TFX / type and lettering
Inside the fonts
Fourteen sets of lettering, from the tiny HUD readouts to the briefing headings. Choose a font, type a sample, or inspect every byte the original writers accept.
Original pixels
Portable font
Pixel outlines at an integer scale. Native text layout quirks are described below.
Character table
Select a cell for its mapping, advance and source offset. Labels use CP437 to identify byte values; the glyphs can have different meanings. An alias repeats another byte’s image and advance.
— blank or space · ↩ terminates text · · skipped by the writer · × unavailable original glyph
How the lettering is stored
Most presentation styles and the miniature HUD font use packed one-bit bitmap records. Two presentation styles and the driver font keep their rows in separate 64-character tables. The widget font adds a 256-byte lookup to 115 physical glyphs. Cockpit readouts use a coloured, four-plane sprite bank.
The custom maps matter. Several writers ignore the upper two bits of a character; some stop at bytes other than NUL. The HUD’s question-mark byte selects an A. Presentation style 6 has a separate extended bank for translated text, while the widget font supports mixed case and accents. We retain missing entries and aliases explicitly.
Using the modern fonts
Each set has a TrueType file and a WOFF2 web font. These are square pixel outlines, with the recovered advances and bearings. At 16 pixels, one source pixel occupies one screen pixel; use integer multiples for crisp enlargement. The font names are descriptive labels for this investigation.
Printable byte values have CP437 Unicode aliases for convenient typing. For an exact source byte, use U+E000 + byte; for a physical bank slot, use U+E100 + slot. These are custom fonts, with the original aliases and gaps. They are not complete Unicode alphabets. Missing and terminating bytes have no exported glyph.
A font file does not reproduce string termination, top-edge clipping, palette changes or every original spacing rule. In particular, presentation style 1 shortens a following capital I, and native width helpers can disagree with drawing. The cockpit font’s Coverage companion includes the background writes; its normal export contains the visible lettering.
Read the format and verification notes · Native renderer checks · Decoded tables · Web-font stylesheet