North Carolina-based developer Idrees Hassan loves Minecraft so much that he recently created a monospaced font to program in that is based on the typeface in the wildly popular video game. Monocraft gives programmers the feel of being in Minecraft without the need to use any assets from the game.
"To be truthful, I created this font because I thought it would be fun to learn how fonts work," Hassan told Ars. "Existing Minecraft fonts lacked a lot of particulars, like proper kerning or pixel size. So I decided to make my own. Once I had it done there was nothing that could stop me from taking it to the next level and turning it into a proper programming font. Plus, now I can write Minecraft plugins using the Minecraft font!"
To adapt the Minecraft font for development purposes, Hassan redesigned characters to look more attractive in a monospaced layout, added some serifs to make letters such as "i" and "l" easier to recognize, created new programming ligature characters, and improved the arrow characters to make them easier to read. Although ligature characters incorporate the most popular operational character strings like "!=" into one character, they aren't often popular with developers.
Monocraft can be downloaded from GitHub for free (get Monocraft.otf on the Releases Page). It isn't endorsed by Microsoft or Mojang and should be considered as a fan-project. As an OpenType font, it can be used on Windows, Mac, or Linux. To install it on Windows simply right-click the font file and choose "Install." Double-click the font file on a Mac and choose "Install Font" from the Font Book window.
Hassan previously made a faithful copy of the Minecraft font that uses variable spacing similar to the font used in Minecraft. It's available on GitHub as well.
Markus "Notch", the Minecraft creator, originally designed the Minecraft font in an earlier game called Legend of the Chambered. Servers This was circa 2008. The Minecraft typeface incorporates an old-fashioned pixel-art style that hearkens back to 16-bit and 8-bit console games, which was a perfect match for Notch's low-fi style of art. It's now a great font for developers across the world.
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