k, my google-fu is failing me completely. What are the two fonts used in SSDs? I want to add the "Poor Crew" modifiers to some ships and I can't for the life of me figure out the fonts. General text is probably Geneva but the ship name text is destroying my will to live. It's Chicago-but-the-S-is-wrong (and the leading stroke of the M and N...), it could be Monaco but there are some differences there too...

Anyway, does anyone know what they are?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 08:22 am: Edit

There are three fonts used on SSDs.

1. Most is a modified Geneva I edited decades ago to make it more readable.

2. The letters/numbers inside boxes are a font I created myself called BOX in which every letter is an even number of pixels wide.

3. The title font is not Chicago. I don't really remember what the name is but I can maybe look it up on Steve Petrick's computers once I get to the office. (Send me an email if you want me to do that.) I think it may be Serpentine but gosh it's been years since I had anything to do with those.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 12:57 pm: Edit

When I edit SSDs I just copy and paste individual letters, and it is a pain.

Any chance of ADB making those fonts available (possibly for money)? I'm sure it would make it easier for people to create high quality submissions.

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 03:17 pm: Edit

k, email sent!

And Shawn's idea is good too, I have copies of all letters and boxes in bitmap format, but I'm a Linux Sysadmin - the thought of doing something by hand gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies.

Thanks Steve!

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Thursday, August 11, 2022 - 07:25 pm: Edit

So, that font you emailed me about, Steve, is from "Accessory Pak 1" by Silicon Beach Software for MacPaint(I think). Which was only available for a short time around 1984-90, when the company was bought. And then, THAT company was bought, by Adobe of all people, but they don't have the font on their site, it's loooong forgotten about. I couldn't even find an image of it! That's how long gone and dead it is!

I went through and compiled an exhaustive search of similar fonts:

Jefferies - probably the second best, though the A is wrong, and so is the S, but only slightly.

ChicagoFLF/BeijingSSi - Extremely close, X,S,M,N are wrong. (Beijing is a smaller version/clone)

Deusex - Eh. Not really close. Too condensed, A is wrong, S is wrong, stroke is too thick.

Closest is, like you suggested, Serpentine, though the A is sharp, not rounded and the X,M&N have secondary strokes that are too thin, but it's really, REALLY close otherwise.

Edit: with some clever switching of fonts, and even more clever kerning, using Serpentine and switching to Chicago/Beijing (for the A's) could probably pretty convincingly pull off the original.

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Thursday, August 11, 2022 - 08:18 pm: Edit

So, because I'm a massive design and font nerd, I also went through and found a bunch of fonts that, to me, 'feel' appropriate for SFB. All are available on fonts.google.com, for free, even commercial use:

Goldman
Oxanium
Share Tech
Sarpanch
Genos
Spline Sans
Gemunu Libre
Zen Dots
Glass Antiqua
Stalinist One
Play and
Durhjati

Some are more in-your-face than the rest, which are rather staid, tbh, but they all are pretty good for *something*.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Thursday, August 11, 2022 - 10:45 pm: Edit

I like Stalinist One. It has a Klingon feel to it.

Goldman and Oxanium have a nice Eurostile vibe to them. I use Eurostile for my custom F&E counter stickers.

I would wager Accessory Pak 1 was for SuperPaint, which was the SBS paint program. If the font in question was a standard Mac font (it almost certainly was) then it could have been used with any program. I'd also wager it was bitmapped only and there was no type-1 or type-3 scalable component.

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 11, 2022 - 11:32 pm: Edit

Ask me by email and I will send a jpg of the font.

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Friday, August 12, 2022 - 08:30 am: Edit

Sent! Thanks!

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Friday, August 12, 2022 - 01:30 pm: Edit

So, using the bitmaps I found online, I managed to not only piece together the font (just the basics: A-Z, 0-9, +-, nothing else) AAAAND...

it's now a TTF, not a bitmap! It's fully vectorized!

Font is named Silicone Beech in honor of the original and it's under the SIL Open Font license, so anyone can use it for any purpose whatsoever.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15AEjuTDTp7n6rpvYuR6BbSyN5qz3d_8t/view?usp=sharing

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Friday, August 12, 2022 - 01:56 pm: Edit

Congrats! Very impressive! I've downloaded a copy for myself....

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, August 12, 2022 - 02:07 pm: Edit

Then I don't need to send you a jpg?

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Friday, August 12, 2022 - 02:21 pm: Edit

Technically, no, the font will serve it's purpose of titling SSDs as is (it's missing parentheses, but one can work around that). But I'd still like it to get the rest of the glyphs. It's literally only capital letters, numbers and the plus/minus signs. :D

Edit: added bit about purpose

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Saturday, August 13, 2022 - 12:49 am: Edit

How about the Fonts used for weapon and movement charts?

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Saturday, August 13, 2022 - 12:56 am: Edit

Man, way to go!

By Hugh Bishop (Hugh62) on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 05:43 pm: Edit

does anyone know where the ssd and ship info for the Andromedan Kali class mauler is.

By R. Burgess (Ataraxzy) on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 06:52 pm: Edit

Probably C3A. Lemme check.

k, it was mentioned in P6 - Galactic Smorgasbord as possibly going into C3A, but it doesn't look like it made it in. It might be in one of the later CLs, but I don't have those.

Edit: it's not in G3 either, so I'm guessing it's not there. But you could build one easily enough, compare the Shiva to the Intruder and make the same changes to the Dominator, but more and bigger.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 07:13 pm: Edit

Hugh: Best I can remember that "scary ship" was based on the Dominator hull. The Shiva mauler (Intruder hull) shows up on pages 5&11 of Star Fleet Times #9 (1995). I remember seeing the Kali appear elsewhere later on, but before I lost access to an active group around 2001. Frankly the Shiva is scary enough, a max power strike would send 278 points through the mauler system....

It is not in C3A I just checked my PDF copy.

By Richard Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, August 14, 2022 - 07:31 pm: Edit

I think it was in the newsletter, not starletter, the later one (which I cannot remember the name of).

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Monday, August 15, 2022 - 02:38 pm: Edit

I have every Captain's Log, every in-print module, every Star Fleet Times, and the free Starletters and Hailing Frequencies SSDs. I do not have the Kali Mauler.

If it exists it must be in something other than those. Is it a Captain's Edition ship?

By Hugh Bishop (Hugh62) on Monday, August 15, 2022 - 04:00 pm: Edit

it is conjectural I thought it might be in R7 but can't find my copy

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Monday, August 15, 2022 - 04:04 pm: Edit

Andromedan ships in R7:
Dictator Dreadnought
Dominion Dreadnought
Demon Dreadnought
Demolisher Dreadnought

No Kali in R7.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Monday, August 15, 2022 - 04:25 pm: Edit

Shawn:

Yes, it was Captain's edition. It was a "Here, fineee..." upgrade of the Intruder-hulled Mauler to a Dominator hull, with as my 20 year old memories include a flat out refusal to even entertain a BB-hull Andro mauler. It'd basically be the closest anything in the SFU could get to angering not one but two major SciFi IP franchises. But that's what us Andro lovers crave, surprising unsuspecting fleets with the power of their fully operational battle stations.....

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Monday, August 15, 2022 - 05:52 pm: Edit

Shiva was published in Module R9 along with the CONQ mauler ...

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, August 15, 2022 - 08:49 pm: Edit

The Kali is a fan creation, I do not remember which one.