This won't help you with your DeluxePaint problem... but http://www.fontstruct.com makes it incredibly easy to create pixel fonts in TrueType format. Could make modern software more usable for your purposes, and naturally your fonts will also be directly supported by Allegro, etc.

Too bad that Fontstruct sucks at (a) encoding and (b) hinting/fine-tuning, which makes it kinda useless for what I'M trying to do (create truetype fonts based on the IBM/Tandy/etc. ROM character sets), but for basic pixel fonts it's more than adequate.

I actually never need to make TTF fonts. Allegro supports bitmapped fonts, so I just do them at double the necessary resolution so they upscale nicely. Making textures that work with Allegro's font processing is very simple to do and pretty much hasn't changed in the 13 years I've been using Allegro for. ;)

Also, upscaling is easy when using software like Inkscape. You just import your bitmap, fit the bitmap pixels to Inkscape's grid, then draw in all the shapes onto that grid to match the shape of everything. :)

This effort in making custom fonts for DP2E is mostly to speed up prototyping my game stuff, as well as to make it faster to put together the game stats and such for ADG episodes, since as it stands, I have a page of font glyphs and literrally have to grab brushes of each individual character and place them pixel-accurately. x_x;

Ah, QBASIC... still useful for whipping together little programs like this in under six hours. ^_^

Still have no idea how the auto-kerning works or why a huge amount of the data in the file and glyph headers seems to go ignored, but regardless, I can make my own fonts for Deluxe Paint 2E now with minimal effort... so long as my fonts aren't anything too complicated. (None of them are, since once your font starts to get elaborate enough, it's better to use modern software. :P )

I can upload this thing as source code if anyone's curious and wants to give it a run with QBASIC. I've misplaced my copy of QuickBASIC so I can't compile it at the moment, though I can just copy QuickBASIC over from my older system at some point if someone REALLY wants a binary version.

All that said, I'm probably one of maybe a tiny handful of people who still use DP2E so I'm well aware I may be the only person on this forum who cares. ;)

And yes, I use DOSBox for non-gaming stuff. I'm well aware that's not what it was designed for but I've yet to run into any problems doing this and I almost always run my backup routines immediately following just in case something goes wrong the next time. :)

Gemini000 wrote:

All that said, I'm probably one of maybe a tiny handful of people who still use DP2E so I'm well aware I may be the only person on this forum who cares. 😉

I'd be the last person to urge people away from their old software as long as it still does the job, but have you checked out GrafX2? it's a modern, free and open-source spiritual successor to DP. Just ran across it yesterday and it looks potentially useful for a little CGA project I've been working on.

I've thought about trying out GrafX2, but there's something about the interface that just urks me for some reason that I've never been able to quite put my finger on. Being unable to use custom fonts with DP2E was probably the major sticking point for me and the only major reason why I was ever considering using other software.

However, with the way games are now and with my plans for future projects, DP2E more-so serves to prototype or put together the basics of something before using other software to bring it up to maximum quality. I use Inkscape for high-res design work and making finished game art, while I use an old copy of Paint Shop Pro 7 AE for artistic stuff or to do basic conversion/translucency/text work. 99% of the graphics you see on ADG that aren't game footage start life in DP2E and are then brought into PSP to add translucent effects, drop shadows, etc.

My apologies for reviving this thread. I am one of those small handful of people who use DP2E and greatly interested in using the font editor.

So, Gemini000. If you could upload the source code or provided a link to it on your webpage that would be greatly appreciated. I am using QBASIC under DOSBox , so the source code version would be fine.

Many Thanks
-ArvinMac

Source code is attached to this reply. :B

I haven't touched this thing since I made the fonts I needed for Ancient DOS Games and the game I'm working on, so I kinda forget how it works. Fortunately, I tend to write little pieces of info to remind me of the basic functionality of my own stuff just in case so it shouldn't be TOO hard to figure out. You may want to experiment with copies of the fonts which come with DP2E before making one from scratch. If I do remember though, one of the bugs I didn't bother fixing is that if you resize a glyph that has data in it you may corrupt said data, which won't affect the rest of the file just the specific glyph you're working on. This is because DP2E mono fonts store data in blocks of 8 pixels per byte, going horizontally first then vertically, but every new line starts on a new byte, so if you have a glyph that's 10x8, it actually requires 16 bytes of font data because each line is two bytes large and simply ignores everything past the 10th bit.

Thanks again. As you suggested I am going to experiment with copies of DP's default font(s) first and I am sure it should not be too hard figure out.