I stumbled upon a discussion about “90s fonts” on HN recently and since this blog has a bit of a retro theme going on as well I was quite interested and decided to do some further digging. In order to test this on my site I disabled ClearType—the brand name if you will of Microsofts font antialiasing—and set the font used to Arial and wow, that felt like pretty much the perfect combination. It had the same blocky look seen in the screenshots of the article and it just kind of felt like it fit perfectly in here.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no sane way of achieving this. If it were available, font-smooth feels like the only reasonable way to get the correct look but not only is it very much non-standard, the Firefox variant of it is only enabled on OS X making it not really fit for purpose.

Now the approach the original article ended up with was creating a new font which mimicked the rendering of that font on older versions of Windows, and while this looked quite good to me there were some problems identified in the discussion which made me feel that wouldn’t be an appropriate approach for this site. Also, from what I could tell, they didn’t make their font-files available, so that also put a bit of a damper on that thought—to be fair, I didn’t look at the source, maybe there was a simple note there with a license.

Someone mentions bitmap fonts being usable, but I didn’t really find anything to support this statement and rather more comments stating the opposite as well as the original article.

Idea #2: Importing bitmap font files
We couldn’t make vector fonts look pixelated, but could we get around this by importing authentic 90s bitmap font files instead? We had a Windows 98 disk image with all of the system fonts including MS Serif: a riff on Times New Roman in the bitmap .FON format dating back to Windows 1.x. Unfortunately, we quickly found out that CSS @font-face doesn’t work with .FON files, and none of the web-based font conversion tools that we could find would convert them to the vector formats that are usable with @font-face.

Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

And even if they were useable there would be problems with scaling since bitmap fonts have one “native” size and anything else will not look all that good.

With all of this at hand, I concluded that there was no way for me to achieve this look in a way that would also be technically satisfying to myself so I then ended up spending some time hunting for other fonts which might satisfy my itch for a more retro look without necessarily being as authentic as this. I did find a style I find quite satisfying but in the end decided it’s probably better to leave well enough alone for now (there was also the slight matter of it being Mozilla’s core typeface, which made it feel somewhat wrong to use it). As far as I can tell the current fonts provide quite decent legibility and while they might not be retro still have a quite pleasant air about them making them nice to read.

So I like writing, should be somewhat obvious on account of me having decided to start a blog that you seem to be reading in the first place. Or at least, I like to see myself as someone who does like write, or I like the idea of being someone who writes—not a writer necessarily, since it feels like that comes with a different set of connotations that I’m not sure fit either me or my ideal.

However, what might also be obvious to an astute reader is that I’m not necessarily so dedicated to this craft since there is a tendency for my writing to be rather sporadic, coming and going as I have both an idea and inspiration to write about it. Once I sit myself down and start, I can generally get something satisfying but down—for me at least if not for the reader.

The process is enjoyable in these moments of inspiration but for whom do I then write, myself or you dear reader? Or merely for the act itself? Looking back at some of the things I have written before—like my writings about bosses we have killed or the like—I feel a certain uncertainty in those pieces, made for the act of making itself rather than with any more lofty goal, writing a guide that isn’t quite a guide yet not quite a recollection of the events nor a thorough analysis of the fight. These pieces seem to fall into that third category, made for the act of making itself.

They were also always the writing I felt least satisified by, trying to appease some nonexistent audience yet at the end serving no real purpose but to make something. But that act of making is in itself also valuable and while it may not serve the reader it does serve to satisfy the writer and her whims, and taking care of those is important as well. So in the end, those pieces were made to satisfy me yet they did not truly feel satisfying to me.

The other type of writing I have sometimes engaged in is simply trying to put my feelings on (virtual) paper in order to work through them, yet choosing to share them so that they may potentially serve as guidance to others or as memories to myself. It can be quite interesting to go back and read some of those pieces and look at the state of mind I was in at the time, especially now with the advantage of hindsight. I tend to gain a certain amount of resolve from those moments, since especially when looking back at times when things have felt hopeless in the moment those times have passed and have given time for better things. The best example of this, I think, are the posts during my transition from Alliance to Horde; those were somewhat difficult times where I was neither quite satisfied with the game nor my place at the time, yet both of those things ended up turning for the better and I made some cool new friends through the experience.

This process of writing things down can be quite freeing, giving another perspective on a matter and helping to process the feelings associated with it. I can remember this happening many times, having written about something and having it feel like a weight being lifted from my shoulders. Thinking about it, I think I need to start doing this around more things in my life though this place probably isn’t the right platform for that, having a somewhat constrained focus at least in my mind but who but I is to decide about what I write here? Maybe that is what I need the most in this time, to realize that my audience is me and not to write in order to appease others but to write to satisfy myself and get the things said that I want to say, not worrying too much about who they are for but me.

So that part of the expansion cycle is with us again, the endtimes. The raid is cleared, there is no new content on the horizon beside the next expansion and the general interest towards the current content is rapidly waning.

Raiding

We are still going somewhat strong and maintaining our weekly raids though we have those down to one per week now, but aside from that it’s mostly just the occasional mythic+ run along with the weekly alt-run that keeps us coming together and playing together.

The reduced activity has given me the opportunity to actually participate in the aforementioned alt-run and I’ve actually taken and geared my paladin well enough to be allowed to join in there which has been rather fun. My paladin I tend to play as a tank so getting to play another role again has been fun as well though surprisingly stressful even in a raid environment which I wasn’t expecting—usually I find raids more relaxing to tank than mythic+ but this somehow hasn’t quite been the case with Ny’alotha so far though I’m getting there with my comfort level.

