This small program converts BMFont's "text format" .fnt font atlas files to GameMaker compatible (.font.gmx for GM:S, .yy for GMS2+) font atlas files.
This allows to make use of BMFont's numerous settings while having fonts that work as fast as those produced by GameMaker itself.
With GameMaker expecting fonts to be in a certain format, you'll need to do a bit of setup in BMFont' "export options" to produce compliant files:
- Check "force offsets to zero". GameMaker does not support vertical offsets in font glyphs, meaning that it cannot correctly interpret "clipped" format exported by default.
- Set "bit depth" to 32.
- Set channels (ARGB) to "glyph", "one", "one", "one" accordingly to produce white glyphs on transparent background.
- Set "font descriptor" to "Text".
- Set "textures" to "PNG".
- Set "texture width" and "texture height" to power-of-two (128, 256, 512, ...) values that are sufficient for your font to fit onto a single "page". Use "Visualize" option from main menu to check.
If you do not have an existing font configuration, you can also use the included fnt_test.bmfc as a starting point.
Once your font is configured accordingly, export a bitmap font to a .fnt file (also creates a .png atlas alongside of it), and drag the .fnt file onto BmFontToGMX' executable.
A same-named .font.gmx file will appear along with an accordingly named copy of the atlas.
You can then import the file onto GameMaker: Studio exactly as you would do with a GMS-created .font.gmx. As long as you do not tinker with the generated resource via GMS itself, it will remain unchanged though compilations.
For additional convenience, consider placing .bmfc and .fnt in the fonts subdirectory of the project, so that newly generated .font.gmx overwrites the previous version of the font file used by the project.