UBFG

Ultimate Bitmap Font Generator

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: