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Need For Speed Forums => General NFS => Topic started by: noise on Jan 04, 2019, 7:21 AM

Title: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: noise on Jan 04, 2019, 7:21 AM
Hi,  After using the Detroit Muscle Mod.I noticed the lettertype in the menu's have changed. Turned out the Arial10b.ffn (In DATA/TEXT) was replaced.Does anybody know how to modify the .ffn file?
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: MADMAN_nfs on Jan 04, 2019, 8:35 AM
As far as i know, there is no way to edit the .ffn file (open, edit and resave).
But a lot of EA games from that time used this font-format. So its possible to copy fonts over from other games, that also make use of this .ffn type.
Examples that work with NFS4 are fonts from: NFS3, NFS5, NBA99, FIFA97.
Not sure from which game the Muscle mod font originates, though.

The .ffn file is simply a texture map with characters (similar to this Link (http://thingy.com/haj/dc-font-to-texture.html)). Guess it works like NFS3/4 HUD textures, where speedometer, rpm, symbols, etc are saved in one graphics file.

But again, to my knowledge there is no way to open/edit the file directly. Fontfiles from other games have to have same resolution and character order - otherwise you simply get rubbish, instead of text.  :)

Greetings
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: noise on Jan 05, 2019, 6:54 AM
Thanks.

In the.mnu files we are able to change scale of text, and choose italic. But with Detroit Muscle .ffn it doesn't work.

I wonder how The team (Jim Diabolo) changed text for their EP/SP pack.
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: ExoticLover on Jan 05, 2019, 2:36 PM
I wonder if this can be used to create fonts to use elsewhere other than those games. But, we're past the point where reverse engineering ffn file will be done.
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: DumbPanda on Jan 09, 2019, 4:47 AM
Working on *.ffn file format reversing as we speak. (https://i.imgur.com/jxg1YT3.png)
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: MADMAN_nfs on Jan 09, 2019, 11:15 PM
Good grief! That looks pretty challanging. Good luck with that.
      (https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/2/2b/htf_images_smilies_thumbsup.gif)
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: noise on Jan 10, 2019, 1:43 AM
Well dumbPanda that's abacadabra to me. Anyway good luck.
Title: Re: Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file
Post by: DumbPanda on Jan 10, 2019, 9:34 AM
Cheers guys. MADMAN, your explanation was pretty much spot on. There's a character table up top that specifies widths and heights of each char (+ some alignment data), following the table is a paletted bitmap and then the indices, bit depth is specified somewhere. Here's what I have so far, but it's mega hacky as I've only put it together over a few hours. More work is needed.


(https://i.imgur.com/R1AZp5p.png)