I stumbled across the AngelCode Bitmap Font Generator a little while ago and fell in love with it. It produces great results and doesn't even require True/OpenType fonts to work, allowing me to use small older bitmap fonts (10px Terminal? Yes please!) which is something other generators I've found were unable to do.

I was wondering if anyone knows if the update process has ended on this excellent tool? I noticed the last update was back in 2009 and there are still todos, including one I'd really like that helps with making editing the results in image editing software easier.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

It's really been difficult to find time to work on BMFont, but it's not dead, just sleeping

Which feature is that you want to have added to the tool?

First of all, thank you for the quick response! I was not sure what to expect, and am happy to learn it hasn't died! =)

The three things I would love to see released at some point, copy/pasted directly from the WIP section:

[font="Arial"]1) [/font][font="Arial"]Add support for ClearType as anti-aliasing method again.[/font]
2) [font="Arial"]Allow output with fixed height, for easier post edit in graphics programs.[/font]
[font="Arial"]3) [/font][font="Arial"]Allow user to write text and see the outcome. It should be possible to encode special characters as icons are usually imported over non-visible glyphs[/font]

[font="Arial"]#1 is my favorite on the list and I could get by with just that one because ClearType comes up with beautiful results at small font sizes. I work a lot with small font sizes and the crispness of ClearType would be a godsend.[/font]

[font="Arial"]Thank you for your time. =) It is appreciated![/font]

Number 1 is a bit tricky to do as GetGlyphOutline that I use to get the bitmap doesn't support ClearType (at least not that I know of). I will have to find a different way of rendering the bitmaps so that ClearType can be used. I'm also not sure ClearType translates that well to bitmap fonts, sure you would get smoother antialiasing, but the subpixel rendering that ClearType does should be done as the final stage, that is when rendering the actual text, otherwise you will most likely end up with characters that are slightly offset and misaligned. For that reason it will probably be a while before I get to implement this.

Number 2 is something that a lot of people have asked for and should be quite easy to do. I'll see what I can do to get this done soon.

Number 3 is also something that I would have to spend more time on to be able to implement, and probably won't be done anytime soon.

Well, I look forward to any updates you put out. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. =)

I'm adding this because it completely slipped my mind earlier and I'm not sure if you saw my last reply and would not think to check back for edits, but do you think you might consider adding a button on the font settings dialog that uses the Font selection common dialog and perhaps derive the font settings in the font settings pane with the values from that dialog when used?

There's two reasons for this suggestion. First of all, it would be nice to get the small font preview when selecting fonts. Similarly, I would love to be able to specify points for the font size. I have a few fonts that are designed for specific font sizes, and it's often an adventure trying to find out what pixel size that point size mapped to. Being able to specify a point size and have it convert to pixel size would be lovely.

Sorry for throwing all my suggestions at you. =)

I can certainly consider it

I just implemented the option to export the fonts with fixed height cells. You can download version 1.12a beta with this function from the site.

Most excellent! I truly appreciate your continued efforts on this excellent tool.