LanaPixel - Localization-friendly pixel font
A bitmap font for localizing pixel art games.
LanaPixel contains approximately 19400 characters, with support for most modern European languages (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic), Turkish (Latin), and Korean (Hangul), good support for Japanese and Simplified Chinese, and some Traditional Chinese. The Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters have kerning.
However, please note that while many CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters are supported, many of them are nearly illegible due to the small size, and thus this font needs to be used very carefully to ensure legibility and avoid visually complex characters. Using a larger font would be the much easier option.
This font is designed to be displayed at 11px. As this is a pixel font, it is recommended to only scale by integer amounts (1x or 11px, 2x or 22px, 3x or 33px...) to avoid distortion.
Thank you to chimeforest (https://github.com/chimeforest) for providing the initial set of outlines! The outlines were created from a PNG generated by @LorenLemcke.
There are three TTF versions of the font available, each in its own zip:
- LanaPixel_Everything.zip - Outlines+bitmap containing all available glyphs. The TTF is 3081 KiB.
- LanaPixel_BitmapOnly.zip - Bitmap-only TTF containing all available glyphs. The TTF is 585 KiB. This is by far the smallest version of the font available, but many game engines try to use the nonexistent outlines instead of the bitmaps and thus do not display the font correctly. Godot and SFML do display the bitmaps, at least. If you care about keeping your files small, start with this one and then try another version if you can't get this one to display correctly.
- LanaPixel_NoKorean.zip - Outlines+bitmap containing everything except the Hangul glyphs, reducing the font from 19k glyphs to 8k, with a proportionate file size reduction. The TTF is 1359 KiB. This is the recommended outline version, use this if you don't intend to support Korean or have an alternate Korean font you can use.
In addition to the TTF, the three zips contain these files, all identical between the zips:
- LanaPixel.md - More info about the font.
- controllerbuttons.html - A cheatsheet for the controller button characters and arrows included in the font, for easy copy+pasting.
- LanaPixel_OpenFontLicense.txt - A copy of the Open Font License and the copyright notice, in case you'd prefer to use that one instead of CC-BY 4.0.
- LanaPixel_CC-BYLicense.txt - A copy of the CC-BY 4.0 License and the copyright notice.
lanapixel_everything.zip 862.3 Kb [5181 download(s)] lanapixel_bitmaponly.zip 251.1 Kb [918 download(s)] lanapixel_nokorean.zip 471 Kb [694 download(s)]
Comments
Nice!
Would you be willing to include a copy of CC-BY in the zip file as well? or indicate in the LanaPixel_License.txt that users may choose either license? Otherwise it looks like the LanaPixel license is contradicting the CC-BY license.EDIT: hmm... The 5th term of the SOFL may actually contradict the CC-BY license. If SOFL forbids this font being distributed under any other license, then it can't be distributed under CC-BY as well. Any thoughts?EDIT2: Fixed, thanks! :)
Licensing is such a PITA =_= I wish OGA offered an OFL option.
I interpreted section 5 as applying to the licensor, i.e. if you license it under OFL, you must only distribute it under OFL, and if you license it under CC-BY, the OFL doesn't apply.
FWIW though, all I want is for people to not sell the font itself, not claim it as their own work, and to hopefully make it possible for their players to find this page if they're so inclined. If someone goes against the text of either license but maintains the spirit of what I want out of these licences, I won't hassle them.
I left the CC-BY license out of the file because I wanted it to be a file the user can just drop in their project and not worry about it. I should add a separate file for CC-BY though, so people can include either one easily.
I agree. I freaking hate how complicated licensing makes things.
Ok, I can get behind that interpretation of term 5. And I can respect the spirit of your desires for this asset.
My job is to make sure developers can use assets without worrying about violating licensing terms. If the terms are not clear, I haven't done my job. We can look into adding OFL to our list of licenses.
In the meantime, the assets must be compatible with the licenses we accept. It looks like that's the case, but when the page says CC-BY, but the file says OFL, it tends to make developers worried.As long as it's clear people can use either license when they look at the file(s), then it should be fine. EDIT: you have made this adjustment already. :)Since you want them to be able to quickly drop the package into their project without having to shuffle files around, what about having two zip files available here? one with the OFL, one with CC-BY? EDIT: Having both the CC-BY.txt and OFL.txt like you have now is fine, just wondering if you prefer two zip files with separate licenses?
