It's one of the things that kills me about GS, is the 8+ text choices all look similar. No BOLD, or IMPACT fonts at all. If all they had was Helvedica in normal, Italic, narrow, and Bold. I would be happy.
gyroscopeI am here.Member, Sous Chef, PROPosts: 6,598
+1 as well... & more text string manipulation would be great too, as well as a behaviour to export text easily... that'd open up a world of possibilities...
gyroscopeI am here.Member, Sous Chef, PROPosts: 6,598
edited March 2014
Ah, thanks for the reminder, @tatiang - the truth is, I downloaded a nightly version one time only, out of curiosity but didn't spend much time using it... and have just kept to the standard beta release in the main... (tut, tut... don't tell anyone... )
Seriously though, the text string functions are quite comprehensive in the Release Candidate then? (And is Release Candidate the new name for nightlies now? I know, where have I been..... )
Stable release... opens old stable release project files but cannot open nightly or release files
Nightly build... opens old stable release and nightly build project files
Release candidate... opens old stable release project files (I think) and current release candidate files and can open nightly build files, courtesy of @Braydon_SFX:
All you have to do is take the nightly project, right click and click "get info." Then rename the file extension to ".gsrcproj" and that should do it.
Of course, those are on the Mac side. On the Windows side, they are just getting nightly builds and do not yet have a release candidate. A cross-platform build is in the works!
Well I'd love to see custom fonts, obviously, which should increase productivity/ease of use/general good looks by about 1000%
Additionally, and this is a bit specialised but would be a lovely feature, I'd love for the text to have a 'delay' on it - so that a sentence, or a word, would appear on-screen letter by letter (or word by word in a sentence).
tatiangMember, Sous Chef, PRO, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 11,949
@quantumsheep not to take away from another good feature suggestion but it's relatively easy now to do this with textSubStr() and a Timer or custom loop. You just increase the index location within the string each iteration and use the full word or phrase as the text. Word by word would be a little trickier but not too much since you can also search within a string for a character (" ").
@tatiang said:
quantumsheep not to take away from another good feature suggestion but it's relatively easy now to do this with textSubStr() and a Timer or custom loop. You just increase the index location within the string each iteration and use the full word or phrase as the text. Word by word would be a little trickier but not too much since you can also search within a string for a character (" ").
I've not really used loops so I wasn't sure how you'd do it - thanks for the heads up.
I'd already figured out a way to do it with tables and a seperate word in each column that you'd use a timer with.
e.g.
Display The
Display The Quick
Display The Quick Brown
etc etc with each word in a seperate column (or just using 'Display over and over')
I just think it'd be a lot easier with the option in the display text behaviour - obviously not a priority though!
That's very kind. Are you on Windows? It doesn't seem to have a project file in it on my Mac so can't open it!
EDIT - just saw you mention it needs the release candidate - I'm holding off installing that till the 'add/subract conditions to rules' thing is fixed - too much hassle when I'm in the middle of a game! Will save for later! Thanks!
gyroscopeI am here.Member, Sous Chef, PROPosts: 6,598
edited March 2014
Cheers, @tatiang, for explanations about releases, as well as the text and table function additions.... I agree, amazing! (I was going to list the new ones I'm particularly excited about then realised I'm excited about all of them!) Excellent stuff, can't wait for the Release Candidate to appear as the major beta version.
tatiangMember, Sous Chef, PRO, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 11,949
@gyroscope@quantumsheep Here's an updated project file (still requires Release Candidate version of Mac Creator) and a video of "by character" and "by word" scrolling.
Braydon_SFXMember, Sous Chef, Bowlboy SidekickPosts: 9,273
edited March 2014
@tatiang said:
gyroscope quantumsheep Here's an updated project file (still requires Release Candidate version of Mac Creator) and a video of "by character" and "by word" scrolling.
[video]
Nice one, @tatiang ! And thanks for the shout out.
tatiangMember, Sous Chef, PRO, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 11,949
edited March 2014
One more idea... it's a workaround and not an actual "bold" checkbox but it does do the job if you absolutely need something bolded (again, requires nightly build or release candidate). The idea is to overlay a second display text behavior slightly offset. In the image below, I have the offset at 1 pixel but 0.5 works and is less bold as do other values for the offset amount.
