Retail Font Stack Audit

This note records what the committed retail Quake Live evidence shows about the Windows font stack and how that stack is now reconstructed and validated in the current writable source tree.

Evidence summary

Observed facts from the committed retail launcher HLIL:

• quakelive_steam.exe contains a second text system beyond the classic renderer RE_RegisterFont path.
• That host text system creates a texture named *fontstash, installs the error callback string R_fonsErrorCallback: error %d val %d\n, and exposes a debug atlas path guarded by r_debugFontAtlas.
• The host initializes five named faces in a contiguous handle table:
  • normal -> fonts/handelgothic.ttf
  • sans -> fonts/notosans-regular.ttf
  • mono -> fonts/droidsansmono.ttf
  • sans-fallback -> fonts/droidsansfallbackfull.ttf
  • sans-windows-fallback -> %WINDIR%\fonts\ARIALUNI.TTF, %WINDIR%\fonts\segoeui.ttf, or %WINDIR%\fonts\l_10646.ttf
• Retail host DrawScaledText / MeasureText wrappers index that handle table directly, instead of collapsing every call to a single baked fontInfo_t.
• Retail host DrawScaledText / MeasureText consume UTF-8 text through the retained host lane instead of indexing raw bytes. HLIL 0x00443BE0 and 0x00444360 walk the same DFA-style decode tables before probing glyphs.
• Retail glyph lookup caches entries by decoded codepoint plus the rounded tenths-sized request and probes the requested face before the retained fallback-face slots. HLIL 0x00443720 shows the current face search, the three retained fallback slots, and the size-tenths key in the same helper.
• Retail R_InitFontStash creates the retained 512 x 512 atlas, installs the callback, loads the face table, and leaves glyph population lazy; no initialization-time loop prebuilds every byte glyph for every face.
• Retail atlas expansion preserves the existing alpha atlas contents while growing the retained image, and it only clears cached glyph state on the maximum-size flush path.
• Retail *fontstash texture refreshes rebind the renderer image as GL_ALPHA storage and upload the retained one-byte alpha buffer directly.
• Retail host draw only treats ^0 through ^7 as color escapes. Other caret pairs stay visible in the glyph stream, while forceColor still consumes the recognized color escapes without recoloring.
• UI HLIL sub_10003d90 / sub_10003ec0 computes host text scale as (vidHeight / 768) * 96. Against the source UI/cgame yscale = vidHeight / 480, that matches a QL_FONT_HOST_POINT_SIZE baseline of 60.0f.

Observed facts from the writable source tree:

• The classic renderer FreeType path still lives in src/code/renderer/tr_font.c.
• The renderer no longer depends on a missing in-tree src/code/ft2/ vendor drop. The build now uses a repo-managed FreeType replacement lane on Windows and pkg-config freetype2 on Unix when BUILD_FREETYPE is enabled. The Win32 build now defaults that lane on, bootstraps FreeType into src/libs/freetype from an official upstream cache when needed, and no longer silently compiles the tiny bitmap fallback path on clean checkouts.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now contains a renderer-owned retained host text core that creates *fontstash, installs R_fonsErrorCallback, and retains the five recovered host-text faces plus the preferred sans/fallback face slots.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now also decodes UTF-8 host text into codepoints, caches retained glyphs by codepoint plus rounded size tenths, and probes the recovered retained fallback-face chain before dropping to the classic baked-font compatibility lane.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now leaves retained host glyphs lazy: glyphs are cached lazily as text is measured or drawn, matching the retail R_InitFontStash ownership path and avoiding startup atlas saturation.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now also preserves the previous atlas pixels and cached glyph coordinates when R_fonsErrorCallback expands the retained atlas, keeping cache invalidation reserved for the retail max-size flush.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now flushes queued renderer text quads before a retained atlas resize or max-size reset, matching the retail FontStash draw-queue boundary so loading-screen text cannot sample a newer atlas generation than the one used for its UVs.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now refreshes the retained *fontstash texture as a GL_ALPHA atlas instead of expanding the alpha buffer into RGBA on every upload.
• native DrawScaledText / MeasureText now route through the shared renderer host-text helpers instead of through duplicated client-side glyph loops.
• r_debugFontAtlas now has an in-source draw path in tr_backend.c.
• The retail GetRefAPI table still carries a legacy font slot after ModelBounds, but the current source keeps that slot as a no-op and routes native UI/cgame font registration through the client compatibility wrappers that call the classic RE_RegisterFont lane directly.