Sorry for the huge wall of text, but you should know, one of the main reasons we don't already have OFL in our list of accepted licenses is because of the "no resale" stipulation. That doesn't mean we want others to profit off of your generosity. We don't accept licenses that forbid resale because it creates legal conflicts. For commercial projects especially, but free and open source projects as well. Developers will avoid anything with a "no resale" clause even when they have no intention of reselling that asset. This is because "resale" can attach to the game itself, even if the asset used by the game is free. Or if the game is free - and it is hosted on steam, itch, or any other game hosting platform with ads - that game generates revenue for the site via increased traffic and ad revenue. This could legally make the developer liable for "sales" based on assets that forbid sales. I know that is not what you're concerned about and not something you would ever go after someone for. I just want you to be aware that
1) We insist on assets here using one of the Free-Software-Foundation-approved licenses, and
2) All of those licenses allow people to try* resale of assets.
*That being said, it's generally pretty difficult for someone to successfully re-sell your free assets under CC-BY. They're required to credit you and link back to this page, so any "customer" of theirs would see that attribution, visit this page, and see it is available for free. Why would they bother paying someone when it's obviously free here? The license still allows them to try, though. :P
Thanks for the detailed explanation and for being so vigilant about this stuff!
Since the ZIP contains additional informational files and isn't meant to be dropped in wholesale, I think including two licences in the one ZIP would be more convenient. I've updated the ZIP file to include both license files and updated the readme to reflect those files. Hopefully that'll be less confusing :D
The OFL forbids resale of the font *on its own* (section 1), but it explicitly allows the resale of the font bundled with software (section 2), even if that software is minimal. Any game using an OFL-licensed font is perfectly in the clear.
Good to know. Thanks again! :)
Personally I hate OFL, I see it as almost non-free because of the "don't sell this" condition, it's really a borderline proprietary license. A font being under OFL is an instant no go for me.
Especially with tiny pixel art and pixel fonts I think you could hardly ever claim copyright for this font, there have been thousands of pixel art fonts of this small resolution by now, so yours would likely be considered a derivative work of some of them, and in some countries these font are not even copyrightable, so licensing very likely makes no sense. I'd personally use CC0.
IANAL but people claiming your work as their own has nothing to do with licensing, they simply can't do that. Even if it's public domain, you could sue them for falsely claiming authorship -- I don't think publicly lying like this for the purpose of e.g. business is legal.
I personally only use CC0 fonts, such as Aileron, because I can simply use them, and I share everything back under CC0 too. I also proudly credit the author (dot colon for Aileron) exactly because he's not forcing me to credit him. I think that itself deserves a credit.
So CC0 is just a little idea from me for how you could avoid the PITA.
Love and Peace :)
I considered CC0, since I also prefer not to worry about licenses, both as a creator and a user. For now, I'm not comfortable with that for various (probably silly) reasons. You can sell any game that uses or includes an OFL font, but you can't resell the font on its own, and that matches well with my goals.
I might eventually replace the CC-BY and OFL options with CC0 when I have more assets out there in the world, but I am not yet ready to do that.
I have been using this for my prototypes and projects and I love it. Thank you for creating something so great.
Hi, First off, thank you so much for creating this incredible resource and offering it to others! I have a pixel art game in development with support for multiple languages (including Russian) and this font is just perfect!
I noticed that the inverted exclamation mark (¡) in the font is just a regular exclamation mark. I have been able to edit it easily enough in FontForge, but thought it was worth mentioning in case you want to update it :
Huh, well-spotted! I've fixed it and updated all the versions (that's the time-consuming part ._.) Thank you!
Fab, thank you! :)
Thank you!! It's just what i was looking for
Hey eishiya,
Would it be possible to request a couple more characters to be added to the font if possible?
In my game I make use of phonetic characters (namely ɒ ə and ʊ) and it would be great if I could include them in the dialogue too.
If not, would you mind telling me what software you have used to create/edit the font, as I don't mind adding them in myself :)
I've added ɒ ə ʊ as you asked, and also ʔ ɑ. They're not kerned, though IME most game engines ignore the kerning anyway.
In case you want to edit the font yourself to add more glyphs or to kern these, any full-featured font editor will do. These are TTF files, not work files specific to any program, so anything that can open them for editing will do. FontForge is free and can do it.
Wow, that's amazing. Thank you so much!
