[ALL Source Games] Anti-aliasing is for all fonts on Linux but not on Windows, why?

[munoida]

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This is rather more of a question rather than an issue, however, I do not know where to ask questions like these about the Source Engine so, here I am.

Are chat fonts/console fonts/e.t.c supposed to be anti-aliased on Linux? Does Linux anti-alias all fonts, or is that something Valve coded into for their Linux Source Engine client? I'm not complaining, it looks better almost 99% of the time to be honest, I think even the Marlett font is anti-aliased in games lol (This screenshot was taken on the native Linux client of Counter Strike: Source, all fonts being anti-aliased) (Then this screenshot, being taken on the Windows Client of Counter Strike: Source running under Proton, barely if not none at all are anti-aliased)

This is just one of many examples, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, e.t.c. Any source engine game you can think of will most likely be Anti-aliased if you are using it's native Linux client compared to on Windows and/or Proton.

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This is likely due to the Windows client versions of games expecting to use DirectWrite or ClearType, which are Windows font smoothing formats.

The native Linux versions may use different fonts and font smoothing methods entirely. Whether those could be ported to the Windows version is a different topic.

[munoida]

This is likely due to the Windows client versions of games expecting to use DirectWrite or ClearType, which are Windows font smoothing formats.

The native Linux versions may use different fonts and font smoothing methods entirely. Whether those could be ported to the Windows version is a different topic.

Ah, maybe. I'm not sure why there's such a noticeable difference between them anyway, although I can say that newer source games ship with the MS Web Fonts package (L4D2, CSGO, and others i believe,) CSGO even ships with Tahoma.

Though the font smoothing things does make a bit of sense, but what doesn't make a lot of sense to me that both support anti-aliased and aliased fonts respectfully, but I may be answering my own question here because the original Source engine Windows client was released in 2004, and the Linux Client in 2013.

Anti-aliased Tahoma is BEAUTIFUL btw lmao

[sylveonsylvia]

the linux version of the game uses different fonts. the that is used has smoothing. so this is intentional

[munoida]

the linux version of the game uses different fonts. the that is used has smoothing. so this is intentional

Funnily enough, that remains false unless you are referring to the non-Latin fonts and/or CJK fonts. Or the older Source engine ports (basically most of the HL ports.)

Newer Source ports have the fonts needed from the Windows client under a proper license. (Usually just TTF-Mscore-fonts.) L4D2 even uses Tahoma as it's closed captioning, even for non-latin fonts. even though I tried to remove Tahoma, from my system and the game's directory, Tahoma is still there, and all Linux fonts are missing in linux_fonts for L4D2

this also doesn't go for vfont files which is used in L4D2, Portal 2, CS:GO, and maybe more?