Chex Quest Font Package released!

Manny Cav · May 24, 2009, 09:12:51 PM

Download my new Chex Quest Font package here, at Chex Quest Gallery!

This began when I was making new menu graphics for Chex Quest Arena. I made up some from the Chex Quest Alphabet made by a still-unknown author. I made the graphics, and put them into SLumpEd when SLumpEd made my graphics white, telling me that whatever I uploaded wasn't a 256-color BMP. I examined the alphabet image, and discovered that this widely distributed file contained colors outside of the Doom palette! This, of course, doesn't meet the Calavera Standard of Excellence in Perfection™. I put it upon myself to make my own letter sheet so I wouldn't have to put up with messed-up graphics and sub-par letters. I looked at this and thought that this would also be a great opportunity to try out the Imagetool utility that Super Chex linked to here. I downloaded Imagetool and decided to model my new slime sheet after the pattern used for creating ZDoom fonts with Imagetool. The end result is three files.

sheet.bmp is a regular BMP with the slime letters in a format form which you can assemble custom menu graphics. It includes many custom characters like J, K, ", and others. It also includes two different colons. One is for use with letters, and the others is for use with numbers.

dbigfont.bmp is for use with Imagetool to create your own custom ZDoom fonts based on the slime letter sheet. The non-standard colon for letters was removed, and the Q was altered to fit the height of the other letters. Palette entries 0 and 1 were also swapped so black could be used as a color in this file.

dbigfont.lmp is the actual lump you will upload into your mod so you can have a custom large font. It was made with Imagetool.

In order to get the black into dbigfont.lmp, I swapped out palette entries 0 and 1 in the internal palette, like I mentioned before. Palette 0 is the brown color used for transparency, and 1 is black. I tried this several different ways with several different custom palettes, including the one used by bigfont.pcx that came with Imagetool, but ZDoom never rendered any black pixels. I'm convinced this isn't an issue with Imagetool or my files, but an issue with the way ZDoom is rendering custom fonts.

Nevertheless, this looks quite "Chexy" in green with ZDoom. Feel free to download and comment. I tend to think that this would also make a nice addition to Chex Quest 3.

Atariangamer · May 25, 2009, 12:16:19 PM

Ooh, I like! Great job on this.

...but I have no mod to use it in...

matthias720 · May 25, 2009, 12:18:05 PM

*downloads*

75 · May 25, 2009, 02:30:23 PM

that's awesome!

ChexCommander · May 25, 2009, 08:30:09 PM

What we need sometime is a TrueType CQ font, for use with MS Office and wordpad and all that. We could type things in Slime!

matthias720 · May 25, 2009, 09:03:01 PM

That's an excellent idea. I'd use it, for sure.

TrueDude · June 20, 2009, 07:45:29 PM

Yeah, that's my older brother who made the original. :p

Manny Cav · June 21, 2009, 10:25:17 AM

Hmm. Was he ever actually a member, or did he just work behind the scene without a CQFF account?

TrueDude · June 24, 2009, 12:39:19 AM

He did come once, he also started up a mod where you played as Flem Chexter and slimed the cereals. It got pretty far until he lost interest. Kinda wish the files weren't gone.

Manny Cav · June 24, 2009, 10:41:38 AM

I wish I new his forum name. Then I could credit him in the downloads section on Chex Quest Gallery for that file. Too bad about the mod, though. If I knew more, like some of his posts, it's possible that I could do some tracking down and find out more. I might even be able to get one or two of his files if they were ever uploaded to the internet.

TrueDude · June 24, 2009, 01:30:35 PM

He actually did upload the sprites to some of the replacements. In fact, I remember most of them now:

Player: Flem Chex

Flemoidus Commonus: Chex Warrior (Could be switched with Bipedicus)
Flemoidus Bipedicus: Kix Warrior (Could be switched with Commonus)
Armored Flemoidus Bipedicus: I can't remember.
Flemoidus Cycloptis: A copy of the normal, but the flem was replaced with robotics, and it fell apart when flemmed.
Flembrane: This one was the best one. He actually put in efforts to replace it with Chex Warrior, then put on the Flem suit you wear once in Caverns of Bazoik. That sprite looked like it took forever, and he also had a special gun. (I think it might have been the BFG9000, no programming though)

It still had much to do, and he actually said he'd like to finish it.

The Slimeinator · June 24, 2009, 02:11:23 PM

Quote from: True_Dude on June 24, 2009, 01:30:35 PM
He actually did upload the sprites to some of the replacements. In fact, I remember most of them now:

Player: Flem Chex

Flemoidus Commonus: Chex Warrior (Could be switched with Bipedicus)
Flemoidus Bipedicus: Kix Warrior (Could be switched with Commonus)
Armored Flemoidus Bipedicus: I can't remember.
Flemoidus Cycloptis: A copy of the normal, but the flem was replaced with robotics, and it fell apart when flemmed.
Flembrane: This one was the best one. He actually put in efforts to replace it with Chex Warrior, then put on the Flem suit you wear once in Caverns of Bazoik. That sprite looked like it took forever, and he also had a special gun. (I think it might have been the BFG9000, no programming though)

It still had much to do, and he actually said he'd like to finish it.

This... it sounds like win. Is there anything remaining from it?