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Typeface: Dicier

an advanced and accessible analog games typeface! · By Speak the Sky

Request a Feature Sticky

A topic by Speak the Sky created Jan 31, 2021 Views: 1,518 Replies: 55
Viewing posts 1 to 15
Developer (13 edits) (+9)

IMPORTANT: Dicier is available under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0). You're free to edit the font yourself as long as you follow the license terms (see the main page or user guide for the specific terms for Dicier).

AND ALSO: While I'll fix problems with the typeface pretty quickly, I'll be adding new features on my own schedule, and may also temporarily or permanently close feature requests. New features will probably also be added in groups rather than piece by piece. I'm more likely to add something to my to-do list if:

  1. it seems like more people would use it,
  2. it's easy to do, and/or
  3. I think it's interesting.

----------

To request a feature, post in this thread explaining what you want added to the font. Examples of features you might request:

  1. new randomisers
  2. new codes/ligatures for existing glyphs (like how 'NOUGHT', 'RING', and 'CIRCLE' all produce the same glyph)
  3. new styles for existing randomisers
  4. technical features

To report issues or request fixes, go to the Issues & Fixes thread. To help translate Dicier into non-English languages, go to the Translating Dicier thread.

----------

For the up-to-date, official to-do list, see the Future Features devlog post.

(+4)

How about some d&d dice?

(+1)

Great work! Yes, I basically came to ask this- how about icons for polyhedrals, even if you don't have all numbers included?

Developer(+2)

Already on the Future Features list! d4, d8, d10, d12, d20, and some special ligatures for getting 100 on a d100, 1000 on a d1000 etc. They'll be in alternate stylistic sets and (once I have some setup done in the baseline) they'll have all values from 1 to the maximum on each die (plus 0).

(+1)

Brilliant! Sorry, I should have checked the list.

Developer

No problem!

(+1)

OMG, I swear I checked the list but somehow missed that part O_O

I think the backgammon throw me off. :-(

Developer

No worries!

Developer

Update on this: Dicier v1.3 (just released) adds d4, d8, d10, d12, and d20! It also adds single-digit barrel dice in vertical and horizontal orientations, and some other dice tweaks and character variants (see the v1.3 User Guide for more info).

(+2)

This may be a bit of a stretch considering the niche nature of the deck in question, but is there any chance you can also include Heckadeck card values? I’ve been tinkering with it for a bit and it would be rad to be able to mention 11s and Hunters alongside the usual Kings and Aces. 

Another niche and arguably much sillier suggestion: rock-paper-scissors! 

Developer(+2)

Heckadeck: I think the only possible problem is it's proprietary(?) and I dunno what the IP situation is or whether the artist'd be okay with it. I'll contact them and see what the situation is, though. A couple other little things:

  1. I actually did have zero, one, eleven, twelve, and thirteen, but cut them because thirteen was too long to do the value+suit combos with (for annoying technical reasons)—obviously that's not an issue with Heckadeck since it only has zero and eleven.
  2. Acorns are actually a suit in German-suited playing cards (see Future Features), but the symbol's very specific (the German suits have a style of their own)—I can work around that with character variants and different-language versions, though.

Rock-Paper-Scissors: I honestly don't know why I didn't think of this! I'll probably do one set of hand gestures and another of objects, with one in the baseline and the other in a character variant.

Developer(+1)

Just got the OK from Travis Nichols, so yeah, I'll add Heckadeck icons in the future.

Wonderful! I’m so glad that he gave permission! I can’t wait to see them in the next Dicier update. 😁

Developer(+2)

It'll probably be the update after next—since I can't use my font design app until the license money comes in, the first upgrade will mostly be things that don't need me to draw any new symbols. After that will probably be a cards-focused update (including Heckadeck), then a dice-focused update, then things get a bit hazier.

