I need fonts!

Specifically, I need western themed fonts. There's thousands of font sites out there, but I could waste several days browsing around looking for free fonts, so I'm hoping someone here knows a site where I can just download a zip of a few thousand fonts and go through them, or if you happen to know a site with some really nice free western fonts.

I suppose I could just go out and buy one of those 10,000 font collection CD's, but store's closed right now so I thought I'd ask here. :-)

http://www.fonts.com/FavoriteFonts/WesternFonts.htm?&ovmkt=JK0U0JDQ41GISCA7JS1RID2DCS

Shawn, I use these guys for my fonts, they'll even make one for you. They are top notch : http://www.blambot.com/fonts.shtml

po:

Which part of FREE didn't you understand? :-)

Most of these font websites (including that one) charge like $20 for a single font, which is crazy. That's why I specified free. If I have to buy fonts, I'll just buy them in bulk because I can get like 10,000 fonts for like $10-$20 at Best Buy.

Anyway, that website you linked might have some free fonts but all the ones I clicked were pay fonts and if there's no easy way to see which are which then I'm not gonna bother with it.

I guess I might end up going to Best Buy in a few hours to get one of those bargain CD's. There's gotta be some good Western fonts on there.


Indie:
There's not a whole lot of fonts there, and I didn't see any which really said "western" to me.

Make sure that "Free" means it's licenced for commercial useage.

eh? They're not free?? My bad.

Looks good
has a couple

http://www.geocities.com/kinneargames/westernfonts.zip

No idea on licensing. Grabbed them off one of my fonts CDs. The CDs are advertised as "public domain" fonts - but of course none of them are. Most of the fonts have websites in the descriptors, so check 'em out.

+BlackD

Note this text from tonyg's first link: Most fonts are freeware and as such free to use for professional webmasters and hobbyists. If you wish to use them commercially, you may have to register them first. Make sure to see if the font is freeware or shareware. Registration information can always be found in the readme.txt file attached to the font file.

You have to download them and check the readme in the .zip file.

It is really important to obey this type of thing so noone gets funny with you when you release your game.

Thanks for the concern guys, but could we stop talking about licensing issues? You act like I said I was going to make an RPG using sprites from Megaman and sell it.

The chances of someone suing you over using a font are incredibly slim, and it would make no financial sense for a business to do so. I'm not going to let fear of that stop me from using fonts which a font site says are in the public domain. There's no way to ever be sure anything you use is legal. Even if you buy a font, you don't know the people you bought it off of actually had a right to license it to you.

Anyway, I'm just gonna end up buying a font CD and be done with it, these font sites are a waste of time. They're charging as much for a font that takes a couple hours to produce as I charge for my texture generator which took two months to develop, and most of the websites are designed really badly making it hard to find what you want. Besides, I can't know if a font is really right for the game until I actually try it out, so I'd have to buy like five different fonts anyway to find the right one.

IndiePath: There's some nice fonts on that site but their "free" fonts aren't free for commercial use. Pity.

sswift: I get that it is "unlikely" (and I agree in the the most part) but I am careful, also with stock photos, to make sure they are totally free. Imagine your game became really big and someone played it and went "Sh*t, thats my Font/Photo/Sound" and it was integral to the look and feel of your product, they could get funny (or not depending on their mindset).

OKay, that's your view and I have to disagree with you. Just because a site hosting a file says that it public domain does not mean it is. It's like getting a .MOD file from a music site and assuming it's public domain because the licence does not say otherwise. If you want to ensure the stuff is legal then contact the author and get their permission.

Just make sure that when/if you licence your game to any portals/publishers that don't forget to tell them about the licence for the fonts, or sounds or images or whatever else was assumed to be okay to use.

@Big10p, I think those fonts are priced pretty well. He'll do you a nice deal if you are looking for a couple.

1001fonts.com have a lot of freeware fonts.

http://www.fontmesa.com/html/cactus_sandwich.htm

"It's like getting a .MOD file from a music site and assuming it's public domain because the licence does not say otherwise."

