- click to enlarge example
First,.. you need a spreadsheet application or any wordprocessor that can use tables, and, you will probably need to put your screen in the highest resolution you have..(for screengrabbing later)
next.. create a table or use existing spreadsheet, and type all required letters in the font you want , in ASCII order, into individual cells - leave a blank cell at the beginning. ( the order you need to place them in has been explained elsewhere on the forum - if someone finds the correct references on the forum please list the relevant posts here
Then, using the cell format tools align every cell to show the letter in the "center" of the cell. and adjust the width of all cells to be the same size and slightly wider then your widest letter, get it as close as you can to the widest letter , otherwise your results will be widely spaced..
next... turn off your "grid" ie: remove the table lines ( if your application cannot remove the guidelines, try setting them to OFF and doing a print preview , it should show the page without the grid...)
at this point you could screen grab the result and start the conversion, but it is easier if you go to the first cell ( the one we left blank) and add a border to it, and one to the last cell (after your last letter)
these "borders" will help you CUT out the new bitmap sheet
now, capture the screen, and take it into PAINT or your graphics package of choice, and cut out and save the letters from the screen grab as one single bitmap using the "borders" of the first and last cell as a guide.
note: some applications will place the border "inside" the blank cell, so you need to CUT just this side of it.. other applications will split the border over the cell lines , in which case CUT down the middle of the border.. then remove any bits of the border still showing on the result.
now, save the new bitmap... and you now have a monospaced font of your choice..
note: some fonts will work better then others it depends on how wide your widest letter is compared to the average width of letters,for example: if your W and M is particularly wide, then your results will seem to be too widely spaced..
BUT for numbers only ( ie: for scores, lives, etc) nearly any font should work OK.
If you need a LOT of letters and/or a larger font, you may have to have two or three lines of letters to get them all in one screen grab.. this is fine... but you will have to CUT out each separate line at a time ( use the border trick to give you guides to CUT with, then paste each line onto the end of the previous one.. GE needs the font BITMAP to be one continuous line..
NOTE: Some fonts have funny copyright rules, (ie; you can use them for anything as long as they are not changed and silly rules like that).....so beware of using this method in a commercial game...
EDIT I almost forgot the most important thing.. either make sure your spreadsheet/wordprocessor has a dark background and use WHITE letters - or after creating the "monospaced bitmap" use your graphics package to INVERT the colors so the background is black and the letters are white.
why ? if your letters are WHITE, you can use the R,G,B, values ( in GE) to get any color letters you want
END EDITif that does not make sense let me know..
but any spreadsheet applications should work.. and or any wordprocessor that does tables..i used ms paint to grab and cut the screen, again just about any graphics app will work...