BZ2 BMF Maker - makes font files for BZ2

[GSH]

See here for a quick tool I just wrote up to use the FreeType 2 library from http://www.freetype.org/index.html to convert TrueType (or many other types of fonts) to BZ2's .bmf form. Allows much finer grained control over the font sizing. UI isn't super pretty, but it works faster and remembers your choices. Use the old 'fontedit' program to view characters outside of BZ2.

Note: the old 'fontedit' program had to use Windows rendering to the screen and oversampling to try and get some antialiasing. FreeType2 does all the antialiasing internally, and will generally produce a 'sharper' output. Not yet sure how to be more bug-for-bug compatible. Also, I don't believe anyone has an exact font file/size on the .bmf fonts used by BZ2, so it's only guesswork as to the original font settings.

(UPDATES - see the changelog file included for details):
- v1.0.0.1 posted 2013/11/04
- v1.0.0.2 posted 2013/11/04
- v1.0.0.3 posted 2015/11/14

-- GSH

[Red Devil]

the edit font function says i'm/it's not allowed access to the fonts folder in windows, but i can open the folder via explorer.

[GSH]

Copy them out of C:\Windows\Fonts\ to a regular folder, then BZ2BMFMaker can read them. Under Win7, the fonts is a special folder that shows things in a special format -- font families are grouped together, not per-file. For example, if I drag out 'Arial' from my C:\Windows\Fonts\ , the destination folder ends up with 9 files.

-- GSH

[Nielk1]

I made this a while ago:

Click here for more info and a download link and source code. (It would probably be best to discuss this program in its own topic to prevent clutter here, but I wanted to be sure it was known this was still around.)

It lets you edit the BMF as a series of raw images (using the export and import program, the nice pretty GUI thing is the viewer). Using it in combination with GSH's new tool should allow for some pretty good results and customization. You can also put custom symbols in for special characters if you see the need for a mod.

It's hard to use but I see it having benefit when used alongside GSH's improved tool.

[General BlackDragon]

The fonts made with this appear to be vertically mis placed.

I attempted to re-create BZ2's fonts using this, and this is what it looked like.

[GSH]

- v1.0.0.1 posted 2013/11/04

-- GSH

[General BlackDragon]

repeated attempt with new version.

The text is now vertically positioned correctly.

However, it's not text.



Same steps as in the bugzilla. Will post the editor's logging info in the bugzilla.


EDIT: The above was with my attempt at re-creating the fonts.

The ones you posted on bugzilla look like this:

[GSH]

- v1.0.0.2 posted 2013/11/04

-- GSH

[General BlackDragon]

Yay! It's working as it should? now.

Though the font I downlaoded still does not perfectly match whats in Stock. This may be the reason for the Larger UI/Console fonts looking wierd, as I've seen some people mention.

http://s101.photobucket.com/user/Myrodi ... sort=3&o=0

If you flip between the New and the Stock, you can see the differance. I am not sure if that is the fault of the program, or the TTF. I suspect the TTF is different then whatever was converted back in 2000.

[Zero Angel]

Seems to be multiple implementations of Bank Gothic Medium. The "Bankgothic Md BT Medium" one (Version 2.001 mfgpctt 4.4) seems to be a more accurate implementation of it compared to one I downloaded named "Bank Gothic" (Version 2.0-1.0) which is a bit thinner and not as good font hinting (which causes things to look a little funky at lower sizes). I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Also possible that the BZ2 team bought the licence to use one implementation of bankgothic which is otherwise unavailable for free download.

Or maybe the BZ2 font generator thing doesnt implement hinting the same way that the original BMFs were made in.


Also:

Program looks funny:


Running Win7 64-bit, disabling the extra buttons on the titlebar doesnt make a difference. Maybe because i've raised my system font size to 125% to make text a bit more readable on my computer. Might not be playing so well with that program.

[General BlackDragon]

Did some more tinkering with this, the fonts made by this are a tiny bit too high now.

[Nielk1]

GSH's new BMF maker added characters with 0 width to the BMF. While BZ2 seems to have no issue with this, my BMF decompiler did. GBD noticed the issue.

[General BlackDragon]

That was not GSH's program's BMF, that was a BMF from ken's old fontedit.exe

[Nielk1]

That was not GSH's program's BMF, that was a BMF from ken's old fontedit.exe

I tested with BMFs from GSH's thing and it killed my app where none of the stock ones broke my converter.

[Red Devil]

finally got bz2bmfmaker.exe to read some font files.

i previously had copied the windows fonts folder, but it apparently has special properties, so bz2bmfmaker wasn't able to open the copied folder.

once i copied just the contents of the windows fonts folder into a new folder, bz2bmfmaker was able to open and use the fonts.