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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Font Packs for AGK

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Mike Johnson
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 13:42
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A collection of font packs have been released today.

Each comprehensive pack contains more than 30 fonts for App Game Kit, saving you weeks of work that could be better spent writing your games! Say goodbye to ugly, fixed width font images, and welcome this collection of high quality, professional and easy to read alternatives.



For more details please visit http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2303
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Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 14:02 Edited at: 4th Oct 2011 14:07
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Very cool!

Ordered!

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Bursar
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:02
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I'm still a bit confused about the point of this product. There are loads of free fonts around that you can use without licensing issues, which means the value must be in the font viewer.

From watching the video, there doesn't seem to be a proper colour picker, there is no ability to specify the size of the font, nor the resolution of the window, and you can't have it copy/paste the code into AGK.

So it looks like the value of the font viewer is pretty minimal too.

If the fonts are only supplied as graphics, then their use is limited as resizing them will cause artifacts and aliasing.

But maybe I've just missed the point?
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BatVink
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:20
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Quote: "If the fonts are only supplied as graphics, then their use is limited as resizing them will cause artifacts and aliasing."


That's the way anything you write with AppGameKit works, so that it can be used on multiple devices. You set a default resolution and then everything gets scaled for the device in use.

You can only use graphical fonts in AppGameKit (except for input boxes), you have no idea what is available on the devices that could be used.

Have a play with fonts in AppGameKit, you'll see the results are very good.

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baxslash
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:25
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Nice

I'll have to save up...

On the plus side none of my games are close enough to completion to use any of these yet

Is that really a plus?

Anyway, nice work TGC!

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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:30 Edited at: 4th Oct 2011 15:34
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All text operations are handled by AGKs own command set. If you specify colour in the editor then you'd have to load a dozen different images to cover a dozen different colours. These font packs can be coloured, and resized with commands such as, settextcolor and settextsize. This saves a lot of device memory.

The additional shadow maps means you can setup additional effects. For example if you have a virtual light moving across the screen (easily acived by an overlaid sprite with an alpha channel) you can move the shadows with that light giving an illusionary 3D style effect. Or you can just side and place text shadows as you desire.

Next there's the legal issue behind fonts, many free font sites are only free for personal usage, if you plan to sell or make money from a game (this includes advertising) then you often need to contact the authors who'll then be able to set a price. If your game hits big time, and one of these font authors notices their font in your game you can even become the victim of legal action. I have noticed a lot of users don't read the site fine print or included read me files, they leave themselves wide open.

AGK font packs are royalty free, and completely legal to use. I won't come chasing after you demanding cash should you make your first million on the app store.

Next I have seen some of the fonts outputted from the free font editors, they are okish but the spacing is often wrong, fixed and doesn't compare when placed next to agkfp's, this is because I've expended alot of time manually creating and editing these images. If you intend to make your own fonts, up to the same standard you will have to expend the same amount of time doing it as I have.

Next I plan a few free extra upgrades for packs 1 to 3 next month, certainly before Christmas. I want to let these packs run for a month first to see what happens if all goes well I'll add some additional font maps styles.
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baxslash
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:34
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I agree that spacing is a time consuming business. Fixed font widths never look as good.

The price seems pretty reasonable to me. Soon as I have the cash you have another customer Dan!

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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:42
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Thank you!
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 15:47
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Quote: "You can only use graphical fonts in AppGameKit "

I appreciate that. What I meant was that if the fonts are supplied as graphics equivalent to (for example) a 20 point font, then scaling that graphic is going to give quite different results to using a 40 point or 10 point based font to start with.

Quote: "These font packs can be coloured, and resized with commands such as, settextcolor and settextsize"

Exactly. If the font is supplied as white, then you can use settextcolor on it. So why not have a colour picker in the font viewer app so you can see how it will look in reality. The same with adjusting the size.

It probably sounds like I'm down on the whole thing, and I don't want to be. I was just pointing out what I thought were missed features.
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baxslash
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 16:15
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Quote: "What I meant was that if the fonts are supplied as graphics equivalent to (for example) a 20 point font, then scaling that graphic is going to give quite different results to using a 40 point or 10 point based font to start with."

I think you get different sized versions of each font am I right? So you can use it large or small and use the smaller image if that's all you need.

Quote: "If the font is supplied as white, then you can use settextcolor on it. So why not have a colour picker in the font viewer app so you can see how it will look in reality. The same with adjusting the size."

I thought there was a colour picker in the video, or does it just use presets? A size slider would be nice though.

Quote: "It probably sounds like I'm down on the whole thing, and I don't want to be. I was just pointing out what I thought were missed features."

