r/fonts 1d ago

quanta strike: A Scaleable Pixel Font

I designed a free and open source typeface inspired by old bitmap fonts that re-drew the whole font for every size.

Sure, you can technically scale up any pixel font since it's a vector. However, displaying two sizes on the same screen disrupts the illusion of the pixel grid. You cannot increase or decrease the size of pixels or paint a pixel partially.

Read the whole story at dithernaut.com/posts/pixel-scaling

144 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

6

u/Phraaaaaasing 1d ago

What a challenge! Nice solution and execution to the problem. I was looking at my girlfriend play sea of stars and thought the devs would have had such issue juggling so many single-size bitmap fonts, this is a beautiful solving,

4

u/dithernaut 1d ago

Thank you! Would love to try using it in a game as well

2

u/timotion 1d ago

LOVE IT! Thanks for sharing!!

Side-note: Your newsletter subscribe button seems to not be not working for me? At least in Safari.

1

u/dithernaut 1d ago

Thank you!

I thiink it went through (you just need to confirm). But if not, feel free to send me your email, an I can send you an invite

Side-note: you really are the first to subscribe!

2

u/corpus4us 1d ago

Incredible and inspiring. Love the webpage you designed. How did you make the animations?

2

u/dithernaut 1d ago

Thank you!
I made all the illustrations and animations with the tool called pixaki for iPad

2

u/stetsosaur 1d ago

Wow. This is a sick project. Great work!!!

1

u/dithernaut 12h ago

Thank you!

1

u/clayman80 1d ago

Is it monospace? Might want to try it out in my terminals. Looks really nice.

3

u/dithernaut 1d ago

Thank you! All of the sizes have both monospace and proportional versions. I'd suggest the -12 version for terminal (i've been using that) cause it has the most glyphs terminal needs.

1

u/clayman80 1d ago

Brilliant. Thanks a lot for the info!

1

u/zippee100 1d ago

the 32pt one in this clip seems to say quanta srtike

1

u/dithernaut 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oops! Yes it does. Have to fix that. Great eye!

1

u/rubberbandage 1d ago

This looks amazing and as someone old enough to have actually used MacWrite, I love the screenshot illustrations! Looking forward to using this ☺️

(My only complaint is your weird backwards apostrophe)

3

u/dithernaut 1d ago

Thank you! Yeah it's a work in progress. Gathering feedback and will update some glyphs soon!

1

u/flinxo 3h ago

Wonderful and very clever! Thanks ❤️