A downloadable tool for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Buy Now$7.99 USD or more

What is this

A set of tools to work with GBS fonts:

  • GBSFont2BG
  • GBSFontInverter
  • GBSFontJSON

With 166 GBS fonts included, ready to use!

GBSFont2BG

Create a background image for your GB Studio game with custom text, using any GB Studio font/s.

Useful for creating text for various screens in your game, such as the credits or logo screens, while maintaining consistency with the font used for dialogs in the game.

It can also be used to generate preview images of several GB Studio fonts at once, if no text.txt file is provided.

This software includes 166 GB Studio fonts ready to use, plus the inverted versions already generated. All fonts have licenses that allow commercial use. Some require attribution, see below.

Current limitations: it can only generate 160x144 images, no extended character support (á, ñ, etc), and you'll need to format your text with spaces.

GBSFontInverter

Create inverted versions of any number of GBS fonts at once.

GBSFontJSON

Automatically generate the required JSON files for GBS fonts.

How to use

1) Create a folder and copy there:

  • The GB Studio font/s
  • GBSFont2BG, GBSFontInverter or/and GBSFontJSON
  • Your text.txt file (only for GBSFont2BG)

2) Run the program/s

3) Done! Your background images/inverted fonts/json files are ready :)

Requirements

This software requires ImageMagick.

The macOS version is for the ARM64 architecture (Apple Silicon: M1, M2, etc). You can verify your Mac's chip type in 'About This Mac'.

Fonts included

The bitmap font files for GB Studio are adaptations that I've made of fonts that were created by different authors credited below.

The GB Studio fonts are licensed under the same license as the original fonts.
In short, as long as you don't distribute the fonts themselves:

  • you can use any of the included png fonts for commercial and non-commercial GB Studio games.
  • you can use any of the included ttf fonts for the promotional material, cover art, etc.
  • no credit is required except for the fonts licensed under the CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0

It would be nice if you give proper credit anyways, something like this:

  • The font "[GB Studio Font Name]" is an adaptation made by Santiago Crespo, based on "[Original Font Name]" by "[Original Font Author]".

or at least:

  • Font based on "Original Font Name" by "Original Font Author".

Font licenses that require full attribution

  • CC BY 4.0
  • CC BY-SA 3.0
  • CC BY-SA 4.0

Font licenses that don't require attribution

  • Bitstream Vera Fonts License
  • CC0 1.0 Universal
  • Custom minimal license
  • GPL-FE license
  • License derived from the Bitstream Vera Fonts License
  • MIT License
  • Public Domain
  • SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1
  • SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1 with Reserved Font Name
  • Unlicense

Credits

StatusReleased
CategoryTool
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Rating
Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars
(4 total ratings)
AuthorSantiago Crespo
Made withGB Studio
Tags8x8, Fonts, game-boy, Game Boy, gbdk, gbs, gb-studio, gbstudio, monospace, tool

Purchase

Buy Now$7.99 USD or more

In order to download this tool you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $7.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:

GBS Font Tools.zip 43 MB

Development log

Comments

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MacOS apps will not open on MacBook M1 Pro running 14.6 (also tried on OS13)

Also, if these apps just run some sort of bash script, can you include those in the zip?

ah, I found script on your GitHub. hoping I can reproduce the functionality of the apps with this.

Hi, the MacOS versions should work on Apple Silicon, but unfortunately I don’t have a Mac to test it.

Does it give you an error?

Have you tried running the tools from the Terminal app?

Thanks!

Yes, the apps produce the following error message on M1 Pro:

You can’t open the application “GBSFont2BG” because this application is not supported on this Mac.

How would I run them with Terminal?

(1 edit)

Thank you Mike! That gave me the clue I needed to solve it 🙂

The macOS binaries were not working because I tried cross-compiling from Linux, but this didn’t create proper binaries for macOS.

So I went visit a friend who has a Mac, and compiled the three tools there. GBSFontInverter and GBSFontJSON compiled perfectly on the Mac, and work just as well as they do on Linux and Windows.

But GBSFont2BG for macOS gave me some issues: it doesn’t remove the temp files (you’ll see a lot of png files after running it) and doesn’t generate the sample image (resized 3x). But the main thing works, generating the Background.png with your text! 🥳

I just realized that I only tested it from the terminal, would you mind testing it from the Finder and let me know if they work? If not:

  • Command (⌘) + Space
  • type “terminal” and press enter
  • cd name-of-the-directory-with-the-program-text.txt-and-font
  • chmod +x GBSFont2BG
  • ./GBSFont2BG
(2 edits)

Thank you for updating Santiago!

The applications must be run as described above. After updating their permissions with chmod, they will attempt to run but produce no output when launched from Finder.

Thank you Mike for testing it!

I added a “notes for macOS.txt” file that explains how to run it on macOS using the terminal.

Nice fonts
Only problem is that my antivirus detected something off with the programs
Already changed my passwords just in case

Hi, thanks!

I’m sorry about the false positives. Can you please let me know what antivirus are you using and the message or log from your antivirus?

I would like to solve this issue, but don’t know how yet.

Thank you!

Norton Antivirus and its just saying that its malware/AI

Thanks! Still not sure why it says it is “malware/AI”.

I’ve compiled the programs for 64-bit Windows (it was 32 bit before) and now got less false positives on virustotal.

Please try downloading the updated version of the tools and let me know how it goes.

Thank you!

Can you please update the software for Windows users? I tried opening the GBSFontJSON and   GBSFont2BG .exe files, but my virus protection software automatically checked and deleted them, saying that they're unsafe.

Hi, I’m sorry to hear that.

Could you please let me know which antivirus you are using?

From my own checks on virustotal.com, I found that 11 and 17 out of 70 antivirus flag these files as suspicious or trojan :( This may be due to the fact that these are command-line utilities, and not GUI-based tools, I’m not sure.

To help resolve this, could you please provide the specific message or log from your antivirus? I hope this would help me understand what is causing the false positives.

In the meantime, if you’d like, I can send you the source code via email, so you can review it and compile the software yourself.

Hi,

I’ve compiled the programs for 64-bit Windows (it was 32-bit before) and now got less false positives on virustotal.

Please try downloading the updated version of the tools and let me know how it goes.

Thank you!

Thanks for this great tool.
However, it doesn't automatically splits lines that are too long.
Is it also possible to have new lines actually being seen as a new line instead of just a  "space"?

Thank you! Both issues are part of the current limitations (“you’ll need to format your text with spaces”). But I’m writing it down to work on it on the next update, thanks!

Hi, this looks great. Are the png files already included (So i can add it to gbstudio font folder) thnks

Hi, thank you! Yes, all the png and json files are included, ready to copy to the gbstudio font folder

great!