The image below has offset values of 0, 0.5, and 1:
Release candidate... opens old stable release project files (I think) and current release candidate files and can open nightly build files, courtesy of @Braydon_SFX:
All you have to do is take the nightly project, right click and click "get info." Then rename the file extension to ".gsrcproj" and that should do it.
@tatiang, thanks, got one myself already, , just a shame to have such text processing power like textfind, textsubStr, etc, and then have to implement a table and search for simple capitalisation.
It should be a quicky for the next version. * googly eyes *
Here are some more quick and easy text effects that you can do in the standard release version of GameSalad. A basic outline, 3D and drop shadow effect.
No way. There are no italics? OMG. I mean... such a hard to achieve game development tool, and bold and italic font variants are still missing? You must be kidding me GS creators.
This is an old thread, but I feel driven to comment now that @noihcra bumped it.
While more features/tools is always a good thing, the graphic designer in me has been cringing at a lot of the posts in this thread. I'm seeing a lot of really creative and impressive feats of GameSalad prowess, but allow me to chime in on the visual design side of this discussion.
Good typography design means using the letterforms as they were created, and being creative (and subtle) with hierarchy and type variation.
In other words, using an effect or trick to produce a bold, italic, light, etc. version of a typeface is BAD DESIGN. If you're using Helvetica and want your text bold, use Helvetica Bold. If you're using X typeface and want your text italic but X typeface doesn't have an italic style, then you should not be seeking out a trick to make it italic.
Microsoft Word is pretty guilty of this, offering an italic or bold button no matter what typeface the user is working with. All this really does is push the letters over, or make the stroke weight heavier. This results in bad design, and is a great segue for my next rant...
...outlined text is almost always a no-no. The reason being: outlines distort the shapes of the letterforms. For example, an outline on the letter O will reduce the negative space in the center of the O, creating a shape the type designer did not intend. More severe issues arise in letters like B, P, R, S...because their negative space lives close to the positive letterform space. You also run into problems when outlines cause letters to touch/overlap in awkward and inconsistent places. Look closely at outlined text in the future and I'm sure you'll start to see how ugly it is. There are exceptions to this, of course, like if the type size is large enough and the outline is small enough it can be okay because the damage to the intended shape is minimal (while the benefit of contrast gained by the outline is worth it).
It wasn't my intention to come off as a snob here, but after re-reading this wall-o'-text before hitting the POST button I see that's probably how I sound. A lot of people much more talented in GameSalad than myself have contributed to this thread with some really awesome ideas. I just wanted to contribute in best way I can. Cheers!
tatiangMember, Sous Chef, PRO, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 11,949
@Adrenaline Very insightful (worth a click but also a comment...) about font design and usage. I admit I hadn't thought about bold/italic/outline overlays of fonts that don't already have those styles but I'm curious now to see the difference.
@Adrenaline said:
In other words, using an effect or trick to produce a bold, italic, light, etc. version of a typeface is BAD DESIGN.
Agreed, nothing mentioned here is really an attempt to measure up against actual typography, just some quick tricks and tips to squeeze a little extra mileage out of the limited font functionality. Of course if you want good typography most people will produce that outside of GameSalad and import it as an image asset.
Even with the soon to arrive custom fonts I can still see some people producing their typography outside of GameSalad as GS lacks formatting tools like leading, kerning, baseline shift and so on.
Bold and italics are possible with 1.25 if you use a bold or italic font. They're still not options, but you can load in pretty much any font, so that includes ones that are bold and italic.
@Adrenaline said:
In other words, using an effect or trick to produce a bold, italic, light, etc. version of a typeface is BAD DESIGN.
Agreed, nothing mentioned here is really an attempt to measure up against actual typography, just some quick tricks and tips to squeeze a little extra mileage out of the limited font functionality. Of course if you want good typography most people will produce that outside of GameSalad and import it as an image asset.
Even with the soon to arrive custom fonts I can still see some people producing their typography outside of GameSalad as GS lacks formatting tools like leading, kerning, baseline shift and so on.
