Chat Balloon Customization: Fonts and Borders

I'm very certain this has already been suggested before. It's way too obvious to me, but it really struck me the other day as I was going through some older comics. One of the coolest things to come out of the 90s other than cross-hatch computer colouring and higher grade paper stock (remember the toilet paper comics used to be printed on?) was computer lettering.



Yes, it's a 90s comic, but check out the font and the borders of the text balloons. It's another layer to expressing the personality of the character, maybe even the sound of his voice. Wouldn't that be an awesome addition to have in this game? Changing the colours of the chat bubbles and writing is nice, but a built-in selection for different fonts at the very least would be so much nicer.

A golden age character might talk in Copperplate, a girly girl in some kind of cursive, and all the dark and gloomy types can talk in Abbadon or Morpheus. You'd be able to gain a measure of understanding of whom you're dealing with based on the look of their chat bubbles alone, and while I have no idea whether such a change would be hard to implement, it shouldn't really affect computer workload if implemented.

It'd be another layer of character customization and expression, and another thing taken straight from the comics this game is based on.

Nice idea.

Some presets should be included as well as the option to select font/border-style combinations.

I have always suggested and been a fan of this. Two thumbs up for a great example, too.

Anything that leads to a general revamp of the text bubble system (including getting border color on a menu somewhere, as well as transparency options) gets my support.

I have to agree here. As a Graphic Designer, I see and work with type all day long. Those CoX chat bubbles are just too blase and I think need to be revamped to show a more "comic book'ish" feel to them. For a game that likes to delve into a individualistic approach for our characters, the dev's I think also need to help us individualize our chat bubbles rather then just being able to change the color of the bubble or the color of the font.

I'm always in favor of giving the players more options for customization, and giving them options for how they do it, whether it be the simplicity of moving a slider in an options menu or the precision of numerous keybind commands (preferably the versatility of both). I know I'd use it.

Counter opinion: I think custom bubbles are a little overused as it is. I get that people want to stand out and personalize their character, but if you open any random comic even today, I'd guess that over 90% of the bubbles are plain black on white with round borders.

Now, I do have a colored macro for when my Peacebringer uses his "goa'uld" voice, and ditto for my character who sometimes speaks with the Voice of the Legion. And it might be neat to have my robot speak with a more squared-off font. But do we really want to encourage more rainbow chat spam?

It's been a while since I've examined every single item in the options menu, but can't you disable chat bubbles entirely?

Signed so long as no hard to read fonts are available. Or fonts that aren't text at all. Someone speaking in Wingdings would be funny for about five minutes at best.

I would be against changing the actual font, border, fine, but font, no.
It really ticks me off when there's two different fonts being used to do pretty much the same thing in one space. Both in comics and on the internet.