One of the components that I needed for ROBOT-SB was bitmap font support.

I didn’t need anything elaborate – in fact, given the low-resolution that I’m working at, I hardly needed a proper “library” at all, just a few “helper functions” might have done the job.

So I began by exploring extant solutions, hoping to avoid reinventing the wheel if I could find something suitable already out there.

But the libraries that I found were either 1) outdated, and I had no desire to spend time updating someone else’s code that might not end up being what I needed anyway; or 2) a bit too elaborate, in that they weren’t focused on the particular issue that I needed to solve, primarily: proper pixel alignment.

I don’t need variable spacing, or kerning pairs, or tools for converting True-Type fonts, or styling support, or animation, et cetera. Primarily because features of that type tend to move characters around in a way that is not pixel-perfect. (or, at least, would have required a bit of patching to ensure pixel-perfect positioning in all cases)

So, in the end, I reinvented a toy-sized wheel, and I am oh so proud to now present you with.. wait for it… tah dah… SimpleBitmapFont!

I’m pretty sure that letters that look like fire are still cool, right?

You can get it from github.

Please note that it is definitely not intended as the be-all-end-all implementation of bitmap fonts! I’ll leave that to others with grander aspirations. But feel free to use it as a jumping-off point if it seems more-or-less appropriate for your particular project.

It is about as minimal as I could practically make it, something that just “gets the job done,” but not much more. (The version I’m using in-game is a bit different, with a few more specialized helper methods, but they aren’t of general-use enough to include.)