Q3Font is a tool to create the font files used by Q3 1.25+. A font exist from a number of tga's, called fontImage_#_<size>.tga and a fontImage_<size>.dat file.

Q3Font is partly based on software technology (c) 1999, 2000 Id Software, Inc and uses the FreeType Engine to render it's fonts. More info about the FreeType Engine can be found on http://www.freetype.org or http://freetype.sourceforge.net. This engine is (c) 1996-2000 David Turner, Robert Wilhelm, and Werner Lemberg.

Usage q3font -create -size <fontsize> <fontname>

This creates a .dat and a number of .tga files based on the TrueType font <fontname>. The font will be rendered using size <fontsize>. You might want to touch up the tga in photoshop to let it look better in Quake 3.

There are limitations in the way fonts are saved and reloaded in that it is based on point size and not name. So if you pre-render Helvetica in 18 point and Impact in 18 point you will end up with a single 18 point data file and image set. Typically you will want to choose 3 sizes to best approximate the scaling you will be doing in the ui scripting system.

q3font -info [-<switch> ...] <fontname>
 Switches:
  detailed = detailed info per glyph

This gives you info over a .dat file. <fontname> is a .dat file in this case.

q3font -decompile <fontname>

This decompiles the fontfile (.dat) in a more easily readable format (.fnt)

q3font <fontname>

This compiles the .fnt format into a .dat file. Usefull for making little tweaks to the font placement. This is usually not needed though.

Version History v1.0 (10-01-2001)
- Initial release
- TrueType font conversion into Q3's .dat and .tga format
- Reading and writing of the Q3 .dat format
- Reading and writing of q3font's .fnt format

Download Get Q3Font from here:

Q3Font v1.0 - 120KB

Credits Q3Font is coded by Arnout 'RR2DO2' van Meer. Please send me all bugs you can find, suggestions are also welcome.

Special thanks to Robert Duffy to supply me with some code id used in it's internal font compiler codes.