SCIOTF

A small utility to convert Sierra On-Line Adventure Game pixel fonts into OpenType fonts that your computer can use.

Basic Usage

The basic mapper will map the ASCII range of characters:

npx @4bitlabs/sciotf otf -r /path/to/sci/game 0

If the source files can be found, this will create file sciAC-font-000.otf, which you can install the normal ways that you install fonts on your operating system.

By default, it will scale the fonts to match the original aspect-ratio of the EGA video mode of the source, to get square-pixel versions use the --apsect-ratio argument.

npx @4bitlabs/sciotf otf -r /path/to/sci/game 0 --aspect-ratio 1:1

This will create sciPX-font-000.otf which ignores aspect-ratio correction, will map to display pixels with a when antialiasing is off and where font-size of multiples of 16px.

Aspect Ratio Correction

The EGA modes that these fonts were originally displayed on did not have square 1∶1 aspect-ratio pixels, instead had a display aspect-ratio of 1∶1.2 (or the closest integer scaling of 5∶6).

• SciAC prefixed fonts are "aspect-ratio correct"
• SciPX prefixed fonts are "square-pixel fonts"

How to know what fonts exist?

You can use scibud to list the available fonts.

npx @4bitlabs/scibud -r /path/to/sci/game font list

Advanced Usage

To map characters outside of the "standard" ASCII range, you will want to use the advanced option. This will let you map any character input to any unicode codepoint output. It also supports generating fonts from multiple sources. Often, due to file-space limitations of the day, not every glyph was included in every packaged release, or special glyphs were included for game specific assets.

For example FONT.000 is almost always found in Sierra releases. However, for Space Quest 3, there were several glyphs that were only included for it: a standard roman-numeral III and a Space Quest specific one. You can use the advanced option to create a font that includes both:

{
  "name": "FONT.000",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "sources": [
    {
      "type": "source",
      "root": "/path/to/kq4sci-demo",
      "id": 0,
      "mappings": [
        "ascii",
        ["04", "00a9", "copyright sign"],
        ["05", "2122", "trademark symbol"],
        ["0a", "2163", "roman numeral four"],
        ["0b", "2642", "male symbol"],
        ["0c", "2640", "female symbol"],
        ["0d", "266a", "eighth note"],
        ["0e", "266c", "beamed 16th note"],

        ["10", "25b6", "black right-pointing triangle"],
        ["11", "25c2", "black left-pointing triangle"],
        ["1e", "25b2", "black left-pointing triangle"],
        ["1f", "25bc", "black left-pointing triangle"],

        ["18", "2191", "up-pointing arrow"],
        ["19", "2193", "down-pointing arrow"],
        ["1a", "2192", "right-pointing arrow"],
        ["1b", "2190", "left-pointing arrow"],
        ["12", "2195", "vertical-pointing arrow"],
        ["1d", "2194", "horizontal-pointing arrow"],
        ["16", "25ac", "black rectangle"],
        ["17", "21a8", "up down arrow with base"],

        ["01", "26f0", "mountain"],
        ["13", "203c", "double exclamation mark"],
        ["14", "00b6", "pilcrow sign"],
        ["15", "00a7", "section sign"],
        ["1c", "221f", "right angle"],
        ["0f", "263c", "solar symbol"],
        ["03", "2388", "helm symbol"],
        ["02", "2387", "alternative key symbol"],
        ["08", "232b", "erase to the left"],
        ["09", "2b7e", "horizontal tab key"]
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "source",
      "root": "/path/to/sq3-demo",
      "id": 0,
      "mappings": [
        ["0c", "2162", "roman numeral three"],
        ["0b", "E000", "space quest three"]
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Freely Available Sierra Fonts from Demo Releases

FONT.000

• Codename: ICEMAN Demo
• Colonel's Bequest Demo
• Conquests of Camelot Demo
• King's Quest 1 (1990) Demo
• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry II Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry III Demo
• Police Quest II Demo
• Quest for Glory I Demo
• Quest for Glory II Demo

Alternates

Space Quest 3 Demo includes an alternate version of FONT.000. This version excludes ♂ and ♀ symbols from FONT.000 and replaces them with two Ⅲ symbols. Also changes some spacing.

FONT.001

• Codename: ICEMAN Demo
• Colonel's Bequest Demo
• Conquests of Camelot Demo
• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry II Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry III Demo
• Police Quest II Demo
• Quest for Glory I Demo
• Quest for Glory II Demo
• Space Quest III Demo

FONT.002

• King's Quest IV SCI Demo

FONT.003

• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Space Quest III Demo

FONT.004

• Colonel's Bequest Demo
• King's Quest 1 (1990) Demo
• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry II Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry III Demo
• Police Quest II Demo
• Quest for Glory II Demo
• Space Quest III Demo

FONT.007

• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Police Quest II Demo

FONT.008

• Colonel's Bequest Demo
• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Quest for Glory I Demo

FONT.009

• Leisure Suit Larry III Demo

FONT.040

• Colonel's Bequest Demo

FONT.041

• Colonel's Bequest Demo

FONT.100

• King's Quest IV SCI Demo

Codename: ICEMAN Demo also includes a FONT.100 but it doesn't look like the one from KQ4. It only includes upper-case characters, and looks like a worse version of FONT.600 from the Space Quest 3 Demo. Use that instead.

FONT.101

• King's Quest IV SCI Demo

FONT.200

• Space Quest III Demo

FONT.300

• King's Quest 1 (1990) Demo
• Space Quest III Demo

FONT.600

• Space Quest III Demo

FONT.601

0 Space Quest III Demo

FONT.999

• Codename: ICEMAN Demo
• Conquests of Camelot Demo
• King's Quest 1 (1990) Demo
• King's Quest IV SCI Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry II Demo
• Leisure Suit Larry III Demo
• Police Quest II Demo
• Quest for Glory I Demo
• Quest for Glory II Demo
• Space Quest III Demo