OT: Fixed size texture mapped fonts

I know it’s OT but there’s no texture mapped font specific list around so I assume this would be OT anywhere anyway.
What I’m talking about is fixed size texture mapped fonts like the ones used in the early NeHe tutorials.Unlike those txf fonts thos were pretty simpler to load and would suit the simple text needs of a game engine well anyway without the extra complexity of left/right bearings,ascents/descents,lingaps etc.
Well the only problem is how do people create the textures for these fonts so that they look well when rendered as simple evenly spaced quads?To put it simpler,how was the texture in the Nehe tut created?
Of course you’ll say: why not use the txf engine?Well it’s nice and all but rather complex for a game engine plus having the fonts in a texture gives you the chance to edit the with say gimp and make them look cooler(like glowing hot,ice cold,etc,etc).
I hope there’s a tool for this out there.Coding an app to render X fonts to tgas and save the font metrics was painfull enough.

There are a few programs out there that do that sort of thing.
http://is6.pacific.net.hk/~edx/texfont.htm

shows you one program you can use. However, I decided to expand on my tga header file and build in a font option using a tga graphic created within an opengl program that generated characters using the standard windows font glPrint routines such as those in nehe…

A bit roundabout but its one way of learning the different elements…

Check out my TGA Font Maker section on my site at : http://programming.swangen.co.uk/opengl/mini_projects/font_creator/
I’ve made the code as simple as possible… helps me recall why I did it at a later date :wink:

Tina

If you’re using Windows, you can open up Character Map (in start menu/programs/accessories/system tools), select your desired font, and take a screen shot. Then load the screen shot into an image editing program, and crop it to power-of-two dimensions. Then use this image as the font texture.

[This message has been edited by Aaron (edited 10-10-2002).]

tina:that first program looks like the complex approach I’m trying to avoid.Your program though looks more interesting.I haven’t looked at the code yet but I assume you use the developer section of targas to store character width,height,advance etc.,right?I used the same approach a while ago but changed it when I couldn’t find a way to create maps(w/o creating a tool myself that is).
aaron :pretty cool but I can’t find a way of changing the size and style of the font and the chars per line in the table.Is that possible?
Are there any other interesting apps out there?

[This message has been edited by zen (edited 10-10-2002).]