These are good feature suggestions too. Personally I'd probably be happy with just the font images and subimage text files for a slightly lower price but I like to experiment

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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 17:29 Edited at: 4th Oct 2011 17:30
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If you have any comments or feature requests please e-mail them direct to the author at support@darkprinciples.co.uk I will read and consider all requests and comments there.
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baxslash
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 17:30
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Should that be support@darkprinciples.com?

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Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 17:32
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If you want REALLY nice custom fonts, then you have to take the time to make them in Photoshop, or some other graphics program.

These font packs are a step up from the bitmap font creators available, and will save me a BUNCH of time instead of doing it all by hand in photoshop.

As far as the legal issue, I hadn't been worried about it, since the AppGameKit fonts *are* bitmap graphics. But it's good to know the font packs are totally royalty free and legal to use.

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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 17:32 Edited at: 4th Oct 2011 17:34
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@baxslash
If you had waited 8 seconds it would have been lol. Forgive me I am typing on my iPad.

P.s. It's co.uk not com
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baxslash
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 17:35
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Quote: "If you had waited 8 seconds it would have been lol. Forgive me I am typing on my iPad."

8 whole seconds? I can't waste 8 seconds waiting, I'm trying to make games here!!!



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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 17:37
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Lol
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Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 5th Oct 2011 15:01
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How do I exit the font viewer? ESC doesn't work, and I'm resorting to task manager and stopping the program. Is there some trick to ending the program?

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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 5th Oct 2011 18:59
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Standard Windows keys work with AppGameKit programs. To close a window, it's Alt + F4 escape is really only a darkbasic thing, most programs don't use that.
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Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 5th Oct 2011 20:37
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Silly me, I didn't think to try ALT F4. Thanks Daniel.

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Impetus73
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Posted: 5th Oct 2011 20:46 Edited at: 5th Oct 2011 20:47
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Thanks Daniel, your an . *need font... CHECK* now I need music...

I was wondering where to get some good fonts for my WIP game.

baxslash, next time, try Sleep(8000) , it should work.

----------------
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Did Amiga / AMOS programming in the 90's, just started programming again with AGK.
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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 5th Oct 2011 20:59
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music, http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

You are free:

to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work
to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

---

Be sure to give credit!
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Impetus73
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Posted: 5th Oct 2011 21:16
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Thanks again Daniel! *now i need £1.000.000... (hoping Daniel supplies a solution)

Any news on the Android player?, I got a Galaxy tab 10.1 yesterday, and i'm BURNING to play my AppGameKit creations on it... I'll even sign up for som beta testing if possible.

How do we submit games to the android app store? will it be compiled in a speccial way, into a single packed file, that we upload to the store? I miss some explanations on how the process is envisioned to be.

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Did Amiga / AMOS programming in the 90's, just started programming again with AGK.
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bjadams
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 11:02
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Regarding Android, I'm curious to know under which compiler will tier2 work, since it will not be java but c++
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 18:48
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The fonts are nice - but it doesn't look as though they have any of the ANSI accented characters. That would be incredibly useful for international games and language learning.

-- Jim
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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 23:43
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@JimHawkins

I'm not sure if AppGameKit supports it, I believe current font maps only support characters 32 to 127 though I may be wrong, international character maps never occurred to me I have to admit, it's something I'll look into.

@bjadams

I'm not sure what the status is of Android myself, I'm not actively engaged in it's development in any way, I'm sure the team are doing their best to make the process as easy on you as possible.

@Impetus73

To get £1,000,000 quid, you need to e-mail HighInterestLoans@Rumpelstiltskin.ha.haha the current interest rate is 1 first born, and a small fluffy kitten, could you really give that kitten up? Alternatively I believe Satan offers a cash-4-soul scheme. You could also invent a time machine and travel back to the 1950's with a HD TV and a blueprint using applicable 50's components.

Or you could become a top best seller on the App Store with an insanely simple, yet attractive idea, like firing insane birds into standing structures while a bunch of green pigs laugh at you.

God I love wiping those smirks off those little green... * this user has devolved into a cursing fool *
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 8th Oct 2011 19:41
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@Daniel

The default font map is a full 256 character ANSI set with the basic Western code page. It would be nice if the replacement sets could have this.

What's NOT clear to me is how you can get accented characters into the AppGameKit editor, and whether you can do it in the text input box. Anybody got any clues???

-- Jim
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pedrolbs
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Posted: 8th Oct 2011 22:03
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I realized you have to be careful with accented chars.

Try this :

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JimHawkins
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Posted: 9th Oct 2011 09:38
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Thanks - but did you cut and paste the strings in, or did you do it in the editor? If so, how.

