3x3 cipher, based on version 0.3 of "Micromaze". It uses its own form of binary notation for the numerals, wherein the upper-right 4 pixels play the role of the 1, 2, 4, and 8.
This is the smallest font in which I was able to give a unique symbol to every glyph (excluding the lower/upper case, which look the same). It reads sort of like Pigpen Cipher, but is more densely written.
Since MMC is obscure and of constant width/height, it serves many "gibberish" and "placeholder text" purposes in addition to being a modestly strong cipher.
Original size: 2pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
A vertical take on Morse code. These glyphs are read left-to-right from the bottom up and spaced so that 1 pixel = 1 unit of time, whether moving horizontally or vertically. Letters have 3 spaces between them and words have 7 spaces.
The result is a concise design that can easily be fed to tone-generation or image-to-audio software (e.g., AudioPaint) to produce accurately encoded & timed Morse code, no matter the frequency (speed) of the transmission. You can use this principle to create and place messages into music or games, make messages match a tempo or beat, arpeggiate words and turn them into music or sound effects, and much more.
The name is a pun. :P
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21NOV2018: I've recently learned that many radio stations use an expanded version of the International Morse Code, adding many symbols and punctuation to it. Though these new glyphs are not part of the standard, they are commonly used and agreed on, so I will keep adding them as I find them.
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Original size: 4pt (use multiples of this size for pixel perfection)
Original size: 15pt
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A font which has a spurless, sans-serif, pixelated polygonal look which is somewhat reminescent of fonts used in VHS technology.
A lot of applied science went into this design. It's designed to remain legible on all media in all use conditions, provided that one uses the original size or a multiple thereof. Numerous technologies and mediums were employed to realize this objective.
"Diaspora" was tested and refined for use with/on/against:
• CRT, LCD & e-Ink screens
• image formats & compressed imagery (GIF, JPG)
• printers (inkjet, bubble jet, laserjet, & thermal)
• analog video & multi-generational copies (VHS, Super 8)
• digital video (AVI, MP4, MPEG, WEBM, WMV)
• 3D and voxel models (Blender, MagicaVoxel, POV-Ray)
• dynamic scaling hardware (game consoles and capture devices)
• imagery plugins & filters, including image degraders
• image scaling/interpolation hardware & software
• image recognition hardware & software
These all have traits which degrade, distort, compress, glitch, or otherwise alter imagery in various ways. This design aims to minimize the loss of legibility from these effects and to attain the best scores possible in various forms of imagery analysis. So far, this has proved extremely useful, as it can remain fully legible even when extreme JPG or video compression are applied to it thousands of times.
A piece of software I helped write, called the Marinan Imagery Deconstruction AI System (MIDAS), is being used on captured images of this font. The end objective is to realize the design which has the best all-around Marinan Interpretability Value (MIV) for all the tested platforms - the design which is considered by MIDAS to be the most legible in the most media under the broadest range of use conditions and quality levels.
MIDAS uses a set of considerations made with both humans and computers in mind, so a high MIV does not necessarily equal a better font - it just means one that the system thinks is easier to visually interpret. Note the use of the phrase "visually interpret" as opposed to "read". MIDAS tries to determine how well people and computers can tell what shapes are, not how much enjoyment they'll get from reading or how much strain they might undergo while doing it.
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VERSION HISTORY:
1.0.0 - initial release.
1.0.1 - More Latin support added.
1.0.2 - First batch of tests run.
1.0.3 - gjy5&ßẞ were improved, some glyphs added.
1.0.4 - Second batch of tests run. Space width reduced.
1.0.5 - Experimentally converted to a rounded spurless design, then converted back to a plain spurless after testing. A few new ligatures were added.
1.0.6 - Cyrillic and Greek enter development. Many of these letters must be altered to be distinct from their Latin counterparts.
1.0.7 - Some spacing values changed to increase internal consistency. More difficult tests are being devised. However, since only I seem interested in this type of work, this project is going on hiatus for some time.
