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 decent support for Traditional Chinese. The Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters are kerned where appropriate.
This is a bitmap-only TTF that contains empty dummy outlines that may result in characters showing up blank. Setting the font size to 11px should make the characters show up correctly in most cases. If you need it at a different larger size, you will have to scale the font. As this is a pixel font, it is recommended to only scale by integer amounts (1x, 2x, 3x...) to avoid distortion.
July 1 update: I've also included a spritesheet version of the font, for those frameworks with no support for bitmap fonts. This version does not contain kerning data. See below for more details!
Files in the lanapixel.zip:
- lanapixel.ttf - The font file itself.
- 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. I recommend using the OFL, as the requirements for it are simpler.
- LanaPixel_CC-BYLicense.txt - A copy of the CC-BY 4.0 License and the copyright notice.
Files in lanapixel-png.zip
- lanapixel.png - A 2k x 1k spritesheet containing every character in the font.
- LanaPixel.xml - an XML file containing information about every character in the texture, everything you need to render the characters with the correct positioning and spacing. Most of the properties are self-explanatory; "advance" is how far to move the renderer along after rendering the character so that the next character is spaced correctly. So, if you're drawing "HI" and render "H" at 40,50 and its advance is 6, that means you'd render "I" at 46,50.
These two files were generated by @LorenLemcke on Twitter using FontBuilder . You're welcome to generate your own version that includes a subset of the characters or otherwise suits your needs, using this or any other tool.
These files are provided in a separate archive because the XML file is rather large (2MB!).
If you license the font under the OFL and use the PNG version (or distribute a spritesheet version of your own making), you do not have to include a copy of the license with your project or provide any other form of credit, as that requirement only applies to redistributing an actual font file, which an image is not :]
lanapixel.zip 225.8 Kb [388 download(s)] lanapixel-png.zip 368 Kb [73 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.