Source alignment landed in this pass

• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now recognizes the retail Quake Live font aliases, builds face-specific cache and page names, and can read absolute Windows font paths when the caller resolves a host fallback face.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now also owns the renderer-side retained host text core: a renderer-owned retained host text core that keeps the *fontstash atlas alive, installs the retail expansion or flush callback, and retains normal, sans, mono, sans-fallback, and sans-windows-fallback in one face table.
• The retained host text core now drains pending renderer commands before the expansion/reset callback mutates *fontstash, preserving already-queued UI and loading-screen text against the old atlas contents.
• src/code/renderer/tr_font.c now also owns the shared host draw/measure helpers used by the native ui and cgame import wrappers.
• Those shared helpers now resolve glyphs from the retained *fontstash face table first and only fall back to the classic RE_RegisterFont cache lane when the retained atlas path is unavailable for the requested face.
• Those same helpers now consume UTF-8 codepoints, treat only ^0..^7 as host color escapes, and keep the retail forceColor behavior where valid color escapes are consumed but do not recolor the active draw state.
• The renderer host helpers are now gate-checked for their core draw/measure contract: face handles fall back through the retained normal/sans faces, requested sizes are rounded and clamped to tenths, max-X clipping happens before drawing the overflowing glyph, outMaxX returns 0 on clipping, and measurement preserves bounds/outLeft while still reporting the retained font ascent for height.
• src/code/client/cl_ui.c and src/code/client/cl_cgame.c now route native DrawScaledText / MeasureText through the shared renderer host-text helpers instead of resolving fontInfo_t locally.
• The native UI/cgame font import slots are now parity-gated as a trio: RegisterFont remains on the compatibility registration lane, while DrawScaledText and MeasureText fail closed through the recovered host text import wrappers.
• The native draw wrappers also preserve the module current-color sidecar and normalize forceColor before entering RE_DrawScaledText; the measure wrappers return retail-style packed width/height floats after calling RE_MeasureScaledText.
• UI and cgame clipped text helpers now have explicit max-X projection gates: Text_Paint_Limit and CG_Text_Paint_Limit project both draw coordinates and clip bounds into screen space, draw through host text, then convert the returned outMaxX back into 640-space coordinates.
• UI and cgame host text metrics/span helpers are gated as retained-text consumers too: measurement uses trap_QL_MeasureText at scale * QL_FONT_HOST_POINT_SIZE, span drawing uses trap_QL_DrawScaledText, and UI cursor painting measures the prefix through the same host lane before drawing the cursor glyph.
• src/code/client/cl_console.c now keeps the console prompt, chat prompt, scrollback, and editable field cursor on the retained mono host-text lane. The strict audit checks the UTF-8 cursor windowing, host metrics lookup, and packed console color-cell conversion into host text color escapes.
• src/code/client/cl_scrn.c now routes client screen-overlay helpers such as SCR_DrawStringExt, SCR_DrawBigString, SCR_DrawBigStringColor, and the demo-recording overlay through the same retained mono host-text lane used by retail, instead of the legacy charset glyph loop.
• src/code/renderer/tr_backend.c now exposes the retained atlas through the debug draw path guarded by r_debugFontAtlas.
• Renderer advertisement debug labels in src/code/renderer/tr_world.c also draw through retained host text at the recovered 16 / 48 debug scale.

Interface font helpers and registered sizes

Observed facts from the committed retail UI and cgame references:

• UI AssetCache is an art-only cache; the committed retail reconstruction for uix86.dll registers gradient, FX, scrollbar, slider, and crosshair art there, but not fonts.
• UI MenuParse_font normalizes legacy tokens onto the Quake Live baked font buckets, stores the resolved token on the menu, and seeds the shared display context fonts on first use.
• cgame CG_AssetCache is described in the committed symbol map as the shared HUD art cache, while CG_RegisterHudFonts remains the explicit HUD font bootstrap helper.

