Matrix Games Forums

The 3.4 patch added support for using 'real' windows fonts instead of bitmaps. It was added mainly for support of non european languages. You don't have to edit these, and I suspect that most people will use either the standard file, or will use one that they download. If you mess it up too much, delete it and TOAW will create one for you.

Creating the default was a compromise of several different objectives.
We wanted to use the bitmapped font in most of the places where a unit name was displayed. That is because the SS runes are only available there.
We tried to mostly use fonts available for Windows XP. I believe that we did use a couple of fonts that are only available if you installed either Office, one of the Office viewers or Windows 7.

A couple for things for brave people to try... See if you agree that the windows 7 fonts are better. I had some problems in that they would sometimes 'bleed' out of the boxes but I felt that they were easier to read than the bitmaps.

There's a file called Opart 3 Fonts.ini in the Matrix Games/The Operational Art of War directory. It's somewhat self-explanatory, except for the 'unicode' entries. These are intended for anyone that wants to try using a language like Chinese instead of English. I did what I could to support that, but I can't read Chinese so I don't know how well I did.

Ralph

Opart 3 Fonts.ini

Hello Ralph!

Thank you for this info. I thought that support for Windows fonts is already implemented into 3.2.29.27 version of TOAW III. I successfully edited Opart 3 Fonts.ini file in 3.2.29.27 and using some of the Win fonts: Calibri as [DocumentFont] and [ObjectiveFont] and Tahoma as [MediumFont] and [SmallFont].

Well done! Ralph. There's some problems in display of Chinese charactors after patching the 3.4 patch, however, by modifying Opart 3 Fonts.ini and deleting Opart 3 Fonts Chinese.ini, we successfully solved the problem. It seems there's no need to make an font file only for Chinese, actrually, Chinese and other languages can share the same Opart 3 Fonts.ini.

Well, let's see, this is the problem after patching the new patch. By selecting Chinese language, What it displayed is neither Chinese nor any other languages.

So we changed the original ini file, and now both Chinese and English can display in a proper way, with the same ini file.

And here's the ini configuration

[Colors]
ToolTipDelay=10
ToolTipAlpha=150
ToolTipColor=0x0A9639
Background=0x7F7F7F
Gold=0xFFD400
Red=0xFF0000
Silver=0xFDF5E6
[DocumentFont]
TextColor=0xFFFFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=N
Background=N
Spacing=0
Weight=400
Size=9
Font=Arial
[MediumFont]
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=N
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=400
Size=8
Font=Arial bold
[SmallFont]
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=N
Background=N
Spacing=2
Weight=400
Size=7
Font=Arial bold
[ObjectiveFont]
TextColor=0xFFFF84
BackColor=0xFFFFFF
windowsFont=Y
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=0
Weight=400
Size=15
Font=Arial bold
[Unicode]
UnicodeFonty=-4
UnicodeFontx=0
UnicodeFont=N
[ToolTipFont]
TextColor=0
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=N
Background=N
Spacing=0
Weight=500
Size=12
Font=Times New Roman
[SupplyFont]
TextColor=0xFFFFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=9
Font=Times New Roman
[SmallSupplyFont]
TextColor=0xFFFFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=N
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=9
Font=Times New Roman
[PlaceNameFont]
TextColor=0xCEFFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=10
Font=Times New Roman
[PlaceNameFont1]
TextColor=0xCEFFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=20
Font=Times New Roman
[PlaceNameFont2]
TextColor=0x00BFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=10
Font=Times New Roman
[PlaceNameFont3]
TextColor=0xCEFFFF
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=Y
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=7
Font=Times New Roman
[UnitInfoSmallFont]
TextColor=0xFFFF84
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=N
Outline=Y
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=7
Font=Times New Roman
[UnitInfoMediumFont]
TextColor=0xFFFF84
BackColor=0x7F7F7F
windowsFont=N
Outline=N
Background=N
Spacing=1
Weight=900
Size=8
Font=Times New Roman

Wow, great job.

