One function most games need is the ability to display information to the user using text and numbers. It’s not uncommon for graphics libraries to have support for TTF fonts (see SFML and SDL). However, given the style of game I’m working on, what I would prefer is a bitmap font.
Just type “video game bitmap fonts” into Google image search and you can see how different they are compared to TTF. If you’re making a low resolution or pixel style game then bitmap fonts really fit the theme.
I’ve found libraries that deal with TTF fonts. I’ve also found programs that will supposedly turn TTF fonts into bitmap fonts. But the fonts I want are built from the ground up as a bitmap image, and I haven’t really found any way of using bitmap fonts (with SFML .NET specifically) within a project that satisfies that.
It seemed like a decent sized task to work on myself, so I took a stab at it.