Give your UI a facelift: replacing the CoH fonts with your own

[GM Capocollo]

The City of Heroes client has a very clever way of letting players non-destructively modify their client files without worrying about accidentally overwriting anything important or needing to redownload files to return to the default.  Every texture, model, sound and resource is located somewhere in the file system of the .pigg archives, but if you create a folder named data in the root of your CoH installation folder, the client will use any files it finds there instead of the correspondingly-named ones in the .piggs.

 

One consequence of this is that it's easy to replace the UI fonts to something you prefer, whether you want something more compact, something more stylish, or something easier to read.

 

Warning: client modifications like this are done at your own risk, and we can't provide support for any problems caused by file replacements like this.  However, if you are unhappy with the results or it causes the client to misbehave or hang, just quit the game and delete the files from the data folder.

 

In the .pigg files, the important font file names are:

• fonts/mont_demibold.ttf, Montreal Demibold, the main UI font for almost everything
• fonts/mont_bold.ttf, Montreal Bold, used in some places like the Mission Architect editor
• fonts/mont_hvbold.ttf, Montreal Heavy Bold, same
• fonts/Paragon City Italic.ttf, Red Circle Italic, the floating combat text font and the font for headers in places like the Options UI and the character info pane
• fonts/redcircl.ttf, Red Circle Regular, the non-italic version of same
• fonts/gothicb.ttf, Century Gothic Bold, which looks a lot like Montreal Demibold but some UI elements use it instead, for reasons I don't know

(There are some additional fonts that I assume are used for minor UI elements, as fallbacks if a regular font is unavailable for some reason, for the defunct Korean version of the client, and other minor things, but the six fonts above cover almost everything you'll see in the UI.)

 

To replace one of these fonts with your own:

• Close the game client.
• Make a folder named data in your CoH install location.  (You might already have a data folder if you have VidiotMaps, or have done any sound or texture replacements.)
• Inside that folder, make a fonts folder.
• Choose a Truetype (.ttf) font and copy it into the fonts folder.  Rename it to match the name of the font that you want to replace.  For example, if you want to use Comic Sans as your floating combat text font, rename comic.ttf to Paragon City Italic.ttf.

 

The next time you launch the client, the font you've chosen should now appear in place of the stock font.  For example, I replaced the Montreal fonts with Claredon fonts, and Paragon City Italic/Red Circle with Big Noodle Too, and here is the result at the login screen.

 

Again, if you're unhappy with the results or just want to return to default, undo this change by deleting the individual font files, or the fonts folder if you want to remove all font swaps.

Edited September 21, 2019 by GM Capocollo
fixed formatting from old forums migration

[justicebeliever]

I love that you guys (GM’s) have as tips and tricks

 

+1 Inf

[Nimruht]

Is there a way to increase the font size for windows other then the chat window? I have trouble seeing the text for options & the AH. I would like to increase the size.

[WanderingAries]

I'd like to point this older post out as well.

[Tanks]

Thanks for this tip, it revitalized the game with just this one font change.

Bangers-Regular.ttf

[SiliconAria]

Which font filename is used for overhead chat bubbles?

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it via replacing the most likely candidates by eyeballing a comparison. Turns out it's either Tahoma or Verdana, but I changed them both at once so I don't know for sure which.

 

Edited May 13, 2021 by SiliconAria

[godslayer]

I don't suppose there is a way to change the font style in chat I am sending out to others.

 

For example, for a monster-themed character, use a horror ttf font style to change the text others read when I send it out.

[Avernal]

On 5/31/2021 at 10:49 AM, godslayer said:

I don't suppose there is a way to change the font style in chat I am sending out to others.

 

For example, for a monster-themed character, use a horror ttf font style to change the text others read when I send it out.

No, the changes affect what you see in your client only, it looks the same as normal for everyone else.

