Lettertype in nfs4, the Arial10b.ffn file

[noise]

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?

[MADMAN_nfs]

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). 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

[noise]

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.

[ExoticLover]

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.

[DumbPanda]

Working on *.ffn file format reversing as we speak.

[MADMAN_nfs]

Good grief! That looks pretty challanging. Good luck with that.
     

[noise]

Well dumbPanda that's abacadabra to me. Anyway good luck.

[DumbPanda]

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.