Developer

I'm coming back to this with the next update and I just need to clear up a few things about the Heckadeck:

  • are there 2 talismans and 2 arrows per colour?
  • which suit combinations do the Travellers and Hunters have?

There are two arrows per colour. There are also two talismans per colour, not including the Omnihedron. 

The dual suits of the Travelers and Hunters are the same: 

  • Spades and Planets; 
  • Clubs and Acorns; 
  • Hearts and Clouds; and 
  • Diamonds and Knives; 

pairing the colours of Black with Green and Red with Blue.

Developer(+1)

Thanks!

Developer

Rock-paper-scissors icons are now in Dicier as of v1.5! The default icons are symbols (e.g. a sheet of paper, a pair of scissors) left-to-right, but there are character variants that let you turn them into hand gestures and/or flip them to face right-to-left.

(+1)

👀

Developer(+1)

Note: I won't be editing the Dicier design files until I pay for the Glyphs 3 license upgrade (see Dicier's main page for details). This means I won't be able to make add new features for at least about 2 weeks (unless I can find money elsewhere before then).

(+1)

This isn't much of a request, but I figured it may be a valuable question to ask and I thought this was the best possible place to ask it: 

concerning what you've already mentioned regarding the character limits of your codes like you mentioned with blank dominoes here, have you considered also making a separate series of non-natural codes that would include the trickier ones (like CRD### for playing cards, DMN### for dominoes, etc.)? I'm sure there's also a good reason why you wouldn't implement it, but I figured it was worth throwing out there; at best it would require additional information in your primer doc, which isn't a bothersome extra step for designers, I think. 

Developer(+1)

Good question—the answer is I'm keen to keep things consistent throughout the typeface, even if it means losing some edge-cases. For something like Dicier I'd prefer fewer features done more reliably and accessibly than the other way around. With the domino blanks in particular, I can add the missing icons using OT character variants—the only thing Dicier'd be missing then is the codes.

One thing about the character limit that gives me a bit of hope is that there are scripts with very long ligatures (e.g. Arabic), so hopefully more and more apps will support longer ligatures in the future.

A silly request, but a triangular 3 dot pattern would be a nice bonus glyph. They look very nice.

(Bought this yesterday. Having co-developed a number of moderately successful board games, this is a really solid execution. Great work!)

Developer

I can definitely put that in a character variant. Any particular orientation?

I feel like two on top  one on bottom, If I had to pick one as a default?

Developer

Dunno whether you saw it but I added this option in Dicier v1.1 about a month ago—it's a character variant (cv13), so check chapter 4 of the user guide (advanced features) for more details.

(+1)

I did see it! Thanks for the further updates. :) Really wonderful work.

(+1)

Would you consider adding Tarot suits? Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles?

Developer(+1)

They're coming in the upgrade after the upcoming one!

Awesome!

Developer

I dunno if you've seen it, but I released Dicier v1.2 earlier this week and it's got extra icons for minor arcana.

(+1)

Fantastic! Thanks! 

(+1)

Really excited to see the polyhedral set added! One thing that would be nice would be to have commonly used modifiers like "5+" for five or higher contained within
the die, if there's a way for it to stay readable.

Even and odd polyhedral dice would also be really useful.

Thanks for all your great work!

Developer

I think it'd be tricky to keep them readable with the numbers at their current scale, but I could add a plus sign to combine with dice.

By 'even and odd' do you mean things like d5?

(+1)

Ah, sorry, I meant the word "even" or "odd" in lieu of the number, essentially representing "on an even roll on a d20" or what have you.

Developer(+1)

Oh yeah, that should be pretty easy.

just saw the 1.4 update! They look really cool. 

Developer(+1)

Even/odd dice have just been added to Dicier in the v1.4 upgrade.

(+1)

Hi Speak, would it be possible to add a symbol to indicate player counts? Something like you see on the side of board games; stuff like a group of people seated around a table with a spot for a number.

Developer

I could definitely do this, in a different typeface (as this one's just for randomisers).

