Taking Suggestions for Bitmapped Font object

This plug-in will be a life saver for me. BTW, does Construct support symbol characters greek/arabic/chinese?

would you be able to load an external image during runtime?

yes, but you will do that by changing the sprite.

the bitmapped text will act kind of like a behavior on the sprite you choose, but logically, it makes more sense as an object.

Please! spacing specified by character PAIR as you wouldn't place AM the same distance apart than AV

that's kerning, by character pair!

I'll look into that, but if so it would be basic, something you can setup with an action, like "override spacing for character pair" action, and then all future spacings in that cap would be overridden. I'm not writing Microsoft Word here

Dude! nice!

Okay my requests for bitmapped font (brace for wall-of-text):

-Unicode support! I need �'s and ����� and I'm sure others will need other codes. Unicode is nicely mapped too so it's no biggie I think. Just index using UTF16 as a key.

ok mad, or anyone who reads this first, and knows the answer

tell me how people normally input unicode characters in game, and this shouldn't be a problem at all.

I tried googling this, but the codes I input using the first method or two I found don't seem to correspond with the unicode characters I expect them to

so yeah, who knows how people who give themselves all L33T names in games normally input the special unicode characters not on the keyboard.

thanks, and btw, the actual coding has begun, I will probably post a few alpha exe's as I go along

alpha build screens:

<img src="http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/New%20Folder/CustomKeys/CustomAlpha1.PNG">

<img src="http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/New%20Folder/CustomKeys/CustomAlpha2.PNG">

amazingly, i made this entire 3 character font set in the construct sprite editor in just a few seconds.

as far as the plugin goes, the hardest part is done. the rest is just to make it more flexible and powerful.

hopefully tommorow(thurs) night i will have the beta build for whoever wants to test it

Looks very promising!

Great work Lucid... Can't wait to try that out!

Can't wait to test it. I NEED IT.

Can't wait for this, could be the solution to the ugly font rendering.

In the meantime, I get good enough results from putting a smooth and a sharpen filter on my text - It's not perfect, but it's more pleasant to look at than the unfiltered text.

The Smart Text Filter doesn't really do anything for me, dunno.

sorry guys

I apologize for the non-beta version yet

my power was out most of Wednesday evening, so I'm a day behind

on a side note, if anyone knows a good source to find alot of bitmapped font sets (like the fontsheets in the original post or this:

<img src="http://images.clipartof.com/small/31589-Clipart-Illustration-Of-A-Font-Set-Of-Blue-Starry-Patterned-Letters-Numbers-And-Punctuation.jpg">

for the initial exe demo, it would be very helpful and cool of you

or if you just knew what these (lettering sheets) are called, cuz google images doesn't seem to agree with me on anything I've thought of so far

here's a little eye 'candy'( ) though, so you know I'm not just slacking

don't blame the plugin for the wrongly cutup letters though, that was my fault

in a hurry... gotta leave for work:

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/New%20Folder/CustomKeys/New%20folder/mousex.exe

edit->edit:: k, now everything works fine in the above test exe, thanks to ashley's awesomeness

Hi!

Awesome work with this object, I'm pretty excited by it. If there were features I'd request, it would be that we can have functions to manipulate any character in the character array by index, as well as the "for each". This way, we can use the index value as an offset for certain effects. I'd like to be able to sinescroll the characters, but also maybe adjust their width/height/rotation too. I imagine this could mean that every character in the array could have a subproperty for x/y/width/height/rotation which could be accessed/stored in the object, unless you think that's too feature specific or memory intensive or something.

For a wishlist feature, it would be cool to have UTF-8 support, so we can for example have a separate character set for another language, or special symbols in-game. Control characters would be nice, too, such as to force newline, print one character over another, prompt for the next block of text and display a symbol (think RPG dialog boxes), or signify EOF.

I agree with others that in the future a tile blitter would be really neat (especially for making tile engines with the data and graphics separate, such as for changing seasons or time of day; or "layered" top-down engines which have different collision maps depending on the z height), but that would widen the scope for an object like this too much, especially when there are features specific to text blitting and features specific to tile blitting.

