===========TheCheat v1.4============ =============By Ryusui============== ==http://theryusui.googlepages.com== ==DESCRIPTION== TheCheat is a custom bitmap font writer, inspired by Stefan Pettersson's own Bitmap Font Writer. The idea for the project began when I realized, thanks to a discussion on the RHDN forums, that nobody had written a dedicated tool for formatting VWF scripts. BFW is useful for previewing what a VWF will look like in a game, but it has no built-in formatting features: I found myself copying the bitmap text into The GiMP to manually check whether a page of text would fit into my project's text box. So I wrote this, and true to my habit of giving my utilities unusual names, I called it "TheCheat", after the Homestar Runner character. (Could've been worse. I could've called it "Fhqwhgads".) Rather than upstage Pettersson's work, the aim of TheCheat is simply to fill a wide-open gap in the translation hacker's toolbox. It accepts fonts in the same format as the original BFW; it may not be quite as pretty overall, but it gets the job done. Or so I hope. ^_^; ==SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS== -Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (get it at http://update.microsoft.com) ==WHAT'S NEW== v1.00 (09/06/2006): Initial release. v1.10 (09/07/2006): Added the "Show Background" checkbox, "Set Clip Rectangle Color" dialog and "Open Font Settings" dialog; implemented auto-parsing of non-BFW-format font images. v1.20 BETA (09/09/2006): Added a bunch of new features, including individual configuration files and a toolbox-style font settings window. Also fixed a bug where VWF characters 1 pixel wide were not being parsed properly. v1.21 (09/10/2006): Minor bugfix release; cut, copy and paste now function. v1.22 (09/10/2006): Select All added to the edit menu. v1.30 (09/10/2006): Font settings toolbox now appears in the taskbar; screen position is also saved. Config files of all kinds have been futureproofed; this and all future versions will be backwards- compatible with configuration files from all previous versions. "Fixed Width" has been added to font settings. v1.40 (10/07/2006): Table support has been added. "From File" now supports scripts formatted with and tags. "From File" now prompts for encoding (UTF-8, Shift-JIS or EUC). ==FILE MENU== Open Font (Ctrl+O): Load a font in BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG format. (Other formats may be compatible but are not tested.) Displays the open font settings dialog. Load Background (Ctrl+L): Load a background image in BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG format. (Other formats may be compatible but are not tested.) Load Table (Ctrl+T): Load a standard-format table for non-ASCII fonts. Select an encoding from the dialogue box to load the table with that encoding (most documents are compatible with UTF-8; however, many Japanese-language files require Shift-JIS). Delete Current Config File: Deletes the saved config file for the current font. Exit (Alt+F4): Close the program. ==EDIT MENU== Cut (Ctrl+X): Cuts selected text and moves it to the Clipboard. Copy (Ctrl+C): Copies selected text to the Clipboard. Paste (Ctrl+V): Inserts the contents of the Clipboard. Select All (Ctrl+A): Selects all text in the text box. From File: Loads text from a file. Files formatted with tags will be treated as containing multiple script entries which can be previewed using the Script Entries box ( tags will be stripped out). Select an encoding from the dialogue box to load the file with that encoding (most documents are compatible with UTF-8; however, many Japanese-language files require Shift-JIS). ==HELP== Readme (F1): Opens the Readme file. About: Displays the About Box. ==MAIN INTERFACE== Enter text in the text box on top and it will be printed in your custom font in the display window on the bottom using the settings in the settings toolbox. Click the "Font Settings" button to display the font settings toolbox. You can also use the scroll bar to scroll through the text displayed in the display window. The "Script Entries" box allows you to select which script out of a file formatted with tags will be displayed. ==FONT SETTINGS TOOLBOX== Space Width: How many pixels wide a single space is. X Offset: How many pixels the text will be offset from the left of the display window. Y Offset: How many pixels the text will be offset from the top of the display window. Line Spacing: How many pixels lines are offset by. Clip Width: The width of the clipping rectangle. Clip Height: The height of the clipping rectangle. Letter Spacing: How many pixels are inserted between characters. ASCII Start: The beginning of the ASCII-ordered set represented in the loaded font. Zoom Factor: Multiplies the display size of text and backgrounds in the display window by the factor given. Font Width (disabled when a BFW-format font is loaded): Adjust this to correct errors in the font display. Font Height (disabled when a BFW-format font is loaded): Adjust this to correct errors in the font display. Show Background: Toggles display of the loaded background image. Override Background Color: Toggles whether the background color of the font or a user-defined color is used. Enable Clipping: Select this to enable text clipping for formatting. Show Clip Rectangle: Select this to show the clipping rectangle. Force