I would like to know how to open the file type: .fnt
"romuln28.fnt" for example
File .fnt
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thunderchero
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Hi anyone interested in using new fonts within BOTF
May have cracked this one.
Each empire has 4 font files, but the 9 pt font can be ignored as it contains race colour and is used on map screen (unless you want to change colour, that is). Sadly, can't change colour on the larger fonts, (I think 15 pt, 20 pt and 28 pt) as these are just grey and colour is added elsewhere within BOTF.
However, if you open them with a hex editor and remove the first 260 Bytes (forgive my lack of technical expertise, but to me that's the first 16 rows of 16 double digit hex numbers, plus the first 4 double hex digits from the 17th row) and save the file with a tga extension, you will be able to open it in Photoshop, or any graphics editor that can handle TGAs.
You will then see an image file with grey letters on a black background in a green grid/matrix. The tricky bit is replacing the characters with letters of equal width, but I have started this with simple cut and paste. Have also used lighter shade of grey to brighten characters and it works!
You need to save as 16 bit tga first and then, using your hex editor add back the 260 bytes removed earlier at the beginning of the file and now save it as it's original filename.fnt.
Winrar it back into stbof.res and away you go!!!
Have only changed A-M in upper case so far, but it works with new characters and brighter.
Hope this is of some interest.
Regards
Pigman
May have cracked this one.
Each empire has 4 font files, but the 9 pt font can be ignored as it contains race colour and is used on map screen (unless you want to change colour, that is). Sadly, can't change colour on the larger fonts, (I think 15 pt, 20 pt and 28 pt) as these are just grey and colour is added elsewhere within BOTF.
However, if you open them with a hex editor and remove the first 260 Bytes (forgive my lack of technical expertise, but to me that's the first 16 rows of 16 double digit hex numbers, plus the first 4 double hex digits from the 17th row) and save the file with a tga extension, you will be able to open it in Photoshop, or any graphics editor that can handle TGAs.
You will then see an image file with grey letters on a black background in a green grid/matrix. The tricky bit is replacing the characters with letters of equal width, but I have started this with simple cut and paste. Have also used lighter shade of grey to brighten characters and it works!
You need to save as 16 bit tga first and then, using your hex editor add back the 260 bytes removed earlier at the beginning of the file and now save it as it's original filename.fnt.
Winrar it back into stbof.res and away you go!!!
Have only changed A-M in upper case so far, but it works with new characters and brighter.
Hope this is of some interest.
Regards
Pigman
Just to confirm above method. I have successfully substituted Ferengi 15 and 20 pt fonts so far for Gorn interface in Birth of the Federation Mod and just have 28 pt to do.
Works very well and will allow me to use same font on screen graphics, buttons etc, to give a unified look.
Only thing I'm not so sure about is whether fonts can actually be made brighter. What seems to happen if you make characters brighter, is that the game has a max level for brightness and simply makes any unconverted characters correspondingly dull.
Once I've done 28 pt font, I will incorporate in Gorn interface and update the buttons done so far with new font and then post it in the Mod thread.
Regards
Pigman
Works very well and will allow me to use same font on screen graphics, buttons etc, to give a unified look.
Only thing I'm not so sure about is whether fonts can actually be made brighter. What seems to happen if you make characters brighter, is that the game has a max level for brightness and simply makes any unconverted characters correspondingly dull.
Once I've done 28 pt font, I will incorporate in Gorn interface and update the buttons done so far with new font and then post it in the Mod thread.
Regards
Pigman
Thought I'd do a little tutorial on this now that I've had success.
I have assumed that you will be able to use Winrar or similar to extract font files from stbof.res and after editing can then return them to same.
Have also assumed you can use a hex editor and a suitable graphics package to edit TGA graphics files.
Step 1
Having already extracted the fonts (all have file extension .FNT), you will need to open the font that you want to edit with your hex editor. Having done that you highlight the bytes that need removing from the file in order to be able to edit it in a graphics package.
Confirm delete and ignore warning about change of file size.
Step 2
Save your edited file , but with a TGA file extension!
Your original FNT file will be unchanged.
Step 3
Now you can edit the file in a graphics package. I'm using Photoshop Elements 2.0 as it can save TGA files in 16 bit.
You can now select a font from the text input part of your graphics package and can type onto the free black area of the graphics file.
I believe that the brightness of the characters is then reflected into the way BOTF displays the fonts, so I set the colour to grey at 90 % brightness. You can experiment as you wish. You can also try using colours. I haven't tried this yet as BOTF colours the fonts anyway, in the game and may just override your colours, or even crash the game.
Step 4
You can the cut and paste your new characters into their corresponding slots. Be careful not to overlap any of the outline/grid. The fun will be finding narrow enough fonts to fit in the spaces and you can't change the width of the boxes...I've tried!
You then save this file as a 16 bit TGA file (BOTF doesn't like TGAs of any other bit depth).
Step 5
Now some more hex editing. You need to put back the bytes removed in the first step.
Open both the original FNT file in your hex editor and the TGA file in same editor. You need to copy the bytes removed originally, from the FNT file, and then paste insert them back into the beginning of your edited TGA file.
Now save with the original font name and make sure you change extension to FNT.
You will now have a new font that you can Winrar back into stbof.res and away you go.
Here is the result using Aurora Bold Condensed on my new Gorn interface.
Hope this is useful to all you modders out there.
Regards
Pigman
I have assumed that you will be able to use Winrar or similar to extract font files from stbof.res and after editing can then return them to same.
Have also assumed you can use a hex editor and a suitable graphics package to edit TGA graphics files.
Step 1
Having already extracted the fonts (all have file extension .FNT), you will need to open the font that you want to edit with your hex editor. Having done that you highlight the bytes that need removing from the file in order to be able to edit it in a graphics package.
Confirm delete and ignore warning about change of file size.
Step 2
Save your edited file , but with a TGA file extension!
Your original FNT file will be unchanged.
Step 3
Now you can edit the file in a graphics package. I'm using Photoshop Elements 2.0 as it can save TGA files in 16 bit.
You can now select a font from the text input part of your graphics package and can type onto the free black area of the graphics file.
I believe that the brightness of the characters is then reflected into the way BOTF displays the fonts, so I set the colour to grey at 90 % brightness. You can experiment as you wish. You can also try using colours. I haven't tried this yet as BOTF colours the fonts anyway, in the game and may just override your colours, or even crash the game.
Step 4
You can the cut and paste your new characters into their corresponding slots. Be careful not to overlap any of the outline/grid. The fun will be finding narrow enough fonts to fit in the spaces and you can't change the width of the boxes...I've tried!
You then save this file as a 16 bit TGA file (BOTF doesn't like TGAs of any other bit depth).
Step 5
Now some more hex editing. You need to put back the bytes removed in the first step.
Open both the original FNT file in your hex editor and the TGA file in same editor. You need to copy the bytes removed originally, from the FNT file, and then paste insert them back into the beginning of your edited TGA file.
Now save with the original font name and make sure you change extension to FNT.
You will now have a new font that you can Winrar back into stbof.res and away you go.
Here is the result using Aurora Bold Condensed on my new Gorn interface.
Hope this is useful to all you modders out there.
Regards
Pigman