And is there a way to get say an e acute in the text input box?

-- Jim
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baxslash
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Posted: 9th Oct 2011 11:25
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I couldn't wait until I needed them, purchased despite the fact I can't afford them...

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pedrolbs
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Posted: 10th Oct 2011 00:02
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No Jim, I wrote them directly in the editor, they're pretty standard Portuguese chars so I use them all the time. I didn't even consider that the editor wouldn't allow them, and it did.

As for the text input box, reading the manual they're pretty straightforward about "It will contain characters in the ASCII range 32-126" so no accented chars. I believe TGC will have to add that support at some point, there's a big market out there waiting to read apps in their own language
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baxslash
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Posted: 10th Oct 2011 01:43
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I agree it would be a huge advantage to have these characters available, I would like to make my games available in multiple languages.

The fonts look great by the way, just downloaded them

@pedrolbs, you live in Portugal? Are you Portuguese? With a name like Pedro it sounds like you are I worked over there for about three years in the Algarve. (sorry to go off topic but I don't see many Portuguese people these days!)

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pedrolbs
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Posted: 10th Oct 2011 02:27
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Yes I am Steven, hope you enjoyed your stay around these parts

If you ever need help to translate game text to Portuguese (PT or BR) let me know and I'll be glad to help.
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baxslash
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Posted: 10th Oct 2011 10:19
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I had 3 fantastic years, made some great friends. I'll let you know if I need any translations. Your English is excellent by the way, much better than my Portuguese!

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Impetus73
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Posted: 10th Oct 2011 14:01
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I'm norwegian, and I would need: æ ø å Æ Ø Å

In Norway, game makers can get money from the cultural department of the gov, IF they release games with Norwegian text and sounds...

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Did Amiga / AMOS programming in the 90's, just started programming again with AGK.
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Daniel TGC
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Posted: 10th Oct 2011 21:27 Edited at: 10th Oct 2011 21:34
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It's not a perfect method, but you could use sprites to simulate a psudo font map. They are basically just images after all.

If you load each font image into an array along with any special characters, then you'd simply have to clone the sprite you need into a second array, on a character by character basis.

Sometime this month, I will put some thought into a tutorial for this, I've got a rough idea in my head, and perhaps I'll generate a few extra character maps to test the concept. When I do this will depend on my current project.

I wrote the idea down, as a very rough pseudo code, it may be completely unintelligible to everyone else, if it is I'm sorry, just ignore it! This is just how I write all my program idea's down when I don't have time to code them properly. If by some miracle someone does understand what I'm going on about you're welcome to try the basic concept for yourself. I don't see why it shouldn't work.

Create udt _id with id and sym$
Create font array assign as _I'd
Load font images
Assign font images to font array.id
Assign font symbol to font array.sym$

Create text string
Create text array
Call ConvertString()

Main loop { call DisplayText }

Create function ConvertString() { loop until true, count up text string pos, check current string char to font array.sym$ if true get font array.id, clone font array.id to next free slot of text array, check if array full or string end then return loop true, else loop false }

Create function DisplayText() { for 0 to until end of text array loop, set sprite pos text array.id plus previous text array.id width, if width goes beyond maximum x then reset x and increase line by previous sprite height }
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 11th Oct 2011 09:48
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That's clever, Daniel - but maybe a bit processor-intensive just to get some text on the screen. I think I'll write a PC program to generate some bitmaps out of fonts and let the grunt-work be done off-line!

-- Jim
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 11th Oct 2011 10:11
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Actually, the string Print("héllõ wörld") does not display the accented characters, so we do have a significant problem with non-English text. I can't see this being a platform limitation, so assume it's an AppGameKit issue. Somewhere there's a constant like MAX_CHAR set to 127.

The only reason for stopping at 255 was from ancient 8-bit processors. The unicode fonts allow for 65536 chars.

AGK will be severely limiting its market if non-English programmers take a look and say "useless!"

I'm writing this in Greece, so I'm surrounded by signs in Greek, but could only put Greek into AppGameKit by making literal string bitmaps. That is really not the way the world should be!

-- Jim
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bjadams
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Posted: 11th Oct 2011 12:39
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I wonder how difficult it actually is for TGC to allow an extended character set?
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LeeBamber
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Posted: 15th Oct 2011 06:52
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Add this one as a feature request so we can start this ball rolling. I agree AppGameKit should be allowed to support international text without resorting to bitmaps for words Post it here: http://code.google.com/p/agk/issues/list

I drink tea, and in my spare time I write software.
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 16th Oct 2011 11:16
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Done!

Might need a separate forum topic for expert input...

-- Jim
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