there. Thankfully, it's absolutely free :p