Mod: Final Fantasy III/IV/The After Years Font Replacement

[galneon]

The default font is Arial. I think most would agree it's rather boring. I modified a version of the Candara font for use in Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, and I'm told it works in Final Fantasy IV - The After Years as well. Here's the information:

Final Fantasy III/IV/The After Years Replacement Font
v1.0
by galneon
Font based almost entirely on Candara by Munchfonts/Microsoft

Changes:

9/28/2014
-Unknown characters now appear as a question mark inside a rectangle again.
-Added percentage sign (Yang).
-Added black star.

9/22/2014:
-Added store quantity minus.
-Added right arrow.

Install:

Backup original arial.ttf and copy new arial.ttf from archive to FF III/IV/The After Years installation directory.

Here's a preview screenshot[i.imgur.com]

Download here[pastebin.com]

Missing characters in The After Years? Let me know where you find them in the game and what they look like when using the stock Arial font and I'll try to add them.

[Logical Paradox]

That looks great. Thanks for the tip =]

[galneon]

Sure. I understand the developers needed to use a font with a permissive license, but there are most certainly better free alternatives out there which permit use in commercial products... Candara would be impractical to bundle, of course, but fortunately most of us not still on XP have most of MS's latest fonts on hand.

[No.1 The Larch]

An extremely helpful thread on the steam forum for a game? Color me surprised.

An thankful. Thanks dude!

[Monterossa]

beautiful.

[Somersault Justice]

The one thing with the Candara font is that it doesn't have a → symbol so any time it comes up it gets replaced by a box with a question mark (such as during level ups or showing changed stats when equipping). I use Times New Roman to get around this, but I guess it doesn't help with the whole not-wanting-to-see-a-font-that's-used-everywhere thing.

[galneon]

→ added.

[Revuhlooshun]

Is there any way to get rid of those random white specks all around the text? FF3 has this same problem, and my eye catches them every time they pop up. It's incredibly distracting.

[galneon]

Not that I know of. It's related to font rendering rather than one particular typeface.

[Somersault Justice]

Another thing missing is the minus in the shop menu when you're buying something and you choose + or - to buy more or less of the same item. I'm not actually sure what symbol it's using other than -

[galneon]

Thanks again. Arial having many glyphs, there were many possible choices and since I can't test them to find out which is the culprit, I replaced the null glyph with the missing minus. The standard minus was already mapped properly, so the developers made an odd choice here despite using the standard plus. It should work in any case. From now on, missing glyphs, if any remain, will show up as a minus until they're reported so I can fix them.

Updated download link is in the topic post.

[bluebird.half.saturn.contemn]

nice work. the font looks much better now.

[toadhall]

Just noticed this! This is amazing! Great job OP! This is much appreciated.

Does anyone know if this also works with FF3?

[Monterossa]

I think that there's another bug with "Twincast" command in battle. another ? letter shows up.

[galneon]

Originally posted by Monterossa:

I think that there's another bug with "Twincast" command in battle. another ? letter shows up.

If you're using the latest version of the font from several days ago, any unknown glyph appears as a "-". The old null glyph was a question mark inside a box, but it's no longer present in the font at all. If you're seeing a standard "?" then that's actually how it's supposed to look as intended by the developers. I'm waiting for a sale to buy the game, but was the question mark perhaps only present the first time the ability was used? I'm trying to remember, but it's been years since I've played the NDS original.

Glad you like it, Monado Blade. I'll look into FF3.

Edit: Yeah, it should work for FF3 judging by the contents of the install directory. May be some missing glyphs, but I'd be willing to add them the same as for FF4. FF3 has more bundled fonts including a giant unicode arial, but it's probably only used for Japanese, Korean and/or Simplified Chinese. I would think arial is the main font just like in FF4, and the replacement should work just the same.

[toadhall]

Gaineon, thanks for looking into it. I'm off to purchase FF3 then! :D