Here's how to improve MAME's interface font

[shock_]

I worked this out myself a while ago and thought nothing of it, but maybe others don't know where to start.

This is for MAME post version 107 or whatever ...

Turning this:
Into this:

You need to create a ui.bdf file and leave it sitting in your MAME directory.  I'll assume you're running Windows and want to convert a normal TrueType font into BDF.

Ingredients

• one ttf to bdf converter (freeware) otf2bdf - http://crl.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/ttf2bdf.html
  
• one appropriate font
• a recent version of MAME

For this example I used the ubiquitous slicker.ttf which is bundled with Gamelauncher front end.  Find something free and nice at www.dafont.com if you like, or copy/paste from your c:\windows\fonts directory.


Method

• Extract the converter software to something like c:\emulation\tools\otf2bdf3
  
• Put a copy of the font file (.otf or .ttf) in the same directory
• Open a command prompt (Start » Run » type "CMD" with no quotes and hit enter.)
• type the following, but replace the obvious bits with paths to your own software as appropriate.
• Start MAME and see how good or bad it looks, then exit.
• Back in your command prompt window, hit the cursor up key, and go back and experiment with the numbers after -p (that's the font size you're starting with) and the -r (that's the DPI, or clarity, you want) until it looks clean, and is appropriately sized for your screen.

My settings for the screenshot above (slicker.ttf):

c:\emulation\tools\otf2bdf3\otf2bdf -o c:\emulation\mame0120b\ui.bdf slicker.ttf -p 8 -r 600

Every font will be different, read the doco on that coverter program for more details. I found that using a nice high DPI (600) was the key to sharp text.

Hope this is helpful to someone, perhaps wanting to match MAME better with their front end layout.  Couldn't find a good spot in the Wiki for this, the MAME pages are a mess.

[Franco]

Excellent! Looks much cleaner!   

Definitely going to be giving it a go this afternoon. 

[u_rebelscum]

Thanks for reminding me about this feature.

IIRC, for a couple versions the font looked closer to the clean looking font, but too many people wanted the old school font back.  So the old "8-bit era" font came back.

Oh yah, the high res fonts are for when you run mame at high res screens (like LCDs), and not at original arcade resolutions, it's not for everyone.


Anyway, there's more example fonts over at Mr. Do's site.

[shock_]

ahh wow, how did I miss Mr Do!'s fine page before?  Makes my post a bit redundant

Cheers on the note about lower resolution - I hadn't considered that, as mine is high.

One of these days I'll work out how to mod the source to change the blue colour too.

[mccoy178]

Excellent!  Thanks for making this thread.