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See also: AMFA, a font built with similar considerations in mind
A font wherein each glyph is depicted through the placement of exactly 5 pixels on a 5x5 grid. This was inspired by basketball where only 5 players per team are on the court at once.
I feel these glyphs could be useful for board games since it takes very few pieces to render these shapes.
A 3x3 microfont from the Virtual Gremlin, an old game of mine. This is designed to look tiny and indistinct. Useful when writing jargon, placeholder text, or technobabble (the kind of meaningless information you'd write when drawing a newspaper or computer terminal).
VERSION HISTORY:
08 Feb 2018 - v1.0 declared finished.
While walking through Glitch Forest, you spot a sudden movement behind the Sprite Trees. It's [EVIL_ANGATONIST]! With a twisted smile, s/he/it converts your words into text written in this font. ZOUNDS! How will you get through summer school now?
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This was made to reproduce an amusing glitch found in MIDAS which caused insanely high ratings of 17.3×10^213 (17.3 septuagintillion). The glitch has since been fixed.
Pandora's Blocks is a new kind of box. A better box. A box that contains things unheard of in the world of humans, a box that dissolves problems and anxieties and casts them unto the wind, a box that turns the words you say and the thoughts you think into ambrosia. Do the right thing and don't not not de-un-open the box. There are bad things living in there.
You must repost this message on Facebook within 30 seconds. If you don't warn at least 12 people about the dangers of pixel fonts by tomorrow, your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma will rise from the dead and raid your kitchen. She was a master Sandwichologist employed by Sir Francis Bacon himself. Repeat, DO NOT OPEN THE BOX.
Experimental 2x4 font. Not the most legible, but maybe useful as a cipher. It requires some contextual knowledge of what you are reading for the best result.
Original size: 6pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
5x5 pixel font with a built-in scanline effect. Because of its subtractive nature and low resolution, some glyphs are impossible to depict.
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Original size: 4.5pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)
Official font of AMFA (formerly ATMA), the main rival of MARENGI Omnisystems in Endless Sea Of Stars. Appears throughout my games (especially those using the ESOS and ESOS-Lite engines) and is used as the main font of ESOS Terminal A (the one doing the super-long survey).
Between 2012 and 2014, ESOS Journey-Depth AI entities collaborated to produce this specific arrangement of pixels as the most legible form of 1px wide, monochrome 8x8 Latin for electro-optical systems (Marinan Interpretability Value 9.29).
This font is useful if you want to write some really efficient text recognition software for a robot with a camera, or if you want a pixel font which elicits a high degree of reading accuracy. Some would argue that the uppercase makes it less readable, but you'll be hard pressed to find another font that is THIS readable in uppercase only!
This is a clone87.10 degree slanted font for Italicized italic italic Ultra-Italic italic Italian italics. Thanks for making me design a whole family of fonts that hurt my eyes, Zuloph. :P
After I made RC Vertigo, Zu said he could still read it. I began to create increasingly slanted designs, and this one was finally the one he couldn't read.
No symbols/numerals for this one. I consider it to be machine-readable only at this point...
A cipher used by robots in my game "Anime Girls vs. The Cavemen". It's a way for robots to communicate in plain sight without organic lifeforms suspecting anything.
The robots are repositioning the dials on electronic devices (including themselves), and the dial positions are being used to encode information which can be read off by other robots. The same is true of the VU meters, indicator bars, etc. - the robots adjust a device's parameters until the meters are operating within a given range.
The actual mapping of symbols to glyphs is scrambled in every game. Additionally, the robots speak to each other using a language that resembles Assembly. It's up to you to scramble these when coming up with your own cipher...
Since the original art style for this game used chicken-head style knobs on the electronics, this gets the amusing name "Chicken Head Cipher".
Original size: 6pt (use multiples of this value for pixel perfection)