Yep! I tried to contribute to the conversation without putting down previous entries because like I said, the comments above are all awesome and impressive. I saw an opportunity to comment because GS abilities seemed to be the focus while typography took a backseat - so why not flip that around
deny
Member Posts: 63
Comments
should be simple to add this into GS. would make a big difference to display text
It's one of the things that kills me about GS, is the 8+ text choices all look similar. No BOLD, or IMPACT fonts at all. If all they had was Helvedica in normal, Italic, narrow, and Bold. I would be happy.
@deny
+1 as well... & more text string manipulation would be great too, as well as a behaviour to export text easily... that'd open up a world of possibilities...
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
@gyroscope just curious... the new text string functions in the Release Candidate are quite powerful; what else would you want added?
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
Ah, thanks for the reminder, @tatiang - the truth is, I downloaded a nightly version one time only, out of curiosity but didn't spend much time using it... and have just kept to the standard beta release in the main... (tut, tut... don't tell anyone...
)
Seriously though, the text string functions are quite comprehensive in the Release Candidate then? (And is Release Candidate the new name for nightlies now? I know, where have I been..... )
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
@gyroscope It's confusing!
We now have:
Stable release... opens old stable release project files but cannot open nightly or release files
Nightly build... opens old stable release and nightly build project files
Release candidate... opens old stable release project files (I think) and current release candidate files and can open nightly build files, courtesy of @Braydon_SFX:
Of course, those are on the Mac side. On the Windows side, they are just getting nightly builds and do not yet have a release candidate. A cross-platform build is in the works!
The nightly build and release candidate for Mac have some AMAZING (yes, all caps) table and text functions. That doesn't even include the Loop and Loop over Table behaviors that are now available. @Braydon_SFX has some great tutorials starting here: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/comment/451279/#Comment_451279.
A quick glimpse at the function drop-down menu will provide you with a sense of their power:
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
Well I'd love to see custom fonts, obviously, which should increase productivity/ease of use/general good looks by about 1000%
Additionally, and this is a bit specialised but would be a lovely feature, I'd love for the text to have a 'delay' on it - so that a sentence, or a word, would appear on-screen letter by letter (or word by word in a sentence).
A bit like this:
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
@quantumsheep not to take away from another good feature suggestion but it's relatively easy now to do this with textSubStr() and a Timer or custom loop. You just increase the index location within the string each iteration and use the full word or phrase as the text. Word by word would be a little trickier but not too much since you can also search within a string for a character (" ").
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
I've not really used loops so I wasn't sure how you'd do it - thanks for the heads up.
I'd already figured out a way to do it with tables and a seperate word in each column that you'd use a timer with.
e.g.
Display The
Display The Quick
Display The Quick Brown
etc etc with each word in a seperate column (or just using 'Display over and over')
I just think it'd be a lot easier with the option in the display text behaviour - obviously not a priority though!
QS =D
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
@quantumsheep Here's a demo of scrolling by character. Requires the Release Candidate for Mac (http://gamesalad.com/download/releases).
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
That's very kind. Are you on Windows? It doesn't seem to have a project file in it on my Mac so can't open it!
EDIT - just saw you mention it needs the release candidate - I'm holding off installing that till the 'add/subract conditions to rules' thing is fixed - too much hassle when I'm in the middle of a game! Will save for later! Thanks!
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Cheers, @tatiang, for explanations about releases, as well as the text and table function additions.... I agree, amazing! (I was going to list the new ones I'm particularly excited about then realised I'm excited about all of them!) Excellent stuff, can't wait for the Release Candidate to appear as the major beta version.
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
@gyroscope @quantumsheep Here's an updated project file (still requires Release Candidate version of Mac Creator) and a video of "by character" and "by word" scrolling.
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
Nice one, @tatiang ! And thanks for the shout out.
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One more idea... it's a workaround and not an actual "bold" checkbox but it does do the job if you absolutely need something bolded (again, requires nightly build or release candidate). The idea is to overlay a second display text behavior slightly offset. In the image below, I have the offset at 1 pixel but 0.5 works and is less bold as do other values for the offset amount.