Anyway, here's where I get all my graphical fonts: http://www.algonet.se/~guld1/freefont.htm

EDIT: Also since I'm new to construct, I don't know if this would be possible, but are you able to use the SDK to clip a layer using your graphical font as a mask? If that were possible, we could make really cool "paint behind" effects, such as fake "copper", palette shifting backgrounds, stuff like that.

Hi!

Awesome work with this object, I'm pretty excited by it. If there were features I'd request, it would be that we can have functions to manipulate any character in the character array by index, as well as the "for each". This way, we can use the index value as an offset for certain effects. I'd like to be able to sinescroll the characters, but also maybe adjust their width/height/rotation too. I imagine this could mean that every character in the array could have a subproperty for x/y/width/height/rotation which could be accessed/stored in the object, unless you think that's too feature specific or memory intensive or something.

all of this is possible

the expression for index in array will be Position in phrase

[quote:1kp71c73]

For a wishlist feature, it would be cool to have UTF-8 support, so we can for example have a separate character set for another language, or special symbols in-game. Control characters would be nice, too, such as to force newline, print one character over another, prompt for the next block of text and display a symbol (think RPG dialog boxes), or signify EOF.

after the initial beta release I will be looking into expanding the possible character set

but force newline will be possible, with the same "newline" expression you can use for regular text boxes

printing one character over another will be possible by offsetting the individual character position, but when the beta is out, you'll have to tell me if it works the way you mean.

being able to make a character that prompts for the next block of text is a good idea, and I will do my best to include something to allow that functionality in the initial version.

I'm not sure what you mean with the EOF. I was going to add file support, but you can already use the construct file object to load strings, and I don't like the idea of people being able to read spoilers for games by opening text files in the directory, but this is the second time someone asked for text from file, so I'll include that.

[quote:1kp71c73]I agree with others that in the future a tile blitter would be really neat (especially for making tile engines with the data and graphics separate, such as for changing seasons or time of day; or "layered" top-down engines which have different collision maps depending on the z height), but that would widen the scope for an object like this too much, especially when there are features specific to text blitting and features specific to tile blitting.

yes, that is a matter for a separate object, I have been considering making a complete tile based editor, and a corresponding object to load them easily into construct, but I have a personal project I want to get off the ground first, and I'm also holding a little bit longer to see if aeal releases his level editor, and whether or not we're making the same basic thing

[quote:1kp71c73]

Anyway, here's where I get all my graphical fonts: http://www.algonet.se/~guld1/freefont.htm

thanks alot! although the site is down it seems at the moment:

the "Spin me around and make me happy!" link is broken

EDIT::now it works!!! thanks...this is exactly what I needed!

[quote:1kp71c73]

EDIT: Also since I'm new to construct, I don't know if this would be possible, but are you able to use the SDK to clip a layer using your graphical font as a mask? If that were possible, we could make really cool "paint behind" effects, such as fake "copper", palette shifting backgrounds, stuff like that.

you will be able to do this with just construct itself, without the sdk, since the fonts are sprites, you can just add the 'erase' or 'mask' effects to the font sprite(and set the layer to "force own texture")to do just that

thanks for the input, and welcome to construct!!

EDIT::LatestUpdate:

<img src="http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/New%20Folder/CustomKeys/New%20folder/Runtime/thisisit.PNG">

on a side note, if anyone knows a good source to find alot of bitmapped font sets (like the fontsheets in the original post or this:

Im playing with some scripts for this atm

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/666516/fontsagys.zip

Its not perfect, but Im getting there. Any way theres plenty stuff in there to play with.

Ps 95 freakin characters.

check it: not much new, just a better font, and some internal stuff

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/New%20Folder/CustomKeys/New%20folder/new.exe

and thanks newt

I'll give it a try.

Lookin' really good, lucid. Can't wait to see a beta of this.

I only suggest vectical scrolling if that's not already done/planned.