spritefont has been on the far backburner for a while. i have an annoying small amount of free time, but I understand spritefont is important for serious projects, and I don't want to neglect the userbase, just because I'm not currently using it myself. I will do my best to work on it at least a little at a time, and to also maintain the compatibility with current caps.
I need to make tutorials again for it, updated, and I also need to remove some half-implemented features, or complete their implementation. But most importantly, I've had people from time to time report to me in pm, that doing certain combinations of things cause letters not to appear. it's all very idiosyncratic, and confusing, and spritefont was written when I was just beginning to really understand c++, so the code is a mess. I've searched for the source of these problems, but so far I've come up empty. I really need to see all these problems side by side to find the connection.
One thing I can say, is purposefully spritefont does not save any information about anything except that which can be edited in the properties pane. this is because it relies mainly on having pointers to spritetypes, and sprites which will change each time the exe is loaded. So if your problem involves loading a saved game, or changing layouts, and not initializing the sprite types on loading again, see if that will fix the problem.
also, I have a hunch some of these issues will change (for better or for worse) if you use either multiple instances of the same spritefont, or an additional spritefont types (copy, paste clone)
in short, if you've ever sent me, or offered to send me caps where you were able to isolate problems, and make them stop happening through some weird nonsensical method, please repost them here, with the description. I will hunt through the old PMs also, and see if those links are still working as well. if you can't post your cap publicly, please pm me a link. Don't be discouraged if I don't respond immediately. I will be looking into all of this, and trying to find the common thread. It definitely seems like all the current bugs, are really just one big bug buried in there somewhere.
so, if you have the time, and you've had issues with spritefont. please help me fix it, and bring it into the 1.0.
also, I'm interested in getting a small group (after some brave soul lays the groundwork) to write a cap using the image manipulator, to create a tool to more easily cut up sprite sheets. there are a few requirements that have been requested in the past that should be included if someone is going to take the time to make this. but honestly it's much needed, and I really don't have the time right now to make it. interested parties, please post here. if it's an open cap file, with a main person, we can assign the smaller duties to other people as it goes along to make this happen quickly and smoothly
for anyone who wants to have at it. The main requested features that I can name off the top of my head are:
take a sheet of fonts and split it into multiple named or numbered files
a more visual interactive way of seeing a simple grid split of the sprite sheet, twisting knobs, or dragging lines to get the grid alignment just right
the ability to easily drag this grid out of alignment in selected spots, or quickly drag and drop squares around letters that don't fall perfectly evenly spaced. it should be simple enough to be convenient in a spritesheet that has no evenly spaced letters at all
also, the ability to automatically cut the sheet up into uneven pieces based on a colored separator (say a pink line). I can't remember the name of the software, but there is a large library of spritefont sheets made with colored separators, so this would be a very useful feature, once someone reminds me of what the name of that app is.
thanks everyone for using spritefont, and reporting those bugs
I think there's only one or two bugs before it's fully stable, and ready for primetime