This all looks amazing. Just one thing... do you think you might be able to update or add new versions of some of the dice that better represent their basic iconic geometry? Some of them look a bit strange, or as if they're being viewed from some sort of perspective (the D20 currently looks like a cube viewed at an angle, for instance). To me, a D8 should look like a diamond, plain and simple. 

I know some of these might be challenging, but a few of them are just... off, to me.

Developer (1 edit)

The d8 and d10 are being updated to outlines of the full dice in the next version (d8 to a diamond shape, d10 to a flattened hexagon). As for the d20, the perspective might be a little forced/up-close, but there are already a few other hexagonal shapes in the font and adding another with vertical sides feels like it could cause confusion. I'll consider it for a future version, though.

Edit: although, with the numerals getting smaller in the next update I can afford to narrow the barrel dice, which would prevent confusion with a more regular hexagonal d20.

Excellent! Thanks!

Developer(+1)

The silhouettes have been tweaked in the v1.4 upgrade released today. You can also see them on the itch pages (e.g. in the banner).

I'm enjoying using Dicier! In case there is indeed a version 2, my only suggestion at this point would be that it would be helpful for the tarot sword characters to be a little more visually distinct from the tarot wand icons. At 10pt, they're tough to tell apart from a quick glance. In case it's helpful to know, in the project I'm working on, I'm either going to substitute the sword character with a crossed-swords unicode symbol, or substitute the wand character with a wand unicode symbol that's tilted at a different angle, as those are both much easier to distinguish in text.

Developer

Adding a crossed-swords character variant'll be pretty easy (I can release that tomorrow as v1.5.1 with maybe a few other small things). Does your software let you use character variants?

It does—I'm on Affinity Publisher! This would be exciting, but no pressure from me. 😅

Developer

Dicier v1.5.1 has a crossed swords character variant (cv39).

WHAT. You are amazing. Thank you!

Developer (1 edit)

No problem. You may wanna re-download and re-install if you already installed v1.5.1, cause I forgot to add kerning to the new variant ('may' because it's pretty minor). I uploaded a new set with the kerning a couple minutes ago. This only affects rank-suit combos, like FIVE_SWORDS.

(+1)

I love this typeface, is it possible to add symbols for elements? For use in card games that have a energy or mana mechanics, I think the four elements and lightning could be useful for a bunch of games.

Developer

Dicier's currently on hiatus, but I might do that if/when I start working on it again.

Cool, thanks for the reply!

(1 edit)

Dicier is so beautiful and I’ve used it in a few projects recently. Thank you for making it!

I have a question: Are the “Dark” typefaces supposed to show a number on a die? It seems to turn the whole die a solid colour. Interestingly, it does seem to work for #_ON_A_D6 (from 0-9, you can colour the die’s number differently than its outline shape, and also for the D6 in “Dark”), but it doesn’t work on a D4, D8, D12, or D20 (which are the ones I’ve tried it on).

If this isn’t a feature/planned, and if it is even possible, I would like to put a request in for it, so that you can have a solid, dark colour for the die, and a second, different colour for the number.

Thank you for all your amazing work! 😊

Developer(+1)

Unfortunately, the way X_ON_D-Y icons are done doesn't allow for that (at least, in apps I've been using). The reason is, the "X" part and the "_ON_D-Y" part are technically different glyphs, one laid on top of the other, but they can only overlap if they have the same text style. Otherwise, they're treated as two separate bits of text that just happen to come one after the other.

(And because they overlap, but have to have the same colour, the X_ON_D-Y icons in Dark fonts look like they're just dice shapes.)

One possible future development for Dicier could help with this, but it has its own drawbacks. I'm gonna post an overdue devlog/blog post about this soon!

What about mahjong tiles? There is already a [Unicode block](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong_Tiles_(Unicode_block)) of the 44 characters. I see in another comment that the project’s on hiatus, so whenever you are back to working on it.