Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

Can anyone help me identify this font from the original HL1 menus?
(I don't have access to HL1 goldsrc files to investigate the files further)

Running on memory here and might be wrong, but either Helvetica Neue or Verdana? Out of curiosity, how come?

EDIT: This old post suggests it might actually, totally, in fact, possibly, maybe be Verdana?

https://twhl.info/thread/view/18325?page=1#post-313085

Post:

"snip

I just nearly posted the Source way of doing it. Time to start reading what section people post in.

Anyway, time for the Goldsource way:

You need to find C://...steamapps/<name>/half-life/resource/ClientScheme.res and open it with notepad. Then you can find a few sections like, for example:
"MenuLarge"
{
"1"
{
"name" "Verdana"
"tall" "18"
"weight" "1000"
"antialias" "0"
}
}
NOTE: This example is the title text font.

And replace Verdana with whatever you want. TrueType font is recommended as I'm not sure with GoldSrc whether or not they need to be. Also not sure if GoldSrc needs to precache fonts."

Hope this helps.

Ooooo! awesome find, thank you!!
Verdana is definitely a close fit. The tail on the lower case t seems too long maybe? But that might be a difference in font version or lack of anti-aliasing in my reference material.

• Do you have access to ClientScheme.res I can't find much of it online?
• Is ClientScheme.res definitely an original HL1 file?

(The references I can find, seem to be referring to Source unless Valve just kept the file and format from HL1 to 2?)

Why am i asking:
Posterity mostly... I'm attempting to document some detailed info about the typography and UI from the series. Inspired by this sort of post.

But I'm actually finding it hard to track down reliable info about the original-original menu-screen because after it was ported to Steam and Source things get a bit blurry.

However thanks to you I've also found SourceScheme.res which is going to be helpful for HL2 stuff!

For anyone following along:

I've managed to get my hands on a copy of HL1 (game of the year edition).

`ClientScheme.res` never appears in the installation directory or on the disc. But there is a file called `GameUIScheme.res` which contains the same style of code:

Code: Select all

   // describes all the fonts
   Fonts
   {
      "Default"
      {
         "name"      "Tahoma"
         "tall"      "16"
         "weight"   "500"
      }

      "DefaultUnderline"
      {
         "name"      "Tahoma"
         "tall"      "16"
         "weight"   "500"
         "underline" "1"
      }

      "DefaultSmall"
      {
         "name"      "Tahoma"
         "tall"      "13"
         "weight"   "0"
      }

      "DefaultVerySmall"
      {
         "name"      "Tahoma"
         "tall"      "12"
         "weight"   "0"
      }

      // this is the symbol font
      "Marlett"
      {
         "name"      "Marlett"
         "tall"      "14"
         "weight"   "0"
      }
   }


However, this feels like a red herring to me because even if I change the values in this file it has no impact on the game menu, so I'm not sure what it's for? -- That said, the font could still be Tahoma, im going to explore that a bit more.

I did find that the main-menu fonts are saved as a sprite-sheet bitmap:
`Half-Life\valve\gfx\shell\btns_main.bmp`

^that one is easily identifiable as Trebuchet Bold

I found a `fonts.wad` file. But I can't export it's contents cause i get this error:

Code: Select all

FONT0.bmp (Error: Error reading lump: lump type 0x46 not supported.)

Anybody know much about that?

And in `Half-Life\valve\gfx\vgui\fonts` there are a bunch of tga files which seem to represent in-game fonts rendered as bitmaps for the various supported resolutions: `1024_Scoreboard Small Text.tga` and I'm also not sure where they are used in game either? Maybe multiplayer given the filename.