This has also given me the opportunity to see how much of the raid I had been ignoring mechanically since these things didn’t really directly concern me though in at least one case it would have actually been useful to know. Three specific things come to mind: Shad’har tank mechanic; Ra-den phase two tank mechanic; N’Zoth Psychus phase.

Now the Shad’har tank mechanic is essentially don’t let your co-tank get two different types of debuffs which while quite simple as a mechanic and not something I need to concern myself with when not tanking is something that tripped me up the first time there.

The Psychus phase again is very relevant as a tank since I’m directly responsible for positioning Psychus correctly so that the debuff gets applied as well as ensuring the pool on the floor spawns correctly, and it’s also very good to know as a damage dealer so the correct tentacle is getting damaged it is largely irrelevant as a healer except for impacting how and where I move though even that is more down to environmental awareness than anything else.

The Ra-den tank mechanic however is something that might have been somewhat useful to know even as a healer though to be fair our tanks did call it and as such specific knowledge of how it works wasn’t important. But essentially, in phase two, Ra-den applies a debuff that does damage to the tank which scales with their current health at the time the debuff was applied. Knowing not to heal the tank before the debuff gets applied is of course important because of this, but as noted it got called anyway and I wasn’t focusing on healing the tanks in that phase so how and why it was important didn’t really register until way after progress was over.

All of this has however made me even more interested in maintaining more alts in Shadowlands if possible so that I have reason and opportunity to gain this insight earlier on in the content when it might actually prove relevant to progressing those bosses on mythic.

Shadowlands

Speaking of Shadowlands, we are slowly also getting more information to how the upcoming expansion will work and while my outlook remains perhaps more pessimistic than most I’m trying to keep an open mind.

The systems on the surface actually look quite promising, I’m looking forward to seeing interesting legendaries again and Thorgast could end up rather fun if implemented correctly especially considering my recent experience with another roguelike but I’m just worried they’ll suffer from the same problem that the Mage Tower in Legion and the Horrific Visions in Battle for Azeroth: being gated behind world quests/dailies. To me, this just adds a completely unecessary level of stress and frustration to the experience especially when playing multiple characters.

My other really big worry are the Covenants since even with the updated information of the initial switch being easy but returning being difficult I’m really worried about how Blizzard will manage to balance the abilities in a sensible manner as well as tying cosmetic rewards to gameplay since that will probably mean I won’t really have much of a choice in the matter. With luck those two things will align however I don’t feel that is overly likely. The optimal case is of course all of the abilities being close enough together that one can actually choose freely and this is more likely for the healers anyway than for damage dealers or tanks, but it is still something I’m looking at with more worry than excitement at the moment.

I think that actually sums up my general feeling toward Shadowlands: a mix of worry and excitement, though definitely more of the former; I’m looking forward to what’s to come but wary of getting overly excited.

For the King is a turn-based roguelike RPG that we have been playing recently.

For The King is a challenging blend of strategy, turn-based combat, and roguelike elements. Each playthrough is unique with procedural maps, quests, and events. Explore Fahrul in either single player, local, or online co-op.

So far it has been a rather fun time, we even managed to get to the final boss (we think) on our first proper run of the game though there our way was sadly cut short. To be fair, we did play on the easiest difficulty thinking that a good starting point, especially for something that can be so unforgiving as a roguelike.

The game is not without its flaws, there seems to be some occasional fast-forwarding going on where everything moves very quickly and I’m not sure what’s causing that, some player behaviour or potentially network issues. The turn based nature does make it rather slow going at times as well though it does provide for some interesting choices especially when navigating the overworld view.

Despite this, the core turn-based combat experience along with managing the limited resources one tends to have in this type of game have provided for some unexpectedly interesting gameplay. The game may be quite simple but the different classes, stats and gear provide enough customization and options to still keep it interesting to me for now at least. To be honest, this game really surprised me since I was not expecting to necessarily like it since I haven’t been that into roguelike games before, but maybe that’s the coop aspect of it talking and I’m just having good times with friends and wouldn’t be interested in the game otherwise. For that purpose though, I can heartily recommend it and I think that might be something particularily valuable in these trying times.

So progress is over for this expansion, we killed N’Zoth yesterday with a moderately decent performance of only 219 tries in total.

The fight itself is a big improvement on the heroic version, with actually some rather interesting parts going on for healers with all the damage coming in though it ends up feeling somewhat finnicky with how precise all the timings one needs to hit are; a mistake a minute or so earlier with a wrongly used cooldown might lead to deaths later on. Still, it does make the whole thing feel a bit more like a precisely executed dance than anything else, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing though it can get frustrating when progressing the later parts of the fight with simply how long it takes to get there. Having to maintain a decent level of concentration for 10+ minutes before one even gets to the new and interesting bit can be difficult at times.

The secret phase was also something of a disappointement, with not that much going on aside from the usual healing and damage. Sure, there is the dance where you dodge a couple of swirlies and yes some people have to disarm the bombs, but overall it felt more like a bit of a lull between all the activity in the other phases while still requiring somewhat precise execution on timing, namely when the mob dies.

Overall though, the fight did end up feeling like a good end to the expansion, even if there might have been some fights earlier on that were interesting and the patch overall didn’t really “save” the expansion as one might have hoped. Now I guess we just need to wait for the alpha or beta to start in order to see how Shadowlands is progressing, though I am more pessimistic than optimistic of its prospects at the moment.