Welcome, and what is FONText?

[Beaker]

Hi. If you have any questions or problems concerning FONText then post them here.

What is FONText?

First and foremost, FONText is an application that helps you create bitmap fonts. Bitmap fonts are useful in the production of games and other time critical applications, because they are the fastest way to display text.

FONText not only lets you create attractive fonts, it also comes with 2 libraries of commands to make displaying them childsplay in Blitz3D/2d/plus.

Game making is supposed to be fun and FONText takes a lot of the pain out of one (quite painful) area of it.

[Beaker]

There are a couple of demos here:
www.zen28085.zen.co.uk/playerfactory/fontext/curvetext2.zip
www.zen28085.zen.co.uk/playerfactory/HUDparticles.zip

EDIT: demos added September 2004:
www.playerfactory.co.uk/animandclicks2.zip
www.playerfactory.co.uk/HUDexplode.zip

[Beaker]

The full version contains the application, and Include files for both 3D and 2D versions Blitz.


The 3D version has simple commands like:

HUDLoadFont.HUDfont(font$)
HUDtext(x#,y#,txt$)
HUDprint(txt$)
HUDwrite(txt$)


But, also more advanced ones like:

Advanced text commands:
HUDtextCircle (txt$,layer.HUDlayer,rad#=200.0,rad2#=250.0)
HUDtextCurve (txt$,x0#,y0#, x1#,y1#, x2#,y2#, HL.HUDlayer, width#=1.0)
CreateCharQuad(char$, par=0)


GUI commands:
HUDevent()
MakeImageButton(hi.hudimage)
MakeTextButton(l.HUDlayer)
HUDclickText(x#,y#,txt$)
LoadIcons.iconset(fname$,names$,x#,y#)


Drawing primitives commands:
HUDplot(x1#,y1#, layer.HUDlayer)
HUDline(x1#,y1#,x2#,y2#, layer.HUDlayer, width#=1.0)
HUDrect(x1#,y1#,wid#,hite#,layer.HUDlayer)
HUDcurve(x0,y0, x1,y1, cpx,cpy, layer.HUDlayer, width#=1.0)


Image commands:
HUDloadCanvasImage.HUDimage(texfile$)
HUDdrawimage.hudimage(tex, x#,y#)
HUDscaleImage(hi.HUDimage, xs#,ys#)
HUDturnImage(hi.HUDimage,ang#)
HUDloadImage.hudimage(texfile$, x#,y#)


Font commands:
ScaleFont (hf.HUDfont, xs#,ys#)
FontColor (hf.HUDfont, r,g,b, alfa#=1.0)
--------------------------------------------------

There are others but I think that gives you some idea of the extent of what you can do with the 3D include.

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The 2d include contains fewer commands:

FT_LoadFont(fontname$)
FT_SetFont.FT_font(font)
FT_SetSpacing(spacing)
FT_SetFontMask(r,g,b)
FT_FreeFont(font)
FT_Text(x,y,txt$)
FT_ImageText(x,y,txt$,img)
FT_Write(txt$)
FT_Print(txt$)
FT_Locate(x,y)

They do offer fast and simple support for gradients and other effects.