all right, here's the situation:
I've got a friend who's got a pixel font in a nice grid. I have Photoshop already and can turn this to bmp and separate the characters if necessary, etc. I want to make this into a simple bitmap font. I don't need vectors or anything, I just need to be able to use the font at the single resolution it is on the grid.

I have done a lot of research on how to do this and on fonts in general, tried a lot of programs (I have FontForge w/autotrace installed and can navigate/use it well enough), figured out FontCreator might be able to but can't actually buy it... there seems to be no way I can find on Google that will simply convert the images to the font.
I'm completely willing to work for a few hours if it gets me the font out of it, but I'd really rather not repixel the entire font in FontStruct or something.

this thread I found with searching ( http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/50457/bitmap-image-to-truetype-font ) seems to have the same problem, but I didn't see a solution that I could make use of.

the question boils down to this -- is there a way to convert, either at once or letter by letter, a BMP image(s) into a usable bitmap/pixel font?

thanks in advance for your help!

The only way to convert a bitmap to a font is by using a font editor. Or one that has a build-in tracer to convert the bitmap to vectors, or by using a bitmap to vector converter and using those vectors as input for a font editor that does not have a build-in converter.
For what you want Font Creator is probably the most suitable solution but FontForge can do the job as well.