Squared Font vs. Rounded Font

[blainelocklair]

Hello, everyone!

 

Quick question about text fonts. I am starting to notice details in games that I never noticed before, which is a good thing. For example, I noticed in Astrosmash! that the rocks don't just disappear when they are shot; they have an animation, which we covered in a recent topic. I also noticed that there is a difference in the styles of fonts that are output on the title screens between the IntyBASIC SDK title screen and the original Mattel screens. The Mattel screens used very blocky fonts, while the IntyBASIC SDK uses a more rounded (maybe like a Sans Serif) type of font.

 

Is that defined in IntyBASIC, in the SDK, or in constants.bas somewhere? I know there are some font changer .bas files included, but none of the title screen code seems to use one of them, unless I missed it. Is there a way to get that "old" style of blocky text back for use on certain projects?

 

Thanks!
Blaine

 

 

[+nanochess]

It's because jzintv comes with a grom.bin and exec.bin (named miniexec.bin) designed to not infringe copyrights.

 

But you can search and download these files from several ROM sites in Internet.

[blainelocklair]

Yes! That's it. I tried it with the original exec and grom files and the two match. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

Two quick notes:

 

1. I don't want to violate any copyrights. I don't want any money or glory for making IntyBASIC stuff. Just want to have fun and contribute to our beloved consoles and hobby.

2. Every time a question like this gets answered, it gets cataloged in Google. That'll make it easier on folks in the future looking for the answers. Good stuff.

 

Thanks!
Blaine

 

PS: 3. At least you know a noob is still out there learning this stuff, which has to be good for the Intelly as a whole.

[+DZ-Jay]

Like nanochess said, the SDK includes a version of the GROM and EXEC ROMs (called "minigrom" and "miniexec") which are designed to be non-infringing. This is the reason we feel confident to publish the library freely. Intellivision Productions, Inc. owns all trademarks and copyrights related to the Mattel Intellivision, including the logos and the fonts.

 

IntyBASIC bypasses all that by not including including any ROMs and letting the user fend off by himself looking for their own copies which let's face it, is most likely going to be an infringing copy because that's what's out there. The IntyBASIC SDK is designed to be user-friendly and self-contained, but also to respect the copyrights and trademarks of others, so we use those the non-infringing ROMs provided by the SDK-1600 created by Joe Zbiciak.

 

I personally recommend people use the provided ROMs when building their projects. They can always test on the console to see how it would look there. Functionally, it should all work as expected.

 

Since home-brewed games bypass completely the EXEC, the minimal version in the "miniexec.bin" file should work for all IntyBASIC projects. If something fails, people are encouraged to report it so that it can be addressed.

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

Fonts aren't actually protected by copyright. Postscipt and truetype font files are because there is code in the file that defines how to draw the font. The intellivision grom has the font graphics but also some unrelated exec code. I know there is some exec data in there and I assume some program code that is protected by copyright but I'm not sure.

[+DZ-Jay]

Fonts aren't actually protected by copyright. Postscipt and truetype font files are because there is code in the file that defines how to draw the font. The intellivision grom has the font graphics but also some unrelated exec code. I know there is some exec data in there and I assume some program code that is protected by copyright but I'm not sure.

 

Good to know. Perhaps it warrants a quick question to the Intellivision Productions, Inc. guys if they would be amenable to letting home-brewers share a version of GROM which contains only the character ROM and not any additional EXEC code.

 

-dZ.

[carlsson]

It won't work unless Intellivision Entertainment (who will have all the IP by the end of this year) limits the use of GROM to users in the USA.

 

While it is true that under the 1976 Copyright Act (US), bitmap representations of typefaces (i.e. what we here call fonts) can not be copyrighted, the copyright laws in e.g. Germany and the UK are different and the same bitmapped fonts may be under copyright. Perhaps it also requires Intellivision Entertainment to have offices and business in those countries in order for them to file for copyright, I'm not sure but to be certain, best leave it as it is unless IE decides to share part of their newly acquired IP as open source. While they probably would not want to give away binary contents of the old games they're trying to sell again, they might be willing as a community effort to release the GROM content as open source.

 

Read more here if you're concerned:

https://www.crowdspring.com/blog/font-law-licensing/