3 ms·

One thing I've wondered lately is about the 6x6 fonts (or perhaps one particular one) that I've seen in all kinds of old (late 80s to very early 90s) games, par

One thing I've wondered lately is about the 6x6 fonts (or perhaps one particular one) that I've seen in all kinds of old (late 80s to very early 90s) games, particularly on Amiga and MS-DOS platforms. The Atari ST had a 6x6 font in ROM (see https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/876150/atari_st_6 https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/876150/atari_st_6 for an example) and I think I've seen text that looks just like it in games that I know where developed first for the Amiga, as well as some early VGA DOS games. Maybe there's cases where artists were drawing graphics first on an ST, weird as that seems for an Amiga production - people have to use whatever tools they have at hand, so if that's an ST with Degas, Neochrome, or whatever, so be it. I considered maybe there was a similar font included with Deluxe Paint, but I can't find any indication of that. Perhaps instead a 6x6 character cell (leaving, really, 5x5) is just so constrained that there are very few ways to draw legible characters, and that's the reason for the uncanny similarity. Or perhaps the font got ripped and converted to some other format that was then passed around. I suppose I should start collecting examples of this font as I spot them, for comparison.

ahefner 3y ago
And a partial answer to this, my memory being jogged by the linked article's mention of Autodesk Animator (which I spent a lot of time with as a kid), is that Autodesk Animator includes a font SIXBYSIX.FNT appears identical to the Atari's 6x6 ROM font, to the extent I can find examples to compare. Ignoring the riddle of this or that Amiga game, this is a perfect link between VGA-era DOS games, for which I'm sure Animator (Pro) was often used for art, and the Atari ST, because Autodesk Animator is a direct descendant of the program Cyber Paint on the Atari ST (another program I spent a lot of time with as a kid), both programmed by Jim Kent. It's perfectly possible that one of the ST ROM fonts hitchhiked along in the conversion from ST to PC and started cropping up in PC games.
- viler 3y ago
  Yeah, I should think that's exactly what happened. I was a big AA user too, but at that point in time I wasn't aware of the Atari ST connection (and hadn't ever seen an ST), so whenever I spotted that font in a game I just thought of it as "the Autodesk Animator font", and assumed that's what they used for the artwork. (Sometimes you could even spot tell-tale effects like that "countour gradient" thing, which would confirm it!)

ahefner 3y ago

And a partial answer to this, my memory being jogged by the linked article's mention of Autodesk Animator (which I spent a lot of time with as a kid), is that Autodesk Animator includes a font SIXBYSIX.FNT appears identical to the Atari's 6x6 ROM font, to the extent I can find examples to compare. Ignoring the riddle of this or that Amiga game, this is a perfect link between VGA-era DOS games, for which I'm sure Animator (Pro) was often used for art, and the Atari ST, because Autodesk Animator is a direct descendant of the program Cyber Paint on the Atari ST (another program I spent a lot of time with as a kid), both programmed by Jim Kent. It's perfectly possible that one of the ST ROM fonts hitchhiked along in the conversion from ST to PC and started cropping up in PC games.

viler 3y ago
Yeah, I should think that's exactly what happened. I was a big AA user too, but at that point in time I wasn't aware of the Atari ST connection (and hadn't ever seen an ST), so whenever I spotted that font in a game I just thought of it as "the Autodesk Animator font", and assumed that's what they used for the artwork. (Sometimes you could even spot tell-tale effects like that "countour gradient" thing, which would confirm it!)