No, it's not at all like that.

In the case I specified, the site says the file is in the public domain.
In the case you specified the site says nothing about the file.

In my case, you might have a defense in court, and you could sue the website owner for putting the files up and saying they were public domain.
In your case, you would have no defemse.

My case is no different than buying fonts on a CD and using them. The maker of the CD could lie about where they came from. There is no way to verify it. You are just making the assumption that someone who is selling something is going to be more honest than someone who is giving stuff away for free.

I would never suggest someone grab random music files off the net and use them.


"Just make sure that when/if you licence your game to any portals/publishers that don't forget to tell them about the licence for the fonts, or sounds or images or whatever else was assumed to be okay to use."

Yeah, OKAY, I'll get riiiight on that.

I already said I was just gonna buy a font CD instead of wasting my time looking for this stuff. Sheesh.

PS:

I hope before you licence your game C'Bubble to any portals/publishers you don't forget to tell them that you didn't consult any expensive copyright, trademark, or patent attourneys to make sure that you're not treading on some other company's intellectual property!

*holds hands and dances around in a circle with everyone*

+BlackD

HA!

I just got back from Best Buy and I now hold in my hands a CD containing 4000 fonts by Snap! That's $80,000 worth of fonts by my reckoning. (Going by the current market price on font websites.)

And I got it for the low low bargain price of just $4.99, which by my calculations is just about 1 cent per 12.5 fonts.

Now to see if there's any good Western fonts on it!

hope they're categorised!

Yeah, I'm betting most of them come under the category of "Crap!". :P

Wow... These jerks ripped me off but good.

The Snap! 4000 Fonts CD doesn't have 4000 fonts, it has 500 fonts. Each font comes in both ttf and ps formats, and in normal, italic, bold, and bold italic versions. 2*4 = 8 * 500 = 4000. And those variations are comletely uncessessary because pretty much any graphics app can create those variations using any normal font.

Plus their font browing program on the CD won't even run unless you have a printer installed, which I don't, because I don't print anything. So I have to use my own font browser.

Here's another font site...

www.themeworld.com/fonts/index.shtml

It contains both free and commercial fonts IIRC.

As for quality, it's kinda hard to screw up a font, and there seem to be a few in here which look Western. 500 fonts is still a lot of fonts for $4.99, but I was @#!*ed that they promised me 4000 and only gave me 500. I wonder how many fonts the 1000 font CD by another company actually had.

You'd be surprised. I've seen some doozies(sp?). :)

Having a font with proper bold, italic etc. versions is a good thing. Apps just fake the effects as best they can - shearing for italic, etc. - and often don't/can't do a very good job of it.

I just gotta lol at that, after all the posts that was the best conclusion hehe

For a bunch of complete free fonts (including for commercial purposes), check out this site: http://www.aenigmafonts.com
Don't know about Western fonts, but they have some pretty good fonts in general on there.

Oooh, nice one xlsior! Bookmarked that baby. :)

Well I just went through the whole collection. The fonts are competently done, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of variation in style. Certainly not like some of the font sites I've seen with all sorts of crazy fonts. These are realtively standard as far as fonts go. But there were a few with a western feel, and I already had a couple in my collection that kinda worked. Maybe one of them will be suitable. I might also head back to Best Buy and pick up that other 1000 font CD and give that a try. It was $9.95 and says on the front that the fonts are quality, so maybe they're not liar heads like Snap! and will actually have 1000 fonts and some real variety in typefaces. I would have grabbed it when I was out before, but I thought there was no way that I could go through 4000 fonts and not find what I needed.

I picked up that other font CD from Best Buy, like I said I would... "1000 Best Fonts" by Cosmi.

This font CD cost $9.99 and contains exactly what it claims to, plus a bunch of dingbat fonts. The fonts on this CD are much more varied and interesting than those on the Snap CD. There were a ton of Western themed fonts.

So if you're looking for lots of good fonts cheap, this would be the CD to go for.

glad to hear you weren't conned a 2nd time.

font sent sswifty :)