Hi all! I'm a pretty new player and have never posted on the forums before. I'm absolutely in love with the game and its visuals, but there's one thing that really bothers me: the font used for signs. A few minor background details first. I work in graphic design/print production, but my education was in game development, so I think I may have some valid insights here. If you will indulge me, I have some pretty simple ideas on how to solve my issues with this, as well as some ideas that go deeper.
Level 1: Allow signs to use a custom font
After creating a sign for the first time, I immediately began looking for mods that can swap out fonts. Unless I'm misunderstanding, VS uses a specific serif font used for the "fancier" UI elements that comes installed with the game. As for the rest of the UI, including all signs, signposts, chest labels, UI for parchment/books, etc., the game chooses a system default sans serif font. This is all well and good, and I appreciate both the accessibility issues, legal hurdles to including fonts, and localization reasons for this. However, I find that a standard, high-resolution sans serif font clashes aesthetically with both the low-resolution/pixel art textures and the game's general pre-industrial sensibilities.
I found both a mod that changes either of these two fonts in real time, and another mod specifically for signs that uses a JSON patch. There are issues with both mods. With the former, there is no way to specifically change the fonts used for in-game objects like signs. You either change the font used for the entire UI as well as these in-game objects, or you change neither. With the latter, it seems to only change specifically the standard signs and nothing else. I'm not sure if either of these issues are inherent to the game's structure or if they're the result of choices made for their respective mods. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to look into the modding process as of yet, so if anyone has further information on that, I would appreciate it.
All that said, a very simple change to allow users to select (a) custom font(s) used for in-game objects while leaving the game UI font unchanged would solve 99% of my issues.
But if there's one thing I love about Vintage Story, it's the dedication to depth and detail. So I had a few more ideas on how to spice up this aspect of the game, which I'm sure very few people care about besides myself
Level 2: More sophisticated text editing
This would be more useful for the writing system (more on that later), but a basic text editor could be a useful inclusion. Opening system fonts in real time is probably not the best idea, but maybe there could be at least some alignment and sizing options, if not the choice to swap between, say, the two usual in-game fonts and one other custom font, as mentioned in part 1.
Level 3: Thinking about cave paintings and a drawing system
Okay, now I'm beginning to stretch a bit, so bear with me. I think the "cave painting" system in the game is an incredible concept. I would love to see it extended to a more general pixel-by-pixel drawing system, so you could create more precise cave drawings, as well as draw on signs and in books. If possible, it would also be cool to be able to draw on objects that already have text on them, like drawing a warning symbol on a sign, illustrations in books, or some low-res ornamented capitals to create illuminated manuscripts.
Level 4: Ciphers, decryption, and printing presses, oh my!
I'll admit that this is orders of magnitudes outside of the scope of my initial suggestion, and surely more suitable for mods, but I couldn't help but think about how these basic features might develop into full-fledged subsystems of their own. With a drawing system in place, it could be theoretically possible to allow players to essentially create their own fonts. The process would be something like this:
1. Create drawings, each of predetermined sizes, that correspond to the keys used in the writing/sign interfaces. This would be essentially creating a custom typeface, but could also be considered a type of cipher.
2. Compile the drawings into a codex. A codex would allow any player access to the "cipher" (custom font) when writing anything. These, unlike the aforementioned custom fonts chosen from the system, could even potentially be stored server-side (again, I don't know the technical limitations here, so I could very well be wrong). This would allow players to develop their own writing systems, which could have its uses for PVP or at the very least RP.
3. This could also be done in reverse in a sort of archaeology system, using fragmented lore books or even things like pottery to piece together the meaning of symbols, eventually letting you "translate" certain lore books into a standard font, or even use the cipher yourself. These could also be procedurally generated to some extent. I know this may conflict with some of the "real world"-related lore -- as mentioned, I'm fairly new to the game, so a lot of the lore is still pretty unclear to me.
4. Codices could be used to create movable type and printing presses. I'm not sure exactly how this would be balanced or "worthwhile" outside of, again, RP reasons, but I can't help but think about things like this given VS's frequent references to historical production methods. Movable type, historically, was created using a lead-tin-antimony alloy, and VS has no shortage of medieval/renaissance-style machinery. Perhaps some time cost could be added to copying books by hand, meaning mass distribution would be out of reach without this technology. The uses for multiplayer are maybe a bit more justifiable here.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this far! I feel that my baseline suggestion is pretty reasonable, and I hope that the rest of my thoughts were of some entertainment to you.
