z64utils/z64font

The first font editor for Zelda games on the Nintendo 64

z64font

z64font is a font tool that rasterizes TrueType font (.ttf) files into a format compatible with Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Whether you're looking to localize these games into new languages that rely on brand new character sets, or you're just adding a fresh coat of paint to your romhack, this program makes your job a whole lot easier.

How to use

z64font requires you to provide only two files:

• A UTF8-encoded text document containing a sample string and a list of codepoints.
• The TrueType font (.ttf) file you wish to convert.

Here are the latest codepoint files (simply Ctrl + S in your browser):

• Ocarina of Time codepoints
• Majora's Mask codepoints

You can use your scroll wheel to effortlessly tweak each control.

What you do next depends on your workflow.

Traditional hackers

Once you are happy with how your font is displaying in the preview window, click the Export Binaries button. You will be prompted to select a location and filename for them. Let's assume you chose the name wow.

Once you have done that, two files will be generated: wow.font_static and wow.font_width.

Inject the files into your decompressed game using a hex editor. For Windows users, I recommend HxD.

Game	.font_static	.font_width
OoT debug	0x008C1000	0x00BCABA0
OoT NTSC 1.0	0x00928000	0x00B88EA0
MM USA	0x00ACC000	0x00C669B0 and 0x00C66E50

If you don't know how to decompress your copy of the game, look no further than z64decompress.

OoT decomp

To export for OoT decomp first make sure decompMode is checked. You must provide a text file with the names of the png files to export. An oot_decomp_fn.txt is included already.

Once you are happy with how your font is displaying in the preview window, click the Export Decomp button. You will be prompted to select a location and filename for the export. Let's assume you chose the name wow.

Once you have done that, a .png will be generated for every character, as well as a wow.font_width.h.

To add all the textures to your decomp repository, navigate to oot/assets/textures/nes_font_static, and place all of the generated files in this folder, overwriting as necessary.

Next, we need to update the spacing between each character. To do so, open oot/src/code/z_message_PAL.c, and find the sFontWidths array. Next, replace the entire array with this:

f32 sFontWidths[] = {
#include "textures/nes_font_static/wow.font_width.h"
};

Now make clean && make to compile the new font.

MM decomp users

The MM decomp will be made targetable once it finalizes its font handling.