Fancy Bitmap Font Generator – Development Preview
There have been some enquiries about the status of the latest version of the Fancy Bitmap Font Generator, so I wanted to post a screenshot and let you all know how it’s coming along. First of all, it’s easiest to explain how the next version of the software will work with a quick screenshot;
Preview of the Fancy Bitmap Font Generator 2 (Click to Enlarge)
In order to accommodate for all types of fonts and outputs, and even for the inclusion of the ability to make a sprite-sheet out of separate images (and apply an effect to each sprite for instance), I’ve developed a modular plugin system. It won’t allow for absolutely anything, but I think it’s a compromise between everything you would probably want to be able to do and not making it so complicated that it almost becomes a scripting environment.
So, how will it work? The process of generating a (bitmap font) sprite sheet is made up of a series of steps. First you generate the individual tiles into one large list of small tiles – these can be generated from a system font or loaded from files. Next up, you have the ability to apply FX to each individual tile in turn. The next step is to turn the large list of small icons into a small list of layers for your final image. Typically, you will just have a background layer, and then a layer that sticks all of your tiles together. We’ll include a couple of basic plugins for ‘fixed spacing’ or ‘smallest spritesheet’ etc. Next up, you can apply an effect to each of the completed layers which will apply to the layer as a whole. Finally, you can tell the software when / where / how to save the files (these will also be like the other plugin lists in the final version).
As each of the 5 stages loads a list of modules from external DLL files, this means that there is, theoretically, no end to what you can achieve in each of the stages.
If you have any requirements that I might not be aware of for the next version of the software so that it suits your project, I’d love to hear them. It’s best to hear them now while I’m compiling plug-ins than in a month’s time when it’s all wrapped up!
Thanks for checking in.
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About John Wordsworth
John Wordsworth has been developing for the web for over 12 years and has considerable experience in software development and game programming across a number of platforms. With a PhD in Applied Mathematics and a BSc in Mathematics with Computer Science, John has spent his fair share of time behind a computer keyboard.
Hi John,
This is a really great piece of software. In the comments section of the original version’s page, you mention that the next version of the software will allow you to save each character as a separate tile or compose them into a layer any way that you like. Would it be possible to also export a definition file specifying the rectangles of each character?
Thanks
Hi Matthew, thanks for the positive comments about the software. This is something that I’m definitely hoping to implement in this version of the soft. I’m not sure where best to implement it with the current model, but it will be there somewhere!
Just out of interest, where do you intend to use the output sprite fonts? I’m always interested to look into SDKs / software that I could adapt my software for! If you have other ideas for features for the software, it would be great to hear from you.
Thanks again.
Hi John,
This is a very nice tool, and I’m looking forward to the new version. We are using it for projects in XNA 4.0 on Windows Phone 7.
One major shortcoming that we have come up against is the lack of support for characters above 0x7F. We at least need support for characters up to 0xFF to support European characters with diacritics. Given the limitations of XNA’s Sprite texture importer, I don’t see our other (lesser) requirements of Unicode and kerning support being possible unfortunately.
Thanks for the tool. It has helped us a lot, and further support for extra character ranges would be brilliant.
Steve ‘Sly’ Williams
Great to see that you are still working on this, it creates great fonts!
There is just one problem I have at the moment and that is the inability to create the characters for 0×80 – 0xFF. This is much needed in the rest of the world I’m affraid