GLIPH / gliph.us

Fonts for Game Development

How to pick fonts for game UI and titles — licensing, readability at small sizes, localization, pixel fonts, and how to build your own TTF with GLIPH.

A game HUD and menu mock-up using a pixel display font and a readable UI font, with a glyph sheet used to build the custom typeface

Display type vs UI type

Pixel and bitmap fonts

Licensing: the step that gets skipped

Localization and layout

Performance and packaging

Making your own game font

GLIPH / ASCII SPECIMEN 001

  SPECIMEN / 001                              FONT FILE  .TTF

   .:::::::::.   ::::::::      :::::::::      +---------+
  :+:       :+: :+:    :+:    :+:     :+:     |  .TTF   |
  +#+  +:+  +#+ +#+    +#+   +#+     +#+     |         |
  +#+ +#+#+ +#+ +#+    +#+   +#+     +#+     |         |
   #+#+# #+#+#  #+#    #+#    #+#     #+#     +----+    |
    ###   ###    ########      ########       |    |    |
                                              |    +----+
   a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t    |         |
   0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  & ? @ # % * ! + =    +---------+

   hand-drawn or generated  ->  extracted  ->  vectorized
   GLIPH / a sheet of characters becomes a working font

GLIPH needs JavaScript to run the extractor. Enable JavaScript to upload a sheet and create a font, or read more at gliph.us.