Is there a font for typing move lists? If not, any interest if I make one?

I was going to make a movelist label to go with the Primal Rage JAMMA board I just bought. Pasting arrow graphics is getting tedious. Surprised that I can't find an existing font. Anyone know of one?

Sure there's dingbat fonts that include arrows, but I was thinking of making a font that includes directions and simple button graphics that could cover many consoles. It's been a few years since I last made a font, but I think Opentype ligatures will let it type a diagonal arrow if you type "DR".

MAKE IT!!!!
Would be awesome to at least have the arrows
Make our own move sets for the iPhone or tablets so we can access them on the fly right on the cabs?

14, I hate when people use 10 or lower.

Unicode already has codepoints for a whole mess of arrows, if that helps.
↖↑↗
← →
↙↓↘
↺⟳↻ ↪⟲↩
⤶ ⤷ ⤾ ⤿
↶ ↷ ↯
↰ ↱ ↲ ↳ ⬎ ⬏ ⬐ ⬑
⤻ ⤸ ⤺ ⤹

Are you guys confusing font for typeface?

Sorry, guys. I pulled this up Monday evening and didn't see any responses for some reason.

Yes, it would be a typeface. If I say that to most non-designers it gets confusing. Ideally I'd have several fonts within it with different style arrows or maybe tailored to specific games.

I already have several styles of arrows drawn. I'm trying to get something that looks good at large sizes and will be legible at small sizes for long lists. The other debate is what letters to map everything to. U,D,L,R seem natural and would easily adapt already-typed lists (which I definitely want to do), but then Neo-geo has a button D. Also debating if I should include a QCF character, or just rely on D,DR,R to show it. A QCF graphic probably wouldn't work well at small sizes, but it should probably be included for flexibility. Same goes for a punch and kick graphic.

Any preferences or requests?

Vampire Savior JP Saturn Booklet shows a really neat way to make movesets. That's the template I've used in the past for custom move sets.

In terms of ease-of-input, 1-9 via the numeric keypad may be your best option for standard directions. (1 for and so on.)
Single characters for particular movements such as and would probably be useful, as - if they're easily recognizable - it would cut-down on how much time a player would spend reading and parsing a move-list.

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From an interoperability stand point, I would kinda like to see the characters themselves mapped - where possible - to relevant codepoints in Unicode, such as some of the arrow characters from my previous post. This would, however, mean that a separate solution would need to be found to enable easy typing of the characters.

I have, in the past, used the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to design custom keyboard setups which afforded me access to whatever random characters I wanted, such as Greek letters used in maths, or the old IBM box-drawing glyphs. But requiring folks to install a whole new keyboard layout just to type-up a move list is probably not the best way to go about this.

What about a simple text converter webpage? Enter your movelist in a large text field, surround the commands themselves with some sort of block-markers such as square brackets, hit submit and a script picks out the command blocks and translates the easy-to-type inputs into whichever fancy codepoints we want, ready to be copy-pasted into the application of your choice.

Or maybe I'm a fool, and it'd just be easier all around to map the command glyphs direct to easy-to-type ASCII characters.

You could call it - Arcon?

Electricgrave-I just looked it up. Is that a vote for 'move arrows'? There'll definitely be a clean plus sign and P and K button graphics.

WNIvek-I'm currently looking into the technical side of things. I need to look up if the numpad keys are separate characters from the regular number keys. Don't know if I could map them differently or use SHIFT with them. Don't know about Win 8 or 10, but I think SHIFT is the only modifier allowed for typing without using Alt-codes which I definitely don't want to do. As a designer I'm used to Macs which give you more modifier keys which make things a bit easier.

Neodog-The working title is just MOVELIST. It's simple enough to convey what it's generally used for. I've considered calling it something like SECRET CODE, but I think movelists would be the more common use and would allow people looking for it online to find it easier.

Here's a few explorations of what some of the characters could look like. Basically, these are just thumbnail sketches in Illustrator. Started realizing that a lot of it was looking like highway signage, but that's because it's also designed to convey information easily and quickly. Right now I'm favoring the top-right arrows. I like having arrows that are proportionally square. That way the verticals and horizontals look much more uniform. That fist needs some serious work. The bottom-left arrow looks like Raiden if he were in a 7800 game. The button diagrams on the bottom row are for Primal Rage. Since it has the 'Hold in these buttons and then do a movement" controls, it's quicker to read. It's how Atari originally showed them on the arcade bezel graphics.

Crowquill said:

WNIvek-I'm currently looking into the technical side of things. I need to look up if the numpad keys are separate characters from the regular number keys. Don't know if I could map them differently or use SHIFT with them. Don't know about Win 8 or 10, but I think SHIFT is the only modifier allowed for typing without using Alt-codes which I definitely don't want to do. As a designer I'm used to Macs which give you more modifier keys which make things a bit easier.

Click to expand...

Yeah, if we're sticking to standard keyboard layouts, then shift is the only modifier you can really rely on, and at least on my machine, shift+numpad acts as if you were hitting the cursor-keys, pgup/pgdn, home and end, none of which typically result in a character being typed. If we're talking about a single set of arrows, you could just assign those to 1-9, but if you wanted some sort of meaningful alternative version accessible via the shift key, you'd probably wanna find some other place for them on the keyboard.

If we are in the realm of custom keyboard layouts, I don't know what sort of options exist in the Mac world, but the layout creator software that MS makes available for Windows allows you to set up some pretty significant sets of modifiers (shift, ctrl, alt, and combinations there-of; I believe 'alt-gr' is treated as alt+ctrl), plus 'dead keys' which don't enter anything until the next key is pressed, potentially modifying their output.

If we're talking about a script to turn easily-typed strings into whichever codepoints we like, then it should be relatively easy to turn anything into a 'modifier' by looking for prefixes/affixes.

GohanX said:

Click to expand...

Wow that is so cool!

He'll never forget how to (not) shoryuken again.

kuze said:

Wow that is so cool!

He'll never forget how to (not) shoryuken again.

Click to expand...

If he lets his arm hang down instead of resting horizontally, it shows ; perfect for player 2.

WNivek said:

If he lets his arm hang down instead of resting horizontally, it shows ; perfect for player 2.

Click to expand...

Hey man, pause the game! I need to read your arm.

Spent a bit of time getting the font together and working this weekend. I've got it to the point I could start typing up some moves for Primal Rage in Illustrator. Once again, these are a little unusual just as the original controls for PR are. You have to hold in the correct buttons, THEN enter in the directionals.

It may take me a little while to get the whole thing done. To avoid any legal difficulties I need to draw all the button letters out instead of using an existing font. Not necessarily that difficult, but a little time-consuming. Especially when I want to be a perfectionist.

Attached is a PNG at 300% and for those who really want to zoom in, a PDF. If anyone is wondering, the text is in Abadi MT Condensed Regular and Bold.

I'll start another thread to announce it once there's a preliminary version everybody can try out. Hope to have that done by next weekend.

this is looking pretty good Crowquill. Looking forward to the finished font!