Creating new fonts

[Lithl]

How does one create new fonts for FG2? I'm crazy, and got it into my head to add in a few fonts to my Exalted ruleset that rendered Old Realm (Dreams of the First Age) and High/Low Realm (Player's Guide, first edition)

If the fonts are rendered from bitmaps, I can actually do it (and at a guess, it seems they are, considering "bmpfonts.xml"). I just don't know how to create the file format they're in.

[joeru]

There's a link to the font generator on this page (miraculously, under the headline Fonts):

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/modguide/resources.xcp

[Tenian]

Some fonts render better than others. Especially at smaller point sizes. Attempts to render "Mentor" the font WOTC uses for 4E stat blocks produced rather poor results at lower point scales. A look alike font ended up working better.

[Lithl]

There's a link to the font generator on this page (miraculously, under the headline Fonts):

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/modguide/resources.xcpHmm... that's not what I need. In order to do what I'm looking to, I need to be able to edit the BMP directly in Photoshop (and fgf isn't just bmp renamed). That utility just turns a ttf/otf into an fgf.

If turning a bmp into an fgf, or directly editing an fgf in Photoshop isn't an option, I guess I'd have to create a TTF from scratch, and draw the glyphs manually.

[Zeus]

The font generator tool is what you need as previously posted. Be mindful the tool will only work with fonts that you have registered with the Windows OS.

In addition the tool will automatically close once you have convertered a single font. This means if your planning to convert lots of fonts get ready to open/re-open the fgfont convertor program many times. If the author of the tool ever reads this post please, please, please change this in a future release, its very painful to use otherwise.

As Tenian stated some fonts (not all) render particulalry badly at lower pixel sizes (Mentor, Mentor Sans were particulalry bad at pixel sizes of 8-10) so be prepared to experiment.

I would suggest alternative fonts but as I am not familiar with the Exalted ruleset and don't have any of the PDFs to reference, I can't help. Once you know they name of the font though, let me know and I'll tell you if I know of/can source an equivalent. Either that or use something like FontForge and make your own clone.

[Tenian]

Here's what Mentor ends up looking like. Both the Gray bar area and the white area are rendered the same, just different point sizes. You can see how badly mangled the smaller size (8 or 9) ends up.

[Foen]

Not only is point size an issue, but fonts with strange spacing requirements (like Leonardo Script, used in CoC) are awful - the FGF format expects the bounds of each letter to be closely cropped.

[Lithl]

The font generator tool is what you need as previously posted.No, as I stated, that's NOT what I need, since High/Low/Old realm aren't actually fonts, I just want to make fonts out of them.

This (https://www.wraithbane.com/Exalted/images/realm%20script.png) is an example of High Realm. (Cha Pa Te Re, or "Chapter")

If there's no way to edit the bitmap directly, then I would need to generate a new font using the High/Low/Old Realm script images to define the glyphs, and then use that tool to turn my new font into an fgf.

[joeru]

If there's no way to edit the bitmap directly,
Nope.


then I would need to generate a new font using the High/Low/Old Realm script images to define the glyphs,
Yep.


and then use that tool to turn my new font into an fgf.
Yep.

[Zeus]

No, as I stated, that's NOT what I need, since High/Low/Old realm aren't actually fonts, I just want to make fonts out of them.

This (https://www.wraithbane.com/Exalted/images/realm%20script.png) is an example of High Realm. (Cha Pa Te Re, or "Chapter")

If there's no way to edit the bitmap directly, then I would need to generate a new font using the High/Low/Old Realm script images to define the glyphs, and then use that tool to turn my new font into an fgf.

OK. I understand what you want to do.

I don't believe their is a direct method but maybe a developer/sage could provide some input on the FGF format.

You could convert the PDF to something like Postscript and then extract the glyphs using FontForge to create your TTF quite quickly.

I used the above process to create outline traces of the elvish and dwarven script from D&D 4e to create a custom set of TTFs (for personal use) which I then subsequently converted to fgf format for use with FG2.

Depending on what size your after will really determine how good they look. A bit hit n miss but wirth a try I guess.

Also the script looks like it reads top down, given FG2 renders text left to right how will you achieve this?

[Lithl]

Thanks for the help, I got it working. Attached image is "Te E Se T" => "test" in the chat at three sizes. Yes, as you said, the script is mean to be read vertically, but it doesn't look terrible laid out horizontally. The only real problem is that some glyphs end up being rather thin (like 5, which is essentially a vertical bar)

I ended up extracting the images from the PDF with Adobe Acrobat, and then pasting them into a TTF with High Logic FontCreator

Although I got it working fine with High Realm, I think I'm going to stick with that, and not add Low Realm or Old Realm. Low Realm is apparently not stored in the PDF as images, which means they'll be a lot harder to extract. Old Realm has 2 symbols for many syllables (and O, Ka, and Cha have 4!), and I already ran out of space in standard ASCII for High Realm. I had to use ¡ (upside down exclamation mark; Alt+0161) for Yu, but I managed to fit the other syllables into mappings with normaly keyboard characters on an English keyboard.