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To create a new font set you can either create one using the first 128 ASCII characters or you can supply Font Fiend with a unicode text file that describes all of the characters that you are interested in. This feature will be used primarily by game developers who have a text file containing all of their in game text - a very useful thing if you are planning on having your game translated by a translator who may not be interested in sifting through tens of thousands of lines of computer code to find your game text! To create a font set using a unicode file go to the "Set" menu heading and then select the sub-heading "Create Font From Unicode File" and you will see that in addition to the options that "Create Simple Font Set" gives you there is also the option to "Browse For Unicode File" which you use to specify the unicode file containing the characters you want rendered.

Tip: As a programmer you may be wondering how the characters in the font set will get mapped to the rendered characters. As you might expect, the simple font set lines up the 128 rendered characters with the 128 first ASC II characters but what about when sets are built from a unicode file or if characters get deleted from a simple font? Within the sprite file is a character mapping code for each character that translates each character to it's sprite. Additionally when you build a set from a unicode file, Font Fiend will also write out a remapped unicode file in the same directory as your unicode file that will look like gibberish if loaded into a text editor. This new file maps the game text to the sprite file - your game code will then load this new game text file and the sprite file and be able to render the game text by using the sprite remapping numbers to match sprites to the correct characters.

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