Files to back up before you start:
fonts.wad, located in Sierra\Half-Life\valve. Make a copy of this file and place it in a backup folder. That way you'll have it if you ever want to restore the default.
Half-life and its mods use a .wad file to generate the fonts for player messages, console text, net graph, and frag notifications. As you might know, a .wad file is sort of an archive that stores image files, most often for the textures that appear in maps. For the game fonts, the file in question is called fonts.wad and it's originally located in the Half-Life/valve folder.
Fonts.wad holds 3 "image" files that are generated from true-type fonts. The three different images are the same font in different sizes. The resolution that you play the game at determines which font size will be used.
It didn't take too long for high-res players to realize that sometimes even the largest default font is barely legible. It's quite easy to miss important team communication, cries of "h4x", and friendly guesses about one's sexual preferences when your text is too small. Fortunately, Valve was good enough to include the font-making utility, makefont.exe, in their SDK. You can even skip the whole SDK download and grab makefont.exe HERE. It's quite easy to make yourself a bigger font, as well as to make a fonts.wad with any true-type font you would like.
Put makefont.exe somewhere on your hard drive where you won't lose it. For this tutorial, I'll place it in C:\Sierra. Now browse your windows/fonts directory and check out some true-type fonts that you might want to see real often. When you find one you like, you're ready to let 'er rip.
Start->Programs->MS-DOS Prompt
Get the MS-DOS prompt to the directory where you placed makefont.exe, in our case C:\Sierra. Your prompt will probably start at c:\windows>, so you want to type "cd ..\Sierra" and hit enter. If the the DOS prompt now says c:\SIERRA> you're ready to go.
Decide how you want your font to appear. Makefont uses switches such as -bold, -underline, etc. to create the font. The command line has the following syntax: makefont.exe [font name] [switches] [pointsizes] [wad name]. I'm going to make one with a font called Blue Highway Bold. I type "makefont.exe -font "Blue Highway Bold" -pointsizes 12 14 16 BHbold" and press enter. I then see the message "Creating 12, 14 and 16 point Blue Highway Bold fonts" indicating success.
The newly created .wad file contains Blue Highway Bold fonts in sizes of 12, 14, and 16 point. The file would be found in the same directory as makefont.exe (in this case c:\Sierra) and would be named BHbold.wad.
To use it in game, simply copy file BHbold.wad to your Half-life/valve folder and rename it fonts.wad (remember to back up the original first if you want to save it).
Here's what it looks like while you're at work:
Here's what it looks like when I start a game:
Click for full image.
Some additional info that may be useful:
Quotation marks around the font name are not necessary if it's only one word, but use them when making a .wad using "Slobovian New Roman Copperplate Black" or other long-winded fonts.
You probably only play in one resolution and like it that way. Save yourself time and use -pointsizes 14 14 14, then name it whatever14. That way you're dealing with a known quantity.
If you go above 16 point the game might not print the font correctly (although some will work up to 18, etc.).
Beware fonts that don't have separate upper and lower cases.
You can have a different font for different mods. Place a new fonts.wad in Half-life/tfc to change the font for TF only.
How do I get my old font back?
Just delete, move, or rename the new fonts.wad file that you created. Then copy the original, which you backed up before starting, to Half-Life\valve. If you put your new fonts.wad in a mod folder (such as Half-Life\tfc), you don't need to remove the original one from Half-Life\valve. The fonts.wad in the mod folder will override the default.
Download the font created in this tutorial, plus a few other fonts, here. Read the enclosed readme.txt for instructions.
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