Is there a faster way to use my unique font while keeping it's texture and colour?

Question

I'm working on an indie game and as such, I've made a unique font for that game but this is where the problem comes in:

I don't know how to turn this into a font file that will keep all the colour and textures in it, and the way I'm creating words and sentences with this font for my game is incredibly time consuming.

I'm using GIMP and I'm essentially copying a letter, dragging where I want it, to create a word or sentence, then export it as an image but it's taking FOREVER to do a simple sentence and this game is very dialogue heavy.

Below is the logo from my game and you can see the colour and texture that I want to keep:

Does anyone know a faster way of doing this?

Answer 1

While technology is evolving, typically font files do not contain any texture or color information. There are emerging technologies which may allow color to be saved in a font file, but those are "bleeding edge" and not widely supported.

Traditionally, what an artist does is configure a "style" or predetermined set of appearance attributes. This can be done via something like Layer Styles in Adobe Photoshop (no clue if The GIMP has something similar), or Graphic Styles in Adobe Illustrator, or via "macros" or "actions" in various applications. These store a series of steps which, when complete, result in the same appearance.

So, you type a word, than apply the predefined style, or run the "action/macro" on that type.

So essentially backwards from what you are currently doing. Rather than starting with the appearance then manually altering the type.. you start with the type and then apply the appearance.

Answer 2

@xenoid gave a link to a chat forum that leads to an insanely helpful script.

1. Download the Custom Font Script: http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14045&p=205693#p205693 (latest version is 16 at the time I'm writing this)

2. Open GIMP and click on Edit, then select Preferences.

3. Scroll down to Folders, it should be on the bottom, then select Scripts.

4. Copy that address into an Explorer folder to access it, then drag the custom_font.scm script and drop it in there, then restart the program.

5. When you start up GIMP again, you should notice a new window next to Filters called Script-Fu if you have it, this means you have added the script properly!

Now, to set up your font file, do the following:

1. Grab your artwork/font and export each individual letter into it's own PNG file.
2. Create a new XCF file and import all those PNG images as layers into the file (make sure they're named A.png, B.png, etc)
3. Save, then click on Script-Fu -> Create New -> Custom Font.
4. From there, you can click on the explorer, then find where you've saved your font file, and it should upload it, while asking what you want to type.

Lastly, I want to add some tips for things that had me stuck: -Throwing errors even after naming files correctly.

If it's throwing errors, such as space.png not found, (even with the correct spelling) then download one of these custom font files, then import your font into that file as layers. Once you do that, on the original files (not yours) erase the layer so it's blank, then merge your layer into that one (so your A.png would merge into their blank A.png) This is handy if you're having issues and can't figure out why.

Custom font files: http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14045&start=0

I hope this helps someone out, as this for me was a huge lifesaver! Thanks again to @xenoid for linking it!