Transparency: Toggles whether the background color of the font is displayed as transparent. Fixed Width: Toggles whether the font is treated as variable width (VWF) or fixed width (FWF). Set Background Color: Allows you to change the color of the background displayed when "Override Background Color" is checked. Set Clip Rectangle Color: Allows you to change the color of the displayed clipping rectangle. ==OPEN FONT SETTINGS DIALOG== Bitmap Font Writer Format: Check this if the font image is in BFW format. Character Width: The horizontal space allotted to each individual character. Character Height: The vertical space allotted to each individual character. ==FORMAT SETTINGS DIALOG== UTF-8: Select this if the text file or table to be loaded is saved in UTF-8 format (works with most plain text files). Shift-JIS: Select this if the text file or table to be loaded is saved in Shift-JIS format (commonly used in Japanese-language files). EUC: Select this if the text file or table to be loaded is saved in EUC format (also Japanese but less common than Shift-JIS). ==USING THECHEAT== TheCheat uses the exact same image formatting as Bitmap Font Writer (although it supports more than just BMP format). A font image should consist of ASCII-ordered bitmap characters aligned across the bottom of the image, with an offset of one blank pixel across the top. Characters are parsed from the file using divider pixels as markers: the top-left pixel of the image is recognized as the color of the divider pixels. Draw dividers along the top of the image between each of the characters in the font; refer to sffont.gif for an example. As of v1.10, you can also import font rips ready for insertion into your project. Uncheck "Bitmap Font Writer Format" on the open font settings dialog and enter the width and height of your font. TheCheat will autodetect the width of every character in the font (please note that some fonts will require you to adjust ASCII Start to display them properly; a value of either 0 or 32 should work in most cases). TheCheat v1.20 will also save all settings made for all your fonts in individual configuration files, as well as the last font loaded. TheCheat v1.4 and onward support tables. If you load a font that is not in standard ASCII format, you can load a table file with the appropriate format to make the font display properly. In addition, you can load a text file with the text you wish to preview: as of v1.4, text files formatted with tags will be treated as having multiple strings that can be selected for viewing using the Script Entries box. Tables and text files can be loaded in either UTF-8, Shift-JIS or EUC format. You can also see how your font will look in the game's text box by loading a background image, which will be positioned at the top-left corner of the display window. Use the settings panel to align the text and clipping rectangle with the text box: now you can see if your VWF text will fit in the box! If you don't choose a backdrop, the background will be filled in using either the color of the bottom-left pixel of the font bitmap, or a color you define if "Override Background Color" is selected. TheCheat supports bitmap transparency. You can save your font with a transparent background in GIF or PNG format, or select "Force Transparency" to have TheCheat display the font's background color as transparent. ==ET CETERA== TheCheat was written by Ryusui of Watercrown Productions. Version 1.00 was released to the public on September 6th, 2006. After some strong positive feedback, Version 1.10 was released less than a day later on September 7th, 2006. Version 1.20 was completed on September 9th, 2006 and implements numerous new features as well as rectifies a minor bug in Version 1.10. Version 1.21 was compiled on September 10th, 2006 and rectifies a major oversight present in all previous versions: cut, copy and paste had never been actually implemented. Version 1.22 added Select All and nothing else; this was more an oversight correction than anything. Version 1.3, the third version released on September 10th, added futureproofing for configuration files (the parser will now take what information it can from the config file and quit when all the settings present in the file have been read) and added complete support for fixed-width fonts. After a long delay, TheCheat Version 1.4 was released on October 7th, 2006. TheCheat adds support for tables, as well as Shift-JIS and EUC encoding (previously, only UTF-8 was supported). In addition, text files can be formatted with tags and viewed as seperate strings. Neither Ryusui nor Watercrown Productions assumes or implies any connection of any sort to The Brothers Chaps and/or Harmless Junk, Inc. And if the aforementioned has any problem with the name, just PM Ryusui on romhacking.net or boards.acmlm.org with your issue and I'll change it right away. (You can also comment on my DevBlog at http://sixtybillionman.tripod.com/wcdevblog.) Thanks to Stefan Pettersson for his Bitmap Font Writer, and apologies to him for more or less ripping it off wholesale. ^_^; Further apologies to everybody who had to suffer through this crappy readme. First timer here. If you can do better, or you have any feature suggestions/demands for my next version, PM me on romhacking.net or boards.acmlm.org. (Commenting on my DevBlog at the above address will also work.)