# 2026-07-11 - DOS Font Editor
I planned to make pseudo-graphics using a DOS font editor. I
downloaded FONTEDIT.COM [1], the classic DOS font editor from
PC Magazine in 1988. I could have used PSF [2], which is like NetPBM
but for fonts. PSF can convert to and from plaintext, to edit in any
text editor. But FONTEDIT.COM was good enough for this.
I kind of forgot just how constrained 8x16 pixels is for graphics.
Even so, i modified the "wood" and "controlled fire" glyphs.
FONTEDIT.COM saves each font as a standalone .COM file. I named
mine WILDFONT.COM.
I made the following changes to WILDFIRE.AWK:
* Rename unicode.cfg to utf8.cfg
* Explicitly call srand(), for One True Awk
See WILDFIRE.ZIP [3] and screenshots [4]. Run WILDFIRE.BAT or
wildfire.sh. WILDFIRE.BAT loads the new font and runs the game
using AWK.EXE, a 16-bit build of the One True AWK.
p.s.
wildfire.bat depends on NANSI.SYS or something like it.
wildfire.sh, when run with gawk, needs an environment variable:
LC_CTYPE=C
tags: occ2026,retrocomputing
# Footnotes
(HTM) [1] FONTEDIT.COM from PC Magazine, 1988
(HTM) [2] PSF for DOS
(BIN) [3] WILDFIRE.ZIP
[4] DOS screenshots with new font
(IMG) gopher://tilde.pink/I/~bencollver/log/2026-07-11-dos-font-editor/screen1.png
(IMG) gopher://tilde.pink/I/~bencollver/log/2026-07-11-dos-font-editor/screen2.png
# Tags
(DIR) occ2026
(DIR) retrocomputing