Observed facts from the writable source tree:

• The shared baked font buckets are now defined as:
  • fonts/font at 24
  • fonts/smallfont at 16
  • fonts/bigfont at 48
  • fonts/monofont at 16
• UI menu asset globals use two retail size tiers:
  • gameplay and HUD menus such as src/ui/hud.menu register 24 / 16 / 48
  • src/ui/main.menu registers 16 / 12 / 20
• UI font registration now stays in Asset_Parse and MenuParse_font, while AssetCache remains art-only.
• UI Asset_Parse now normalizes the global font, smallFont, and bigFont declarations before registering the retained text, small, and big buckets, while MenuParse_font bootstraps that trio once from the resolved menu token.
• UI item-level font stays a retail integer bucket: ItemParse_font writes item->fontIndex, and the shared item width, height, paint, and cursor wrappers forward that bucket into the extended host-text callbacks.
• cgame HUD font registration stays in CG_RegisterHudFonts, while CG_AssetCache remains art-only.
• cgame CG_Asset_Parse is now parity-gated for the retail token spelling: font, smallFont, and lowercase bigfont route through cgDC.registerFont, while the one-time HUD bootstrap keeps the default text/small/big trio available when scripts omit a bucket.
• cgame browser/HUD menu parsing is now gated through the shared menu parser: CG_SetupBrowserMenuKeywordHash rebuilds the keyword hash containing font -> MenuParse_font, CG_ParseBrowserMenu enters Menu_Parse, and both CG_Init and loadhud rebuild that parser state before HUD menu font declarations are replayed.

Inference:

• The source tree now matches the retail face selection and per-face cache behavior much more closely for the retained host-text lane itself.
• The hidden exactness tail inside that retained lane is now also closed: host text is no longer byte-oriented, and Unicode fallback probing no longer depends on the caller choosing the fallback face manually.
• The UI and cgame font helpers now also match the retail ownership split more closely: asset caches own shaders, while dedicated font parse/bootstrap helpers own the registered Quake Live font buckets and their point sizes.
• The renderer font stack now has a coherent source, build, and runtime parity story instead of a missing-vendor plus warning-only tail.

Closure status

• RG-P10 is now complete:
  • the renderer build metadata no longer points at ..\ft2\*
  • BUILD_FREETYPE is now tied to a repo-managed FreeType lane, while the non-retail codec stack is bootstrapped from repo-managed sources instead of from system SDK or Vcpkg discovery
• RG-P11 is now complete:
  • the tracked runtime artifact is artifacts/renderer_validation/logs/renderer_runtime_evidence_latest.json
  • the stable alias was refreshed on 2026-04-21 from the clean renderer_runtime_evidence_20260421.json bundle
  • that artifact now proves a windowed UI-bootstrap pass, retained-atlas debug rendering, and live bloodrun runtime with distinct engine/window capture hashes, while rejecting RE_RegisterFont fallback-lane logs
• The 2026-04-17 full font audit reopened one hidden renderer-host gap inside the earlier RG-P8 closure:
  • raw-byte host glyph lookup instead of UTF-8 decode
  • point-size-only retained glyph caching instead of codepoint-plus-size cache
  • retained fallback faces that were stored but not automatically probed
  • over-permissive caret color parsing in the host draw helper
• That reopened gap is now reclosed in source, tests, and the strict audit script.
• No confirmed renderer or client screen-overlay font-stack gap remains after RG-P11, the 2026-04-17 audit refresh, and the retained mono overlay wiring follow-up.
• The strict audit also now covers the native UI/cgame font import slot values, import-table assignments, fail-closed trap wrappers, the VM-side RegisterFont compatibility wrappers, cgame Q3_VM host-text stubs, cgame snapshot/FPS upper-right host text, module current-color/packed-measure bridge semantics, renderer face/scale/color/max-X/out-left core semantics, UI/cgame metrics, cursor, span, and clipped max-X text, renderer advertisement debug labels, console/chat host-text consumers, UI asset/menu parser bootstrap ownership, UI item integer font buckets, UI legacy font alias normalization, cgame lowercase-bigfont HUD asset parsing, and cgame browser-menu font parser routing plus HUD reload ordering.

Verification

Run:

pwsh tools\ci\audit-retail-font-stack.ps1

Use -Strict to turn any reopened font-stack or runtime-evidence regression into a hard failure.