The image below has offset values of 0, 0.5, and 1:
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
+1 to what Bray said; thanks. :-)
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
@gyroscope
Updated my post above to include this:
Release candidate... opens old stable release project files (I think) and current release candidate files and can open nightly build files, courtesy of @Braydon_SFX:
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
@tatiang, a textUppercase/textLowercase function would be great.
MESSAGING, X-PLATFORM LEADERBOARDS, OFFLINE-TIMER, ANALYTICS and BACK-END CONTROL for your GameSalad projects
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@Hopscotch Yes! Although I can see a way to program it with a table of lower- and upper-case letters. In fact, maybe I'll make a quick demo...
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
@tatiang, thanks, got one myself already,
, just a shame to have such text processing power like textfind, textsubStr, etc, and then have to implement a table and search for simple capitalisation.
It should be a quicky for the next version. * googly eyes *
MESSAGING, X-PLATFORM LEADERBOARDS, OFFLINE-TIMER, ANALYTICS and BACK-END CONTROL for your GameSalad projects
www.APPFORMATIVE.com
Here are some more quick and easy text effects that you can do in the standard release version of GameSalad. A basic outline, 3D and drop shadow effect.
Link: https://www.mediafire.com/?eh3r81t4ndcq9o8
P.S forgot to mention, in the drop shadow effect above you can click the word to depress it.
No way. There are no italics? OMG. I mean... such a hard to achieve game development tool, and bold and italic font variants are still missing? You must be kidding me GS creators.
This is an old thread, but I feel driven to comment now that @noihcra bumped it.
While more features/tools is always a good thing, the graphic designer in me has been cringing at a lot of the posts in this thread. I'm seeing a lot of really creative and impressive feats of GameSalad prowess, but allow me to chime in on the visual design side of this discussion.
Good typography design means using the letterforms as they were created, and being creative (and subtle) with hierarchy and type variation.
In other words, using an effect or trick to produce a bold, italic, light, etc. version of a typeface is BAD DESIGN. If you're using Helvetica and want your text bold, use Helvetica Bold. If you're using X typeface and want your text italic but X typeface doesn't have an italic style, then you should not be seeking out a trick to make it italic.
Microsoft Word is pretty guilty of this, offering an italic or bold button no matter what typeface the user is working with. All this really does is push the letters over, or make the stroke weight heavier. This results in bad design, and is a great segue for my next rant...
...outlined text is almost always a no-no. The reason being: outlines distort the shapes of the letterforms. For example, an outline on the letter O will reduce the negative space in the center of the O, creating a shape the type designer did not intend. More severe issues arise in letters like B, P, R, S...because their negative space lives close to the positive letterform space. You also run into problems when outlines cause letters to touch/overlap in awkward and inconsistent places. Look closely at outlined text in the future and I'm sure you'll start to see how ugly it is. There are exceptions to this, of course, like if the type size is large enough and the outline is small enough it can be okay because the damage to the intended shape is minimal (while the benefit of contrast gained by the outline is worth it).
It wasn't my intention to come off as a snob here, but after re-reading this wall-o'-text before hitting the POST button I see that's probably how I sound. A lot of people much more talented in GameSalad than myself have contributed to this thread with some really awesome ideas. I just wanted to contribute in best way I can. Cheers!
@Adrenaline Very insightful (worth a click but also a comment...) about font design and usage. I admit I hadn't thought about bold/italic/outline overlays of fonts that don't already have those styles but I'm curious now to see the difference.
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
Agreed, nothing mentioned here is really an attempt to measure up against actual typography, just some quick tricks and tips to squeeze a little extra mileage out of the limited font functionality. Of course if you want good typography most people will produce that outside of GameSalad and import it as an image asset.
Even with the soon to arrive custom fonts I can still see some people producing their typography outside of GameSalad as GS lacks formatting tools like leading, kerning, baseline shift and so on.
Bold and italics are possible with 1.25 if you use a bold or italic font. They're still not options, but you can load in pretty much any font, so that includes ones that are bold and italic.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Yep! I tried to contribute to the conversation without putting down previous entries because like I said, the comments above are all awesome and impressive. I saw an opportunity to comment because GS abilities seemed to be the focus while typography took a backseat - so why not flip that around