Tilefont 🔠

Tilefont is a native macOS app that turns any TrueType or OpenType font into a font image ready for GB Studio: 128×112 pixels, 8×8 tiles, the same colours as GB Studio's own fonts, magenta variable-width markers and the .json file with the font name and character mapping.

✨ Features

• GB Studio Layout: 16×14 grid of 8×8 tiles, character 32 (space) in the top-left tile, ASCII 32–126 in order.
• Extended Characters: Tiles 128–255 with accented letters, € and symbols in the same order as GB Studio's built-in font (Latin-1 plus the Windows-1252 extras). Can be turned off for ASCII only.
• Right Colours: Background #E0F8CF, glyphs #071821, magenta #FF00FF, exactly like GB Studio's fonts. Pure white must be avoided: GB Studio treats it like magenta, so text would get a white box instead of a transparent background.
• Font Metadata: A .json file is saved next to every PNG with the font name shown in GB Studio and the mapping for characters 128–159 (€, „, …), which GB Studio would otherwise look up in the wrong tile.
• Clean Pixels: Glyphs are rendered in greyscale and kept where they cover at least 30% of a pixel, so thin strokes don't break apart at 7–8 px; the PNG holds only three colours. Pixel fonts at their native size come out pixel-identical.
• Consistent Baseline: One baseline for the whole font, taken from the ASCII characters; taller accented capitals are lowered just enough to keep their accents.
• Variable Width: The unused part of each tile is filled with magenta #FF00FF, leaving one empty column as letter spacing. Can be turned off for 8 px fixed-width fonts.
• Fit to Tiles: When a font is opened Tilefont picks the largest size where every character fits; the size can then be changed by hand.
• Live Preview: The font image at 4× with an optional 8×8 grid, and a text test laid out with each character's width, the way GB Studio shows it.
• Clear Warnings: Characters too tall or too wide for their tile and characters missing from the font are listed.
• Add to Project: Saves the PNG and its .json straight into the assets/fonts folder of a GB Studio project, asking before replacing a font with the same name. Save Image… saves them to any folder.
• Font Files: TTF, OTF and TTC/OTC (with a style picker); drop a font on the window or on the app icon, or use Open With in the Finder.
• Appearance: System, Light and Dark themes.
• Multi-language: Native support for Italian 🇮🇹 and English 🇬🇧 (system language or chosen in Settings).

🚀 Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon.

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🍺 Installation via Homebrew (Recommended)

brew install --cask gionnio/tap/tilefont

🔄 Updating

brew upgrade --cask tilefont

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📥 Manual Installation (Pre-built App)

1. Go to the Releases section of this page.
2. Download the latest .zip file (e.g., Tilefont_v1.0.0.zip).
3. Unzip the file and move Tilefont.app to your Applications folder.

⚠️ How to open the app

Tilefont is not signed with a paid Apple Developer ID, so macOS may block the first launch with a security warning ("Apple could not verify…").

To open it:

1. Try to open Tilefont once and close the warning.
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway next to the Tilefont message.
3. Confirm with Open. From then on it opens normally.

Right-click → Open no longer works for this on macOS 15 or later.

🛠 Build from Source

./build_app.sh            # build/Tilefont.app
./build_app.sh --install  # also installs it in /Applications and launches it

Requires the Xcode Command Line Tools (Swift 5.9+). During development: cd app && swift run. To work in Xcode, open app/Package.swift.

The icon is drawn by icon/make_icon.swift; the PNGs in icon/AppIcon.iconset are turned into AppIcon.icns by the build script.

🚧 Roadmap & TODO

• GB Studio font image: 128×112, ASCII 32–126, variable width.
• Add to Project: Save into assets/fonts.
• Extended characters: Tiles 128–255 (accented letters, €, symbols) with the .json mapping.
• Homebrew Support: Install and update via brew install --cask gionnio/tap/tilefont.
• Glyph adjustments: Manual X/Y offset and per-tile pixel editing.

Privacy & Security

Everything runs locally on your Mac. Tilefont only reads the fonts you open and writes the PNG files you save; nothing is sent over the network.

Tilefont is an independent tool and is not affiliated with GB Studio.

🤖 AI Acknowledgment

This application was developed with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence for code generation, logic optimization, and problem-solving.

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Created with AI, ❤️ and SwiftUI.