ORIGINAL: Spider

Well done! Ralph. There's some problems in display of Chinese charactors after patching the 3.4 patch, however, by modifying Opart 3 Fonts.ini and deleting Opart 3 Fonts Chinese.ini, we successfully solved the problem. It seems there's no need to make an font file only for Chinese, actrually, Chinese and other languages can share the same Opart 3 Fonts.ini.

Awesome! I thought I'd tried that. It could be that I was having problems becuase I was running English as the language for Windows 7, but running a Chinese scenario??

Let me know if you run into any problems with it (other than the vertical spacing, I can't fix that until 4 comes out.

We changed the fonts too but not to Chinese [;)] the bitmap fonts were too hard to read really and it now is just wonderful (like the whole game!).
But as it was said here the SS runes are not available. That wouldn't bother me that much, but we have just two 'square signs' now as a placeholder (playing a downloaded Arnhem scenario). Wouldn't it be possible to have at least SS standing there? How could we change a windows font that it will display two S characters instead of two weird signs?

Thanks [:)]

Anyone? Any idea??

No idea about the possibility of font changes, but you could open the scenario in the editor and change the '?' in the unit names to 'SS' manually. Should only take a couple minutes, but you will have to start the scenario over for the change to take effect. [:@]

Thanks, but that exactly is what I try to avoid [;)]
I thought more about a possibility to have the signs changed into SS where the scenario is getting the fonts from or something like that, so that it would always work no mater the scenario.

Well, looks like you need to give the bitmap fonts another go! Try ms sans serif and change the size, eh? This should give you the SS as runes.

Work around with it, works for me........

Lzard,

any chance that you could post your opfont.ini here? Would like to take a look and perhaps it works for me as well so I can skip the 'workaround' part [;)]

Thanks

Andreas,
 
Yes, I DID miss this..........anyway:
 
 [Colors]
 ToolTipDelay=10
 ToolTipAlpha=150
 ToolTipColor=0x0A9639
 Background=0x7F7F7F
 Gold=0xFFD700
 Red=0xFF0000
 Silver=0xFFFFFF
 [DocumentFont]
 TextColor=0xFFFFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=N
 Background=Y
 Spacing=0
 Weight=700
 Size=10
 Font=Arial
 [MediumFont]
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=N
 Background=Y
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=8
 Font=MS San Serif
 [SmallFont]
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=N
 Background=Y
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=7
 Font=MS San Serif
 [ObjectiveFont]
 TextColor=0xFFFF84
 BackColor=0xFFFFFF
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=0
 Weight=900
 Size=12
 Font=Arial
 [Unicode]
 UnicodeFonty=-4
 UnicodeFontx=0
 UnicodeFont=N
 [ToolTipFont]
 TextColor=0
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=Y
 Outline=N
 Background=N
 Spacing=0
 Weight=500
 Size=12
 Font=Times New Roman
 [SupplyFont]
 TextColor=0xFFFFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=Y
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=9
 Font=Times New Roman
 [SmallSupplyFont]
 TextColor=0xFFFFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=9
 Font=Times New Roman
 [PlaceNameFont]
 TextColor=0xCEFFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=Y
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=10
 Font=Times New Roman
 [PlaceNameFont1]
 TextColor=0xCEFFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=Y
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=20
 Font=Times New Roman
 [PlaceNameFont2]
 TextColor=0x00BFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=Y
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=10
 Font=Times New Roman
 [PlaceNameFont3]
 TextColor=0xCEFFFF
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=Y
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=7
 Font=Times New Roman
 [UnitInfoSmallFont]
 TextColor=0xFFFF84
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=Y
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=7
 Font=Times New Roman
 [UnitInfoMediumFont]
 TextColor=0xFFFF84
 BackColor=0x7F7F7F
 windowsFont=N
 Outline=N
 Background=N
 Spacing=1
 Weight=900
 Size=8
 Font=Times New Roman
 
Enjoy!

My attempt:-



Mainly the MS San Serif font (Windows), default sizes, with Outline. It looks clearer to read to me, albeit a bit squashy occasionally. Placenames are in Comic Sans MS which I think looks quite nice.

The documentation does actually say specifically that you're not meant to use Windows fonts except for placenames. Oops!

Ditto on the Comic Sans MS. Trying yellow fill for now.