Started playing around with this again, and I'm kind of bouncing back and forth between pixel-perfect and antialiased versions. I tend to prefer the pixel-perfect versions, as they're more readable. Obviously the large fonts will have to be antialiased. I want to make a really clean, readable small font to be used for various things, though
in-game IRC console, tooltips, etc.
I've attached a few different prototypes.
1st line = no antialiasing - everything is per-pixel.
2nd line - Mostly per-pixel, with a couple areas antialiased (to try to make the b and d look more rounded).
3rd line - all antialiased (looks less jagged, but also looks blurry).
4th - all antialiased, bold
5th - per-pixel bold.
Bottom right - experimented with curving the edges out + antialias. Large version attached as a second image. Not sure if I like it or not, but it's a potential large font that would scale down well, since it's designed to align perfectly at 6 pixels wide.
Feature vote thread related to this:
http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=15095