Official font?

[Myranda]

Any chance we'll ever see an officially released version of the Eorzean script font? (say in a fansite kit?)

This is a question I know has been asked before but through my extensive browsing of search results, all such previous threads basically ended with people being satisfied with the unofficial font someone created.

I am well of this unofficial font, and it works well enough for most purposes, but I would really like to know if an official release is coming because there are a few things missing in the unofficial font:

• Unofficial does not include the Eorzean version of numbers (if you did not know these exist, look at the stalls in the market wards, they're labelled 1-10). Instead it uses rather skinny serifed latin style numerals which don't really fit with the rest of the styling.
• Unofficial is missing many special characters (e.g. ? ! & % < > etc.) or again uses the skinny styling of the numbers, making it jarring to look at. Maybe you could even make the currency symbols be one for the gil (if there is one)?
• Unofficial does not include hiragana/katakana/kanji/other expanded unicode characters, all of which are replaced by question marks

By far I'd say the first point is what I want most and has the greatest scope as the numbers can be used in any fan-created media. The other 2 points are more for those interested in the novelty of choosing Eorzean as the game's UI/chat font, which I'll admit isn't most people and even those that do probably won't be doing so all the time.

Mostly though I just want to satisfy my inner immersion nerd, I've become rather interested in the script even going so far as to explore how characters might ligature together and/or be written in more cursive/fluid stylings (my signature should be evidence enough of that...)

(Minor edit/note: sorry if this isn't the right forum section. Wasn't sure where it should go but it seemed maybe a little lore-related so I stuck it here.)

[Fernehalwes]

Greetings Myranda!

I'll relay your request to the development team and let you know what they have to say.

In the mean time, regarding special characters, I can tell you that there are a lot of characters that simply do not exist in Eorzean (writers in the realm have little need for @, $, ~, etc.), so even if we were to release something official, those characters would probably not be included, and have to be replaced with more modern renditions if you were to use the font in-game.

Oh, and by the way, your signature in Eorzean is great!

In case you missed it, here are another few instances of handwritten text.
(Seen in signatures on a photo of Mutamix Bubblypot's Carriers of the Cauldron)

[Myranda]

Thanks Ferne!

Yeah I guess I wasn't hoping for Eorzean styled special characters, since as you said those aren't used in normal speech, but more the point I brought up that whatever the unofficial version uses as a modern font for the non-Eorzean symbols just doesn't fit well (too skinny and thus hard to see compared to the rest of the text, like in chat where "[1]" would precede linkshell messages).

And I love the Mutamix link, love seeing those extra examples! I wouldn't suppose any of the stylings are typical of the different races? :P (i.e. Roegadyn would all have that more angular style Swynbroes uses whereas Miqo'tes would all have a tendency to be more like F'hobhas'?)

[Reinheart]

Myranda ever thought about using font editor? You can load existing font and just replace with easier to read font style for the special characters. Either way if there is official one, that would be awesome

[Myranda]

Myranda ever thought about using font editor? You can load existing font and just replace with easier to read font style for the special characters. Either way if there is official one, that would be awesome

Yeah I did some trying on that front, though I'm by no means an expert in font making.

Maybe I just don't know what's the best software, but the ones I tried didn't seem to be able to deal with including tons of Unicode characters (i.e. the kana and kanji, though I wouldn't mind one with languages like Kannada and Telugu for the more obscure emoji ಠ_ಠ) because of some kind of limit they had on characters per font. Either that or the programs would freeze and crash constantly. Maybe paid programs would perform better, but I'm not about to shell out hundreds of bucks for the cause of a single self-made Eorzea font... if anyone has a suggestion for a program I might try it out, but for now I've given up.

When it comes to the numbers, there's a bit of source material trouble, I could never get a good face-on screenshot of them for a decent quality vector trace since the signs are higher than the player, would either be looking up at them at an angle or too zoomed out. Now that I think about it though, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have 2 versions of the font, one with Eorzean numbers for making fansites/media and one with Arabic numerals still, because keeping track of HP/MP/whatever might be a pain in the butt to translate on the fly in battle situations if someone is using it as the game font. Granted, with the changes in the UI it may not look as good anyways. Here's how the unofficial looked on the 1.0 UI, which funnily enough the resident Loremonster Anony Moose was standing next to me at the time...

The other thing I bet an official version would handle better than most fan-made attempts is the font's spacing and kerning (unless we have a professional typographer playing the game I suppose >.>). I understand the very basics of the concept, but probably not enough to make a good quality font on my own.

Anyways, here's hoping!~