What is Bitmap Font :

Bitmap fonts have one concrete image,or a portion of texture atlas,assigned to each letter used by the font.This makes the font’s size fixed,it can scale up and down but not without loss of image quality.

Bitmap Font have the following advantages

  1. Extremely fast and simple to render.

  2. Unscaled bitmap fonts always give exactly the same output.

  3. Easier to create than other kinds.

You can generate bitmap font using Hiero Software . You can easily download(free of cost) Bitmap font generator Hiero Software (compatible with libgdx )from the link as

 http://code.google.com/p/libgdx/downloads/detail?name=hiero.jar

Working With Hiero-Bitmap Font Tool :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above screen shot describe the options available in Hiero. From the system option you can select one of given font type. And in sample Text, default values of characters will come in selected font type by you .You should edit or write only the required text in sample text (keeping in mind the wastage of memory with unused text). You can apply the effect from the effect option on the text.

After resizing your text, you must select the Glyph cache option where you set the page width and height and then click Reset Cache Button.

If u want to generate your custom Bitmap font, then you have to import the font type file(.ttf) from the File option in hiero.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now from the File option u can save the following files.

  1. Creatio.fnt (your gaming font file)

  2. Creatio.png (your text png file)

  3. Creatio.hiero(for the future modification purpose in above 2 files)

If u want to more play with hiero then follow the below link and go through the Tutorial-Bitmap-Fonts-and-Hiero pdf. http://www.learn-cocos2d.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Tutorial-Bitmap-Fonts-and-Hiero.pdf

You can check the effect of Bitmap Font (score of play screen) in the below app:

 

I hope u will enjoy with Hiero while generating the Bitmap file.

-By

Arvind Kaushal

Android Developer