This program will allow you to generate bitmap fonts from TrueType fonts. The application generates both image files and character descriptions that can be read by a game for easy rendering of fonts.

Bitmap Font Maker
Bitmap Font Editor
Bitmap Font Generator

The program is freeware and open source, but a donation is greatly appreciated.

If you don't have an image viewer capable of reading TGA, PNG, or DDS files, I recommend PUPP, another free product from AngelCode.

Font In Cocos Creator there're three types of font assets supported: System font, Dynamic font and Bitmap font. System font is not include in the project, it's a special asset type that only tells the platform the game is running to provide the default font from operation system.

Download Mobile Bitmap Fonts for free. The framework that allows to draw a text in any color, measure a text and format a text on the screens of mobile devices using various bitmap fonts. You can create any fonts with any character sets by easy-to-use Bitmap Font Editor. Bitmap fonts in Cocos2d-x The Cocos2d-x CCLabelBMFont class uses bitmap images for the characters, unlike CCLabelTTF which uses true type font files. The bitmap image we are using here was created with the program GlyphDesigner, and in essence it works just as a sprite sheet does.

Downloads

Features

Support for complete Unicode 13.0 character set, as well as 8 bit OEM character sets
Optimal use of texture space, i.e. as little unused area as possible
Support for kerning pairs
Easy to use file format, either normal text file or xml files. Binary format is available for those that prefer that
8bit or 32bit texture output (TGA, PNG, and DDS files)
Option for packing 4 layers of font images into 1 32bit texture. Needs special shader to render with, but saves a lot of memory
Anti-aliasing, both through Windows native font smoothing and super sampling
Configurable padding and spacing between characters
Select characters from text file, supports both UTF8 and UTF16 encoded files
Generate bitmap font from command line
Import colored images as characters, supports: bmp, jpg, tga, dds, png
Optional outline to font characters
Optional packing of characters with outline into 1 channel. Needs special shader to unpack during rendering, but saves a lot of memory
Use TrueType fonts directly from the file without installing them first
Autofit font size for target texture size

Documentation

The manual is included with the tool, but for those who wish to take a look at it without installing the tool first it is also available here. The manual describes bothhow to use the tool and the file format of the generated files.

Source code

The source code is available under the widely known zlib license. The svn repositoryis hosted at SourceForge.net

Get the code by pointing your svn client at: http://svn.code.sf.net/p/bmfont/code/trunk.

If you want any support with the code, then please visit the forums.

Observation on virus alert

Avira anti-virus has been known to give a virus alert when scanning bmfont.exe or the installer. This is a falsepositive generated by their heuristic functions that tries to predict and catch unknown viruses. I've already reportedthis false positive to Avira a few times and each time they recognize it as a false positive, however for some reasonthe problem comes back months later (presumably when they update the heuristic functions).

If anyone has any idea what I need to change in the code to prevent this false alert I would very much like to know.

Tutorials & Resources

Here are a some links to other resources that provide information or tools that are useful for those interested in bitmap fonts.

Bitmap Fonts by Andreas Jönsson
Bitmap Fonts by Chad Vernon
Quick tutorial: Variable width bitmap fonts by Promit
BMFont OpenGL Implementation by legolas558
bmfont BlitzMax module by Mike Wiering
C# XML serializer for font loading by DeadlyDan
C# XML BMFont reader by Antoine Guilbaud
BMFont to C source code converter by Lars Ole Pontoppidan
PlayOnLinux - can be used to run BMFont on Linux
GlyphCombiner - a Mac OS X tool by Binary Blobs for combining multiple bitmap fonts into a single atlas

The following are some other tools that also generate output in the same format that I came up with for BMFont and that is widely usedin the industry today.

Littera - free web application
Glyph Designer - paid app for Mac
ShoeBox - free tool written with Adobe Air
Hiero - open source tool written in Java

Changes

1.14 - 2021/01/05
- Fixed crash with large fonts when Windows API incorrectly reported negative width for glyphs.
- Improved handling of out-of-memory conditions.
- Fixed crash that could occur when exporting unicode characters above 0x10000 with kerning pairs.
- Fixed crash when command line argument -c was a relative path and the configuration included font file or image files.
- Fixed crash when saving configuration file with added font file from the same directory.
- Corrected the cell height when using fixed height and supersampling.
- Fixed compatibility with Windows XP.
- Fixed scaling issues and cropping when using height scale with render from outline.
- Fixed application freeze when generating very large fonts.
- The source code is now available under the zlib license.
- Converted application to compile for Windows with Unicode to better support file and font names with international characters.
- Updated libpng to 1.6.19.
- Updated zlib to 1.2.8.
- Updated libjpeg to 9a.
- Updated libsquish to 1.13.
- Fixed a problem with exporting glyphs for some international languages.
- Added support for Unicode 13.0.
- A 64bit build is now available to support huge bitmap fonts that require more than 2GB of memory to generate.
- The default glyph for invalid characters is now properly rasterized when not rendered from outline too.
- The status bar now shows the glyph id for the characters.
- Fixed corrupt glyphs when rendering very large fonts (1000+ px) from glyph outline.
- Added autofit that automatically determines the max font size that fits in defined texture size.
- Fixed crash on startup if default font doesn't have the Unicode chars in range 0-255.
- Added support for file paths with Unicode characters.
- Improved support for kerning pairs in true type fonts that store them as ranges.

1.13 - 2012/08/12
- Added option to export fonts using fixed cell heights for easier post processing.
- Improved support for exporting kerning pairs for true types that use the GPOS table instead of KERN table.
- Kerning pairs are no longer exported for char ids that have been overridden with imported icons.
- Improved glyph packing when there are large out of proportion images.
- The final texture no longer has boxes around glyphs when a channel is inverted or set to one.
- Fixed subpixel clipping in supersampled glyphs.
- Implemented an alternative glyph rasterization based on the true type outline.
- The rasterization from true type outline doesn't clip glyphs that extend above or below cell height.
- Allow disabling hinting when rasterizing from true type outline.
- Re-added option for rendering with ClearType with native Windows font engine.
- Fixed bug where saved XML format sometimes didn't close the 'kernings' tag if there were no kerning pairs.
- Fixed bug with duplicate kerning pairs in non-unicode font output.
- Fixed problem where double-clicking in file dialog would sometimes change the selected characters under the mouse.
- Enabled run-length encoding for TGA output.
- Added option to force xoffset and yoffset to 0, and xadvance to width.
- It's now possible to open the app directly with a configuration file from the file explorer.
- When loading a bmfc file the characters are now selected accordingly.
- The font dialog no longer lists rotated fonts, i.e. those prefixed with @.
- Added support for working with a font from a file so it is no longer necessary to install it first.
- Imported images are now stored with a relative path in the configuration file.
- Fixed clipping that could occur on left and right edges when generating a font in italic mode.
- Kerning pairs can now be optionally left out in case they are defunct in the TrueType font.

Cocos Creator Bitmap Font