[Herotu]

I'm having a great time with this! Thanks GM Capocollo!
My favourite so far is using

Heroes Legend font, which you can get here, free: https://www.dafont.com/heroes-legend.font (non-hollow version)

for redcircl.ttf

I think it looks great in combat, though in some instances it's a little large. I can live with that 🙂

Edited December 5, 2022 by Herotu

[Herotu]

On 12/5/2022 at 8:15 PM, Herotu said:

I'm having a great time with this! Thanks GM Capocollo!
My favourite so far is using

Heroes Legend font, which you can get here, free: https://www.dafont.com/heroes-legend.font (non-hollow version)

for redcircl.ttf

I think it looks great in combat, though in some instances it's a little large. I can live with that 🙂

These fonts are now available as mods!

Smaller font : "Font_Readable_Exo"

Large font : "Font_Large_Comic_Book"

or you can pick them up here manually: https://mods.cityofheroes.dev/
Large font: https://mods.cityofheroes.dev/modView.php?id=216

Smaller font: https://mods.cityofheroes.dev/modView.php?id=215

Edited May 28, 2023 by Herotu

[mechahamham]

I spent an afternoon experimenting with subbing in different font files and have made the following observations:

 

Paragon City Italic... I can't see that this is actually used for anything? Maybe just a clone of redcircl?

redcircl - Account Name and Password labels, Settings button, Select a Server label, character names on select screen, combat text floaters including damage and heal numbers, level number on HP bar

gothicb - account name and password fields, Exit and Login buttons, Back to Login button, server names, character AT/Powerset/LastPlayed on select screen

mont_bold - zone name on loading screen

mont_demibold - license text, button toolips, most UI elements including buttons, menus, neighborhood names, and chat text

mont_hvbold - status text (Hidden, Held, Taunted, etc...), character placards above heads including titles, names, badge titles, SG

verdana - chat balloons

Font Considerations:

 

When picking fonts, you want to consider what's important to you: Readability, aesthetics, etc. Red Circle is not terribly readable and is used almost solely for aesthetic reasons. Montreal is better, but has really crummy character differentiation between look-alikes such as 1, i, l, 0, o, or O. If you invite team members by typing their names, this can cause problems. If you invite them solely by clicking their names in chat, it's less so.

 

A significant number of players use 'look-alike' characters to make trick chat names. This ranges from idiocy like copyrighted characters ala 'WoIverine' to more creative examples, like using 1s, is, and ls to make barcodes. If you change the font you see character names in, you're going to see some of these break.

 

The CoH client has pretty awful font configuration. You can only indirectly work with font sizes via UI scaling and the 'chat font size' slider, which has huge jumps. In many cases, you're stuck with the sizes the client chooses for you and the metrics built into fonts. This means one font might appear significantly smaller (and therefore less readable) than another in CoH, even though their sizes are more similar in any other application.

 

Some of the most 'impactful' aesthetic fonts are fixed-width, meaning each glyph is exactly the same width, even comparing characters like W and I. Be prepared for text to slide off the right of your screen if you use these.

 

I, personally, do NOT like serif fonts (fonts with tags on the ends of character strokes). YMMV.

 

TTF (True-type Font) and OTF (OpenType Font) are very similar, but not identical formats. So far I've found that CoH handles all .otf fonts I've thrown at it if I rename them to .ttf

 

Fonts I've found that work well or are noteworthy:

 

Raleway - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway

This is a particularly good chat font, with great differentiation.

 

Rowdies - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rowdies

This is an nice, impactful bold font that's a good choice for your floaters (i.e: redcircl.ttf) It looks like a million bucks when you see 'Critical' or 'Assassin Strike' floaters.

 

The Magnificent Girl - https://www.fontspace.com/the-magnificent-girl-font-f79686

Another aesthetic font. The metrics don't play quite as nicely as the others, but it looks awesome on the character select screen.

 

Gamegirl Classic - https://www.fontspace.com/gamegirl-classic-font-f3331

This is one of those fixed-width aesthetic fonts. It looks great in floaters, but not so hot on, say, the consignment screen.

 

Dosis - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Dosis

This is wonderful for differentiation, and scales very well if you use the chat font size slider or use /uiscale. At its default size, it's a bit hard for my worsening vision, though.

Edited July 8, 2023 by mechahamham
Addendum