I hate to do text in games. Is there any good widgets etc?

I really love to make games, but one thing I really dislike to do is the UI, and even more I despise to do the actual text on it, for example the text for information boxes etc. I have looked at some examples etc in the past and I have got some that works quite well, but it is still a drag to work with I have found. Especially when you have different needs, for example you might need one text blitter to be centered over an object with as much space both to the right and the left. Or you might need your text to auto adjust within a given space, like in a speak bubble.

What widgets and examples do you guys use? Is there some really good ones out there that I might have missed that makes this a lot easier and straightforward? I work cross platform so I only use extensions that are supported on all platforms (mobile,flash,html5 etc)

I always use Strings for text. It's easy to create and manipulate text with it.

I used Formatted Text when I was starting out, but that was a pain to use because Auto Vertical Scrollbar is enabled by default and it needed a background color that matched whatever was behind it. The latter makes it look bad over anything that isn't a solid color. The guide specifically says the String object's "purpose is not to display complex strings or text: use the Formatted Text or the Rich Edit text objects instead.", which is why I used Formatted Text at first. I don't really see why, though.

By the way, if you're going to have a bunch of separate Strings in one frame that all have the same font/size/color, it's easier to clone the objects instead of setting up the formatting all over again.

But strings is problem since you need to have the font used installed on the machine to display the correct font?

A good place to start/build from is the various text blitting tutorials/guides found here - http://www.diybandits.com.au/MMF/tut...textblit1.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Outcast

But strings is problem since you need to have the font used installed on the machine to display the correct font?

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You can use font embeed extension to pack the font in the app.

Font embeed extension only windows?

I'm actually really interested in this, I'll have a go at making a widget or something like that

I recall having some problems with font embed extension.
Worked on some machines but not on others...

Having something solid for font embedding would be really, really useful.

So I was messing about with this for quite a long time and reached this state:
Attachment 17291
You can have your own fonts, pretty easy to use, has line breaks and you can angle and scale your text.

The only thing that this is missing is text alignment and some other stuff
To make the Character Sheet, simply place the Character Image Object, click generate from font and save all the frames inside it.
Then load all the frames in a new animation inside the TypeFont Active.
(Don't actually use it though, it corrupted my .mfa for some reason. So when you generate your font, remove the object)

Don't have Character Image Object?
Attachment 17292

Scroll down on this link to "RPG Text Widget":

http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mmfexamples-q.htm

The two examples at the bottom of this link are super good... reason being because it works with only two events!! (I have no idea how since i'm new to fusion... lol... but both of these two examples are each just 2 events in length VS dozens of events I've seen in other examples... pretty gnarly...) Any seasoned pro clicker want to educate us on this and explain it further for us noobies?

http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mmfexamples-s.htm

@ Robotica

You didn't really understand the request behind this thread?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BartekB

So I was messing about with this for quite a long time and reached this state:
Attachment 17291
You can have your own fonts, pretty easy to use, has line breaks and you can angle and scale your text.

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This looks like a really good start! Still centering, or left to right and being able to fit text into different sized "bubbles" is really what I have trouble with!

Okay so, I made an upgrade including Horizontal Text Alignment and "X Max" (When certain pixels have been reached, makes a new line)
Vertical Text Alignment would also be a good thing to make in this

Attachment 17297
Blitting text seems extremely fast and apps seem to get little to no slowdown (And that's 22 events as well)

Hope this helps!

Very cool, BartekB!

I will keep it at hand for future reference


@ Robotica: those examples are indeed smart and cool, but they use the "string object" which is bounded to the system fonts,
unfortunately this gives problems if the end-user doesn't have your font installed on his own machine.
Latest example by BartekB is instead a real "text blitter" application, which "prints" fonts on the screen from starting images loaded in the application itself, thus giving no compatibility issues.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BartekB

Okay so, I made an upgrade including Horizontal Text Alignment and "X Max" (When certain pixels have been reached, makes a new line)
Vertical Text Alignment would also be a good thing to make in this

Attachment 17297
Blitting text seems extremely fast and apps seem to get little to no slowdown (And that's 22 events as well)

Hope this helps!

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Very nice! :) I noticed some strange things though, for example when I set the Xmax to 340 for example I get

"Arr! It has set t
he sails!"

At the moment, this blitter doesn't really "care" for blitting words together, so someday I'll have to remake it so it only makes line breaks at spaces and such

A very nice example can be found here: Example: Text blitting with only the active object

But now I see Outcast already answered on this topic. But why not build on this?


@ Robotica

I don't wanted to be rude. It's just here a text blitter is asked for (without String object) and no typewriter.

That's a cool example
I might see how this one works and improve mine (I see the word wrapping is decent)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gustav

@ Robotica

You didn't really understand the request behind this thread?

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I guess not. Sorry.

I am using just Text on an Active..
So I have my own font (IOS/Android/Windows) and it's all the same.
I am always running into problems with not supported fonts. (might be a good option to have only fonts included that actually work for Text strings.

But back to the Actives... That's how I do it, and i can move them around etc.. since my games don't require a lot of text.

edit: somehow i skipped page 2 with all the comments... sorry...
Does that string_widget 2.mfa work for every platform and with the font of your choice ?

Since it only uses actives, yes it does work for every platform.
You can make your own font using the Character Image Extension with the "Generate image from font" which will create every character into frames, you can save the frames with numbers and load it into the TypeFont Active, making a new animation (13)
After that, you can remove Character Image

I might make a thread for this and update it from there

Sounds interesting.. I have to take a look when I get home tonight :)

Nice Job.
I like it.. noticed 1 thing. with the last word on the 2nd line "Too" the 1st "o" is higher?
I added another line break and then it was straight.. unless it's my eyes lol.

Anyways.. was kinda puzzled with the Blitter_ID
Is that linked to font_0 in the active?

I used something like this a while ago, but ran into the issue if i wanted to change the Font Size. but now you can just resize the thing
I might use this for future projects.. if I figure out how to add more fonts to it etc..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BartekB

Since it only uses actives, yes it does work for every platform.
You can make your own font using the Character Image Extension with the "Generate image from font" which will create every character into frames, you can save the frames with numbers and load it into the TypeFont Active, making a new animation (13)
After that, you can remove Character Image

I might make a thread for this and update it from there

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Blitter_ID is a unique string that should isolate TypeFonts from each other. For example:
Created username text: Bliiter_ID = username
Created info text: Blitter_ID = text

When you want to remove only the username text:
Blitter_ID of TypeFont = username > Destroy

Also, that "Too" problem might be there because of some trigonometry error, I'll have to have a closer look at it