PC-8 Packer

A minimal LÖVE application that renders the CP437 (PC-8) characters of a unicode ttf, and allows you to pack that into a lua source font file that draws the font (or a C language file, or a JSON data file). This repo includes all the fonts of the int10h Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack 2.2. Given you have LÖVE installed on your desktop, you should be able to download and run the PC-8 Packer.love in the repo. It is built against 11.4, but it should work on 11.0 or better.

Application Usage

Everything is spelled out at the top of the screen, check it out!

When you have the font you want to use, press spacebar and wallah! The lua file for that font is placed into the clipboard. Paste it into your editor, save, and you are good to go.

Output File Usage

Here is the quick and dirty usage of the output source code:

myFont = require 'thefontfile'

function love.draw()
    myFont:print("Hello world!",0,0)
end

The functions provided by the output are:

w = fnt:getWidth(str)
h = fnt:getHeight(str)

These return the width and height of the font character when str is nil, and if you pass a string it calculates the total width or height (if the font was printed downward).

w, h = fnt:getDimensions(str, downward)

Returns the dimensions of the block that contains the output text in respect to downward flags.

fnt:setPalette(p)
p = fnt:getPalette()

Get access to, or set the internal palette used by print(). The font comes with a built-in CGA compatible palette of 16 colors, but you can do what you want and replace that. Also, you can not use the palette at all, as you'll see in :print() below.

fnt:setFilter(min, mag, anisotropy)
min, mag, anisotropy fnt:getFilter()

Sets the filter applied to the texture backing this font. Proper oldschool grunge can be had by calling :setFilter('nearest','nearest').

fnt:print(str,x,y,dontcolor,downward)

Draws the string or color table string (see LÖVE docs) at coords: x,y. If dontcolor is set, ignore colors sent in the table. If downward is set, draw each character downward instead of across. Unlike the format of the color table from LÖVE, you can also just pass a number as a color palette entry: { 15, "some text", 4, "some other text"}. setPalette/getPalette let you adjust/replace the internal CGA 16 color palette as you desire.

fnt:printTexture(str,dontcolor,downward)

As :print() above, but returns a texture of the output instead of drawing directly. Useful to cache often used by never changed contents, but honestly the draw overhead of the quads from print() isn't all that high.

fnt:printChar(cv,x,y)

Draws the character string (1st character) or CP437 entry number (type(cv) == 'number') at the coords: x,y. Minimalist function, should be fast and compile down in luajit given jit is enabled.

C output format

If you select .c output format, it creates a C language source file that holds the encoded font data as BASE64 text, plus the font character width and height. The font bitmap is width * 32 wide and height * 8 tall (a 32x8 matrix of 0-255 characters starting on the top left).

JSON output format

If you select JSON output format, it creates a .json data file with the font name, width, and height, plus an array of strings that make up the BASE64 encoded 1 bit data for the font.

BASE-64 encoded data