By the way, in case you're interested, here's the game it's being used on: https://lucy-dreaming.com/
Thanks again
Tom
I really like this font
C# constants file for the button glyph codes if it would be of use to anyone
https://pastebin.com/AcvSe5wc
Hi, thank you so much for creating this amazing font and providing it for free!
I'm using it in my game to cover the translations for the non-latin languages as it can be hard to find such small pixel fonts for them.
I noticed that it is missing a few glyphs that I use in my game, I was wondering if it was possible to add them?
The characters (and their unicode value):
Japanese: 々(12293), 瞑(30609)
Chinese: 噗(22103), 噜(22108), 嚕(22165), 墻(22715), 帧(24103), 幀(24128), 桿(26751), 疡(30113), 緝(32221),
縂(32258), 蝠(34656), 螃(34691), 鈕(37397), 铠(38112), 锯(38191), 饋(39243), 鹚(40538)
I can totally understand if the small size of the font makes it pretty much impossible though.
How the heck did I miss 々?! While adding that, I also noticed ヶ's horizontal stroke was too short, fixed that.
Added requested glyphs:
々, 瞑, 噗, 噜, 嚕, 墻, 帧, 幀, 桿. 疡. 緝, 縂, 蝠, 螃. 铠, 锯, 饋, 鹚 (this last one is awful, wouldn't recommend using it)
鈕 was already in the font.
Through the magic of copypasta I also added:
稈, 焊. 皔, 楫, 湒, 諿, 恖, 搃, 輻, 褔, 偪, 楅, 堛, 愊, 揊, 稫, 搒. 滂, 牓, 謗, 恺, 垲, 皑, 硙
Thank you so much!
I'm so sorry that I have to immediately bother you again. I prepared a list to be able to request all at once, but I messed up when I copy & pasted my list into my post and one glyph fell through the cracks.
Is it possible to add this one too: 儅(20741)
Bah, I guess that explains why there were only 19 characters listed when earlier you'd mentioned 20 xP
I've added 儅; it was a copypasta job, so it took longer to export the fonts and upload them than it did to add it.
Thank you again!
Hi,
I've noticed the character 繁(32321) is missing. I know it's a rather complex character, but it's apparently needed to spell "traditional chinese" in traditional chinese, so it's a bit odd that it's missing.
Is it possible to add it?
Hi Eishiya,
first of all, a big thank you for the font, it's anamazing and unique asset for pixelart games with localization. Western, cyrillic and even greek alphabet are really really readable. I got a feedback from my chinese associate though that the chinese version is very unreadable. Not that I ask you to change anything, and Imagine the limited pixels are a harsh constaints for kanjis glyphs, but just reporting a direct feedback (and they are specialized in localization too the ones that gave me the feedback)
All the best and keep up the great work!
Cheers
Yes, many of the CJK glyphs not easily readable, and in the readme file, I mentioned this. There's only so much I can do within the available space. For Japanese, it's possible to avoid the visually complex glyphs by using kana, but in Chinese, one would have to use circumlocutions or a larger font size. For context, many retro games in Chinese used glyphs that were roughly 15x15 in a 16x16 space, not 9x9 in a 10x10 space like this font does, and even then still had to keep the glyphs visually simple.
Though I've added many CJK glyphs, I am considering removing the more complex ones (including perhaps the entirety of Hangul), because I'm worried that people are using this font as a fire-and-forget solution, without considering that it's not actually effective in all scenarios. If those glyphs are outright missing, then devs will have little choice but to consider paraphrasing or using a larger font.
While possible, it would not be legible. I recommend using a different, larger font for Traditional Chinese, and probably also even for Simplified Chinese.
In fact, I am considering removing many of the visually complex CJK glyphs from the font, to avoid giving users a false sense of the font working when really it's just an illegible mess in some cases xP 9x9 pixels is not an adequate size for most hanzi.
yes, I agree! we are considering having to rely on a non pixel font for asian languages, given that our game is very UI rich (a management game) and therefore larger size wouldn't be an option.
nevertheless, for all the other languages, an very nice font a well readable.
I can totally understand that, it makes sense now why it's hard to find such small fonts that support chinese. Will look into finding a bigger font, if I'll stumble into any further issues. (I'll probably go with a bit less tiny resolution for my next game, to make it easier for myself.)
Also just wanted to update that the glyph 繁 is actually present (in the current version), I was just a silly goose, messing something up in my asset pipeline.