Ultimate bitmap font generator - useful tool to create compact font textures for games
If you know Russian - welcome: http://www.gamedev.ru/projects/forum/?id=152527
Feature list:
- multiple fonts may be packed into one texture
- extremely effective packing algorithm + subcharacters merging
- optimizied not only for English: generate Russian, Japanese, Chinese fonts
- easy-to-create characters list from text
- distance fields for easy OpenGL scalable fonts
- exporting kerning pairs
- free and open-source project
UBFG can export font into XML format (image in base64 format also stored in XML) or into it's own .fnt format, - ready to use with Cheetah 2D engine. XML format is self-described, .fnt format uses following spec.
UBFG generates two files: font.png and font.fnt.
- font.png is an image, that represents your font texture. You must load it as texture.
- font.fnt is a text file, that contains information about all chars on font.png.
This information looks like:
Arial 9pt -- font name and size
Char X pos Y pos Width Height Xoffset Yoffset Orig W Orig H
32 0 0 0 0 3 14 3 14
97 90 36 5 7 1 4 7 14
98 0 41 5 9 1 2 7 14
kerning pairs:
32 97 -1
32 98 -0.5
Here:
- Char - UNICODE number of your char (codepage varies and may be specified before export). For example, 32 is a 'space'
- X pos - x position of glyph on texture
- Y pos - y position of glyph on texture
- Width - width of glyph on texture (glyphs are cropped and Width and Orig Width aren't equal)
- Height - height of glyph on texture
- Xoffset - distance on the x-axis, on which glyph must be shifted
- Yoffset - distance on the y-axis, on which glyph must be shifted
- Orig W - original width of glyph
- Orig H - original height of glyph
Also fnt format may have kerning pairs: a set of kerning pairs listed after phrase "kerning pairs:". First number if a first character in pair, second number - second character in pair, third number - kerning value. Note: this value may be with floating point if you use distance fields.
Screenshot:
