Westwood Font Format v3

Westwood Font Format v3

Format type	Font
Max glyph count	256
Minimum glyph size (pixels)	0×0
Maximum glyph size (pixels)	255×255
Metadata?	None
Bitmap glyphs?	Yes
Vector glyphs?	No
Compressed glyphs?	No
Hidden data?	Yes
Games	Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny Lands of Lore III The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge Dune II Command & Conquer Command & Conquer Red Alert Command & Conquer Sole Survivor

This is the third type of bitmap font created by Westwood Studios, used in the Lands of Lore and Legend of Kyrandia series and in their early RTS games. It is a 4-bit-per-pixel font with a variable amount of characters, which allows the separate symbols to specify their width, height and Y-offset.

File format

Header

The font format starts with the following header.

Offset	Data type	Name	Description
0x00	UINT16LE	Size	File size.
0x02	BYTE	DataFormat	Data format. 0x00 for v3, 0x02 for v4.
0x03	BYTE	SigByte1	Signature byte. Always 0x05.
0x04	BYTE	SigByte2	Signature byte. Always 0x0E.
0x05	BYTE	SigByte3	Signature byte. Always 0x00.
0x06	UINT16LE	OffsetsListOffset	Offset of the array of data offsets.
0x08	UINT16LE	WidthsListOffset	Offset of the array of symbol widths
0x0A	UINT16LE	FontOffsetStart	Start address of the font data. Unused in v3, since the addresses in the OffsetsListOffset array are absolute. In v4, offsets are relative to this value.
0x0C	UINT16LE	HeightsListOffset	Offset of the array containing the symbol heights and Y-offsets.
0x0E	UINT16LE	Unknown	Unknown. Always 0x1012.
0x10	BYTE	Unknown	Unknown. Always 0x00.
0x11	BYTE	NrOfChars	Number of characters. Actually, this is the byte value of the last character in the list, so the real number of characters is this value plus one.
0x12	BYTE	Height	Overall font symbols maximum height, in pixels.
0x13	BYTE	Width	Overall font symbols maximum width, in pixels.

Following this header are the referenced arrays and the font data, normally in this order:

• Array of UINT16LE values indicating the offset of the data for each symbol, relative to the start of the file. The start offset of this list is specified by OffsetsListOffset.
• Array of byte values indicating the symbol widths, in pixels. The start offset of this list is specified by WidthsListOffset.
• Array containing two bytes per entry; the first being the Y-offset, the second the height in pixels. The start offset of this array is specified by HeightsListOffset.
• Actual symbol data referenced in the offsets list.

However, since the game just follows the offsets as it reads them, this order probably doesn't really matter.

The fonts could technically be pushed slightly beyond their normal limit of 65535 bytes, by making sure the last symbol offset referred to in the index is still below that maximum. Though there is no guarantee that the game will reserve enough space to fully read such large font files into memory, and third party apps to view or edit the font may have trouble identifying such files, since the file size saved in the header will always be incorrect.

Optimisation

The font data is uncompressed, but it is optimised by making the offsets for any identical symbols in the font refer to the same data. The use of this technique means that very little space is lost by including the normally unusable symbols range of 0 to 31. Most of these indices are filled with the same one or two filler symbols, which will each only be saved once despite being used dozens of times. This also allows fonts with no difference in upper and lower case to expose the same image data for both, with barely any increase in file size.

This optimisation technique can actually be used on any type with indexed frames, in any game, as long as the game doesn't do any elaborate checks on the expected data length.

Image data

The actual font data is 4 bit per pixel, and always uses the minimum stride per line, so, for example, a font with a width of 5 will require 3 bytes to contain all five nybbles, and, as is common for image formats in general, will have these three bytes for each line, without optimising a next line's start-nybble into the unused end of the previous line's byte. The general method of calculating the minimum stride for any bit-per-pixel value under 8 is (width * bpp + 7) / 8.

For each byte, the lowest nybble is the leftmost of the two pixels, which might seem counterintuitive when compared to the way the bytes are viewed in a hex editor.

Tools

The following tools are able to work with files in this format.

Name	Platform	View images in this format?	Convert/export to another file/format?	Import from another file/format?	Access hidden data?	Edit metadata?	Notes
Westwood Font Editor	Windows	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	N/A	Automatically trims off the top of the characters on save, and saves the trimmed amount as Y-offset.
Engie File Converter	Windows	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	N/A	Automatically trims off the top of the characters on save, and saves the trimmed amount as Y-offset. This font type was added to Engie to allow creation of font sheets.