[DoomCRAP] ZDoom Font Generator

[Nash]

Very nice. I'm loving it so far. It's already saved me about the usual 2-4 hours I normally spend to create a font, and I used that time to *gasp* enjoy real-life!

Does anyone have any tips on how to create a working CONFONT though? No matter how I size the font and adjust the cell sizes, I can never get it to work correctly, especially in the controls menu.

(The other non-text glyphs are missing too, but it shouldn't be hard to add that from imagetool's confont.pcx)

[Graf Zahl]

Confonts are not scaled so with the code as it is there is no way to make the font work in both the menu and the console.

[Tormentor667]

Success, it works. I turned Bitstream Vera Sans Mono into a confont - it's a little broken in the menus, but looks great in the console.

Could you send me that? Or upload it? I'd like to test something.

[bagheadspidey]

Very nice. I'm loving it so far. It's already saved me about the usual 2-4 hours I normally spend to create a font, and I used that time to *gasp* enjoy real-life!

Thanks!

Does anyone have any tips on how to create a working CONFONT though? No matter how I size the font and adjust the cell sizes, I can never get it to work correctly, especially in the controls menu.

Yes. doomfontgen does not currently create palettes correctly for confonts. Until I get this fixed, here's what you can do:

First, download the Gimp. Windows users can get it here - http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

1 - Create a confont in doomfontgen and save it as a PCX.
2 - Open the PCX with the Gimp.
3 - From the menu, select "Image -> Mode -> Greyscale"
4 - From the menu, select "Image -> Mode -> Indexed..."
5 - Make sure "Generate optimum palette" is checked and "color dithering" is set to none. Click OK.

Now, save the pcx. It should work fine as a CONFONT now.

If you want to see whats going on here, select (from the menu) "Dialogs -> Colormap" after step 2. Take a look at the dialog that pops up. Leave it open and look at it again after step 5.

(The other non-text glyphs are missing too, but it shouldn't be hard to add that from imagetool's confont.pcx)

Yeah, I was going to deal with this by using some line drawing characters from the unicode set. I may try to use some other little vector shapes (postscript, svg, or maybe wmf) for those, or some simple bitmaps. Not sure yet.

By the way, just in case you didn't notice, you can type in that textbox in the bottom right corner. For instance if you want to add the little selector for the menus, just throw a dash or something in the right spot in that textbox, and voila You can copy character maps that you like into a text editor and save them for later, then paste them back into that box when you want to use them. There are 4 example ones in the res/ directory.

[bagheadspidey]

-- IT'S UPDATE TIME AGAIN! --

New version is 0.2.3

* STCFN* font support - added option to save font as a folder full of images
* Fixed palette when exporting indexed console font (thanks, ImageMagick)
* Console font characters are now centered when using a variable width font

link - http://doomfontgen.sourceforge.net/

edit - by the way, that stuff i was talking about in my last post is fixed in this version. However, it is still useful: You can save confont images as truecolor, edit them, and then fix the palette using the above technique.

[Nash]

STCFN* export - YES YES YES ! ! ! ! ! ! No more wasting countless hours creating font lumps!

[Cutmanmike]

So can we have a step by step for idiots such as myself?

[bagheadspidey]

So can we have a step by step for idiots such as myself?

Yeah, a tutorial or two is definitely a good idea. Is there anything specific you're wondering about or having trouble with?

[Nash]

It appears that the fonts are anti-aliased upon export.

Could you possibly add an option to turn off anti-aliasing so the pixels remain crisp?

[Cutmanmike]

So can we have a step by step for idiots such as myself?

Yeah, a tutorial or two is definitely a good idea. Is there anything specific you're wondering about or having trouble with?

I generate the pcx file or whatever... then what?

[Enjay]

Then you use imagetool (unless that's been integrated now - haven't had time to check yet).

[bagheadspidey]

Then you use imagetool (unless that's been integrated now - haven't had time to check yet).

yeah, pretty much. Get imagetool ( http://zdoom.org/files/utils/imagetool.zip ) and read the readme, it is written very clearly and will probably help explain the purpose of this tool.

Better yet, get a graphics editing program that can handle pcx. Save pngs instead of pcx, and use the graphics editing program to add effects and texture to your font. Then save as paletted pcx, and THEN use imagetool.

After using imagetool, of course, you will need to use a wad editor to put the resulting lump in your wad.

I'll create some tutorials later.

It appears that the fonts are anti-aliased upon export.

Could you possibly add an option to turn off anti-aliasing so the pixels remain crisp?

That is definitely planned, however the platform this tool uses does not seem to support control over antialiased fonts. According to the documentation it is supposed to be able to do so, but it seems to be unsupported, at least under GTK. Maybe it works under Windows.

For now, the only workaround is to set the font antialiasing in control panel / gnome font preferences.

[Nash]

I can't get the neither the PNG nor PCX STCFN* export to work. It just creates an empty folder.

What's the correct way to do it? Or is it broken?

[Enjay]

I have the same problem.

[bagheadspidey]

weird, it works fine for me. Ill check it out.