Kickstart 1.3 Topaz font for Amiga Sierra AGI Games

[skiphipdata]

The Amiga platform option for Sierra AGI games in the current ScummVM versions uses the Amiga Topaz font that was standard in AmigsOS version 2.0. Most of the Sierra AGI games were released during the time when AmigsOS 1.3 was in common use. AmigaOS 1.3 had a different Topaz font that was more similar to the IBM PC standard font. It would be nice to have the option to choose whether to use the AmigaOS 1.3 or 2.0 Topaz font for Amiga platform AGI games, as that is the font that was in common use on the Amiga at the time the AGI games were originally released. Older versions of ScummVM used a font that more closely resembled the AmigaOS 1.3 version of the Topaz font. I would like to see the option to use the older style Topaz font for Amiga platform games in ScummVM

[m-kiewitz]

We are using an effectively recreated Topaz font, that is also used by the engine "Parallaction". We can't ship the original Topaz font with ScummVM, because that could be a copyright violation.

BUT you are actually already free to use any font you like.

For Amiga games, ScummVM will look for a file called "agi-font-amiga.bin".

For AtariST games, ScummVM will look for "agi-font-atarist.bin".
If that fails, it will look for a Atari ST ROM font called "agi-font-atarist-system.fnt" (needs to get dumped out of the operating system ROM).

For DOS games, ScummVM will look for "agi-font-dos.bin".

For Apple IIgs games, ScummVM will try to use the supplied Sierra font.

You can put those files into your extra directory. Or into the specific game directory.

You can even actually change the rendering to another platform and then even use for example the Apple IIgs Sierra font for a DOS AGI game.

All of those user supplied font files have to be 8x8 bitmap font files (so 2048 bytes).

It's also possible to use the hi-res Hercules Sierra font (which was supplied with AGI DOS games) with for example Amiga AGI games. That font is called "HGC_FONT". Although mind you, afaik Manhunt 2 got shipped with a broken Hercules font file.

In any case - you will just have to get yourself the corresponding font into a 2048 byte font file. We can't distribute those.

Because of this, I'm closing this request.

[skiphipdata]

Any suggestion on how I would extract the Topaz font from the original Amiga Kickstart ROM? I have officially licensed copies of the Amiga Kickstart ROMs, so I should have the legal right to use that font for ScummVM.

[m-kiewitz]

Some people have already created raw bitmap data out of amiga fonts.

Just google for "topaz font amiga bitmap" and select the result on github.
Then grab one of the raw fonts.

Those are 4096 bytes though and we need 2048 bytes. So you need to delete every 2nd byte of that data. You should see that in the original file every second byte repeats anyway.

You could also get the original Amiga bitmap font file from the ROM, although you will have to google how to do that.

There is Fony - the font editor - that can be helpful and it supports raw bitmap fonts and plenty of other font file types - ​http://hukka.ncn.fi/?fony