Good fonts for Renpy?

Chatterbox

Active Member
Game Developer
May 28, 2018
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Any suggestions for a good font in Ren'py?

I've tried several. When I released a demo, many people complained about the font that I used.

I recently removed the old font and thought I had a good replacement, but it turned out to suck when testing it.
 

xcribr

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Nov 7, 2017
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Go over to dafont.com
You can search there for free to use fonts, and even have the fonts appear with a preview line of text that you choose.

Most people prefer sans serif fonts (like the one on this site), but there's a selection of very readable serif fonts there too, like ... I'm using in my current project, and apart from personally hating the excessively curly k just a little bit, I haven't had any complaints (yet).

In my experience, Ren'Py seems to do better with slightly heavier fonts, but use the to stop Ren'Py from doing it's awful font editing. It makes italics look weird, sometimes.
 

Penfold Mole

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May 22, 2017
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DejaVu Sans - Ren'Py's default font.
It isn't default without a reason - it's just very easy to read.

If you want something different, then:
- Don't go for the fancy looking ones, because while they may look nice on a greeting card, they're very tiresome to read.
- And don't go for the thin and narrow fonts, their visibility is poor.
- And don't go for the very wide and "fat" fonts, either - while they may have excellent visibility, they also make the reader tired fast and their readability therefore, is poor. What may be good for titles, isn't always good for some longer text.

As I already suggested - the default font is one of the best possible fonts regarding readability. You can search for something that looks similar, just keep in mind what I said about above. You can use any fonts on the main menu pages (Preferences, save, load etc), even for the name labels, just keep the dialog text well readable.

Basically, you can change the default font to whatever you want allover the game, just change these styles back to DejaVu Sans or something similar and well readable:

style say_dialogue
style input_prompt
style input
style choice_button_text

And players will be happy.
 

Rich

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Google fonts offer a large variety. If you're looking for something simple, a lot of people use Roboto.

But it all depends on what "look" you're trying to achieve.
 
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anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
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DejaVu Sans - Ren'Py's default font.
It isn't default without a reason - it's just very easy to read.
"... for everyone".

Around there, there's people with a shitty screen, a extremely wide screen or a too small one. Some fonts are almost not readable when the size is reduced because the game resolution is higher than the screen one. Some other become unreadable when they are display at large size, and some are unreadable because of some glow effect on the screen.
There's also people near sighted, far sighted or astigmatic, when they don't have two or even the three because of their age. Of course they have glasses, but glasses don't reach a 100% correction, especially when there's more than one problem. For them, the letters will be deformed. Their brain learned with time to deal with this, but the letter must stay recognizable enough for this to happen.
There's also people who are color blind, red, blue, green, it depend. Your beautiful font look great for you, but once removed a color on the background they'll tend to merge with it. By default it's not such a problem. Like above their brain learned to deal with it, but here again the letters must stay recognizable enough.
And finally to this you must add people who have dyslexia and will be confused if some letters look too similar.
All of these people will play your game, and all of them should have the same facility to read what is wrote on it.

DejaVu is the default font for Ren'py since many years, and a widely used font on Ren'py games. If it wasn't a font which stay readable enough in all case, it would have been changed already.
It doesn't mean that you can't change the font, but that doing it isn't just a question of game customization. You can't just choose the font you love, you need to choose one that will stay readable whatever happen.
 

Jackboo1

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Aug 26, 2017
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Don't use weird fonts that don't fit the design of your project. And use two different fonts, at the most.

But in some ways the right font is a matter of taste. Someone said Comic Sans... I hate this font (like many others lol). It conveys a strong sense of amateurism in design, at least in my opinion.

Some recommendations:

Roboto font


Inconsolata font


Adamina font


Alegreya Sans Font Family


Actor font


Ethos font


Antic font


Gaspar font


Fénix STD font


Klinic font


Aleo font


Modum font


Fira font


Metropolis font
 

Chatterbox

Active Member
Game Developer
May 28, 2018
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Thank you guys for all the advice. I'll either use the default font, or Roboto.
 

Volta

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Apr 27, 2017
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As a bit of a font collector these are really good suggestions. I would say that tailoring the font type to the game genre or setting is important too, sans makes sense for a modern setting, a more times new roman "rigid" looking font for a fantasy setting, something like Ethos which is mentioned above, perhaps a more digital looking font for a sci-fi setting ect, anyway thanks for the suggestions.