As of 1.13-pre6, the vanilla game files no longer contain the old font file ascii.png, but use vector-based tff font files for the unicode characters instead. If resource packs still contain ascii.png though, the game will display chaotic font gibberish (see screenshot). Further information on how to apply the ttf files to a resource pack or problems with the SGA font (ascii_sga.png), see MC-132707.
Note:
I tried to find a way to properly convert my old ascii.png into a proper ttf file, tested different font editors and even played around with editing the vanilla seven.tff. It turned out to be really hard to even find a good (and free!) font editor or to create a font where the letter spacing is properly displayed in-game (really hard to get right), or don’t get blurry letters (every deviation from the default 7x5 pixel font blurs the lines and edges of the letters >>> MC-132736) … Minecraft really has some bad vector scaling.
In its current implementation, making new fonts appears to be a real pain in the butt. To fix this issue, it might be a good idea to still allow resource packs to optionally use the ascii.png instead of seven.ttf, or otherwise provide a tool to convert such png files into a ttf with proper letter spacing and scaling. Creating a new font for a resource pack should be a managable task even for less experienced resource pack creators.
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It would seem that bitmap fonts still work, ascii.png (main font) and ascii_sga.png (enchanting table text) but only for the original vanilla resolutions, this mean custom fonts but only at a low resolution.
Currently the Berylium font used in my pack (John Smith Legacy Resource Pack) is 4096x4096px, to scale that down to just 128x128px loses so much detail it's just not readable anymore.
Hopefully the scaling issue for the font will be fixed in the next pre-release.
Updated/corrected title and description to mention the new ttf font feature. Such things would be so much easier to figure out if Mojang would provide at least a tiny bit of information about such significant changes. If their documentation about resource pack changes would be as detailed as about the command syntax changes, it would save many people a lot of time and trouble ...
That new bug is looking exactly like what it was in good ol' days when HD font were not supported.
Please fix that (again)! 😉
After experimenting hours over hours with the new ttf system, all I can say so far is that it turned out to be a rather frustrating task to convert png based fonts to ttf. Any helpful ideas are welcome. Added some thoughts to the description of this issue, I would really prefer if Mojang could provide a managable solution to this issue, e.g. by allowing resource packs to still use the ascii.png or to provide a small conversion tool ...
I have managed to at least somewhat get my old ascii.png converted. Here are some problems I have found:
• Character spacing must be made at the front of the character. Minecraft currently ignores "Letter Width."
• No matter how 'high resolution' the font Minecraft will down-sample it and make it either look "blurry" or extremely pixelated, this is most prevalent when placing signs.
• There is no good way to convert a .png into a .ttf. I had to re create my entire font pixel by pixel and it still will not come out the same as it once did before 1.13pre-6.
My proposed solutions are as follows:
• Give players the option to disable the new "improved font" as it was stated on the latest patch notes. Personally I am for this option the most since I don't even prefer the new font over the old font. (In reference to default)
• Give players the ability to set the "resolution" of the custom font. Currently I have found that using a program called FontForge has allowed me to seamlessly change the size of my font, however this is not a working solution since Minecraft completely botches any custom .ttf.
• Fix players not being able to use custom resolution ascii.png files. This would be the easiest solution since we know Minecraft can still read from the file, the problem appears to be that Minecraft is unable to properly read higher resolutions ascii.png files.
So far that is all I have to add. I have created 3 different fonts ranging from small to large pixel sizes and have tried up-scaling and down-scaling these fonts in an effort to get Minecraft to read them properly. At this point I can only hope Mojang fixes these bugs because I give up on creating fonts, it has been a lot of work for no payoff.
This has been fixed in 1.13-pre7 by allowing resource packs to properly use ascii.png and other font texture files again. ttf files seem to be no longer used by the vanilla game either.
YES! Finally! I can go back to creating custom icons with chinese characters! =D
I love these fixes that are total surprises.
I believe there is a still a small error with the ascii/unicode files, and that is that 32x32 unicode files won't be displayed, leading to one of the related issues, MC-133179. I can create a different report, if that one doesn't describe the same thing, but I believe they are both caused by the same issue. MC-133179 could use some help in the description, maybe adding something about 32x32 unicode.
I have created a new report, which possibly relates to this issue. (MC-133372)
Also added the HD ascii.png of my resource pack, in case anyone needs it for testing.