Westwood Font Editor
Platform | Windows / Mono |
---|---|
Release date | 2016/11/22 |
Homepage | Project folder on nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com |
Download | Releases folder on nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com |
Games |
The Westwood Font Editor is an editor specifically designed for editing indexed bitmap fonts. It is developed by Nyerguds. It can edit fonts from a very wide variety of games, though the majority of supported types are those from the games developed by Westwood Studios and Sierra/Dynamix.
Due to the fact the entire editor is built on manipulating 8-bit images, there is no support planned for Westwood's later high-colour font formats.
Contents
Development and license
The program is written in C# on the .Net framework v3.5. All code in the editor that was specifically written for the editor is released under the WTF Public License, meaning it can be used without restriction. A few components taken from online resources, as well as an ini reader originally written by Nyerguds for another project, have similarly permissive licenses, mentioned in the tool's readme and/or the actual source code files.
The tool was originally created to edit the font files in Command & Conquer, but was soon expanded to support all known indexed bitmap font types created by Westwood Studios. After a request from the translation community at OldGamesItalia, research was started on implementing the fonts of the Sierra/Dynamix games. As cooperation with OldGamesItalia continued, increasingly more fonts of old DOS games were added.
Use
The tool is distributed as a simple .zip file to be unpacked in a new folder. Once unpacked, the included .exe file runs the program.
It is a straightforward pixel editor, with tile selection on the left, the editor in the middle, and colour selection on a palette to the right. In addition to a series of generated palettes, palettes can be added in classic 6-bit RGB 256-colour palette format, the format used by most Westwood Studios games. For 4-bit fonts, one such 256-colour palette can be used as a 16-entry set of 16-colour palettes, with names for these sub-palettes given by an accompanying ini file.
Font modding
The font editor can open and edit fonts, can convert fonts between all the supported types, and, starting from v1.12, also contains the ability to create new font files from scratch. There is currently no import or export function to normal image types, though the font editor does have clipboard support for both copying and pasting symbols, and for copying the bitmap generated by the editor's preview pane.
Since the Font Editor's main purpose is translations of games to languages that require new characters or new character variations with diacritics, it features a list of all known 8-bit ASCII-compatible text encodings, so the list at the side can accurately show the characters to create no matter the targeted code page. The preview pane, likewise, adapts to this chosen text encoding to convert the typed text to 8-bit font indices, so the preview text can be generated correctly.
Note that like many game files, fonts are often stored in game archives that require them to be extracted first. In fact, some of the supported games have no external font files, and the font data needs to be extracted from the exe file to allow editing it, and reinserted afterwards.
Text generating
Because the font editor's preview pane offers the ability to copy the generated preview text, the editor is also frequently used for reconstructing text used on images that is not in the games as actual font files. The basic method is to reconstruct the font using the available text and generate the new text using the preview text box. This technique was first used on the build icons of Command & Conquer in the Ukranian translation pack.
Some new features were added specifically for this use. The preview pane got an added option to copy its contents with transparent background, and as of version 1.12.3, the editor has a "drop shadow" function which can generate shadow under text by adding copies underneath it at specified offsets in a specified colour. Notably, this allows adding shadows that could not be added in the font itself because they overlap with neighbouring symbols.
The shadow feature was developed for the cutscenes of Sherlock Holmes and the Serrated Scalpel because the thick text shadows in the game's cutscenes are comprised of up to twenty copies of the original text image, which would be extremely tedious to add by hand.
Supported types
As of version 1.13.3, the editor supports the following types:
- Westwood Font Format v1 (Nightmare on Elm Street, Circuit's Edge, DragonStrike, Wargame Construction Set)
- Westwood Font Format v2 (BattleTech, Eye of the Beholder 1/2)
- Westwood Font Format v3 (Dune II, Lands of Lore 1/2/3, Legend of Kyrandia 1/2/3, Command & Conquer, Red Alert)
- Westwood Font Format v4 (Tiberian Sun)
- Dune 2000 Font (as "IG Font", since this is not a Westwood Studios format)
- Westwood BitFont Format (Nox, Red Alert 2) and its Unicode variant (Red Alert 2)
- Transylvania Font (Transylvania 1/2)
- Dynamix Font Format v1 (Pete Rose Pennant Fever, Skyfox II, Arctic Fox)
- Dynamix Font Format v2-v3 (Abrams Battle Tank, A-10 Tank Killer, Caveman Ugh-Lympics, Die Hard, F-14 Tomcat, MechWarrior...)
- Dynamix Font Format v4-v5 (Red Baron, Rise of the Dragon, Heart of China, Willy Beamish, Incredible Machine, Betrayal at Krondor...)
- Dynamix Font Format v6 (Front Page Sports Football Pro)
- Dynamix Space Quest V Font (Space Quest V)
- Centurion Font (Centurion: Defender of Rome)
- KORT Font (King Arthur's Knights Of the Round Table)
- Mythos Visage Format (uncompressed frames only) (The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes 1/2, Bodyworks Voyager)
- Kings of the Beach Font (Kings of the Beach)
- Cover Girl Strip Poker Font
Links
- All modding tools
- Graphics tools
- Wargame Construction Set
- A Nightmare On Elm Street
- DragonStrike
- Circuit's Edge
- BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge
- Eye of the Beholder
- Eye of the Beholder 2: The Legend of Darkmoon
- The Legend of Kyrandia
- The Legend of Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate
- The Legend of Kyrandia 3: Malcolm's Revenge
- Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
- Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny
- Lands of Lore III
- Dune II
- Command & Conquer
- Command & Conquer Red Alert
- Command & Conquer Sole Survivor
- Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun
- Dune 2000
- Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
- Nox
- Pete Rose Pennant Fever
- Skyfox II
- Arctic Fox
- Abrams Battle Tank
- The Train: Escape to Normandy
- Die Hard
- Caveman Ugh-Lympics
- F-14 Tomcat
- Suzuki's RM250 Motocross
- MechWarrior
- A-10 Tank Killer
- A-10 Tank Killer v1.5
- Ghostbusters II
- DeathTrack
- David Wolf: Secret Agent
- Stellar 7
- Rise of the Dragon
- Heart of China
- The Adventures of Willy Beamish
- Red Baron
- Betrayal at Krondor
- Nova 9: The Return of Gir Draxon
- The Incredible Machine
- Sid & Al's Incredible Toons
- Front Page Sports Football
- Front Page Sports Football Pro
- Space Quest V
- Transylvania
- Transylvania II: The Crimson Crown
- Centurion: Defender of Rome
- King Arthur's K.O.R.T.
- Bodyworks Voyager: Missions in Anatomy
- The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel
- Kings of the Beach