display text FAIL!

ultimaultima Member, PRO Posts: 1,207
edited February 2012 in Working with GS (Mac)
text display has always been a problem for me because they are either extremely blurry or they have a black stroke around them (for white text)... yet i rarely hear anyone talking about it? is there a way to work around that without resorting to swapping out letters with image individually?

i've never had to use display text as it is inside the game until now, and it's quite frustrating.

and if swapping out letters are the only way, what are your solutions to a string of letters without store them character by character in the table cell by cell.

Comments

  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    Hi @ultima, I share your frustration with Display Text; what this behaviour displays is unusable for any professional game/app for sure. I've requested several times that this problem be looked at, so we can have proper anti-aliased font displays. I hope it'll be sorted sooner than later; it's been awful from day one, as far as I can remember. It'd be nice if we could have the option for larger than 100 pts as well... at least 250 max. would be nice...

    Sorry, I personally can't think of any other workaround than the one you suggested...


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    ""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork        temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps

  • SAZ_1SAZ_1 Member Posts: 397
    personally the function can be extremely useful, but for now i only use it to debug :D ... they really should allow users to import custom fonts and if not that the bare minimum is the retina display that needs to be sorted...would save everyone a hell of alot of memory by reducing images etc.
  • CloudsClouds Member Posts: 1,599
    @ultima

    "they are either extremely blurry or they have a black stroke around them"

    Yes, the text handling in Gamesalad is woeful, no control over leading, kerning, baseline shift . . . etc . . . . basically no control at all other than which characters are displayed, but the appalling psudo-anti-aliasing ("extremely blurry or they have a black stroke around them ") puts the icing on the cake !

    I absolutely agree with Gyroscope here, the text is unusable for any professional application. I would go as far to say that Gamesalad's text handling is perhaps the worst I have seen in any modern application.

  • CloudsClouds Member Posts: 1,599
    @SAZ_1

    "personally the function can be extremely useful, but for now i only use it to debug "

    +1
    Agreed, it's very useful as a tool for testing stuff, beyond that you risk making your project look amateurish by using it in the actual game.
  • HoneyTribeStudiosHoneyTribeStudios Member Posts: 1,792
    Yeah, having nice fonts that stay sharp on retina screens would be good.
    Warning There was an error rendering this rich post.
  • CloudsClouds Member Posts: 1,599
    @HoneyTribeStudio

    "Yeah, having nice fonts that stay sharp on retina screens would be good."

    Staying sharp on any screen would be good ! 8-X
  • Rob2Rob2 Member Posts: 2,402
    If you test on device you will find they look far better - and colour choice is very important.
  • Rob2Rob2 Member Posts: 2,402
    edited February 2012
    GS Creator - Mac screenshot
    image
    iPad - GS Viewer
    image
    image
  • calvin9403calvin9403 Member Posts: 3,186
    I check though GS creator and can not found any ttf files

    I think GS should really have a way to import the fonts, that will be a lot better!

    P.S. anyone here use fontographer?
  • ultimaultima Member, PRO Posts: 1,207
    edited February 2012
    @tynan yes exactly what i mean, when i try to change leading, did all kind of things, changing size, putting \n and changing size... no matter what i do i just couldn't get the right leading, so i gave up and did the the "illustrator way" which is just break up the lines and lead them individually, which is terrible because i have to calculate the lines y value numerically.. also on kerning... oh man... oh man. it's like grand canyon has power over display text. what i ended up doing is breaking up each letter and manually kern it and change the kerning by using change attribute self.x for different letter combination... it almost drove me nuts... and in the end i created different "single" image for different letter combination...

    and the ability to not be able to import font,, i think that's a big time waster for a lot of people... i'm very very pleased that GS included 2 version of helvetica, but there's only 1 weight for every single typeface.... which makes it pointless to have 2 helvetica or even have Helvetica Neue if 1 weight is all we get... that's like giving as a porsche with 1 cylinder.. what?

    @Rob2 thank you, yes i noticed that in one of my adhoc build though it's still a bit blurry.. i wish it was crisp sharp on retina display too..

    @calvin9403i use fontlab studio .. same company why?
  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    edited February 2012
    Hi Calvin, the only thing about importing files is possible font copyright problems, I'm guessing; it could open a minefield...

    I used fontographer *years* ago! For interest, if you every come across an old rub-down lettering catalog by the name of Mecanorma (they were like Letraset) you'll find one of my fonts I designed in there: called PlaySchool.

    So agree with you, @Tynan that there should be more font control re: leading, etc.

    Rob, wow, that's much better than I thought... more than acceptable. I'm sure @ultima will be pleased too! I thought that as the display in Preview was so awful it'd be the same on an iDevice... so I never bothered to try it out to see... big thanks for that. I'm going to start using Display Text with much more confidence now! :-)

    Edit: writing as the same time as @ultima ....

    ""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork        temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps

  • ultimaultima Member, PRO Posts: 1,207
    edited February 2012
    @gyroscope for iPad yes i'm somewhat pleased =) except that it still has no control over the text and single weight ............and really cool that you did a full set of fonts... it's tedious work.
  • calvin9403calvin9403 Member Posts: 3,186
    I never heard gs is going to add custom fony maybe gyro you are right

    fontographer will be awesome with custon font
  • ultimaultima Member, PRO Posts: 1,207
    edited February 2012
    i think font copyright issues is probably as relevant as game element copy issues, they don't worry themselves with users using illegal images or sound or character design so they shouldn't worry about font as well, their liability with fonts is just as any other software that allows the use of fonts.

    @calvin9403 yes, but i don't use it often, it's really more complex than just designing the font itself, let alone a good design, there are millions or billions of typefaces out there, usually it's sufficient to just find something that's already done. I do use it when I'm giving clients corporate typefaces.
  • CloudsClouds Member Posts: 1,599
    @Rob2

    "GS Creator - Mac screenshot . . . . vs . . . iPad - GS Viewer"

    Thanks for that ! I thought GS type was so poor that I'd never even tried to proof it on an iOS screen, that's much much better than I would have expected . . . they just need to introduce basic type controls in creator.
  • Rob2Rob2 Member Posts: 2,402
    @Tynan - yep for a quick look it is often ok... close inspection.. aghhh ...as you say kerning etc all over the place (different between ios and desktop eg No of Not above)
  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    edited February 2012
    Agreed about the kerning, Rob & Tynan, that IS bad sometimes, perhaps they need to update the kerning tables relevant to each font....

    "Close inspection.. aghhh..."
    Oh.... I'll have to do a test myself I think to put my mind at rest. :-)

    Small apology to GS HQ though, seeing as text shown on the iDevice is still much better than in GSC Preview.... not so much gnashing of teeth now! ;-) Still be nice for all the type refinements that we've all be asking for... :D

    ""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork        temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps

  • MotherHooseMotherHoose Member Posts: 2,456
    well, hopefully when we are out of Lua … we will have access to the iOS native fonts!
    (noted that the available fonts we now have, are hard-coded in the lua engine)

    @};- MH
  • SAZ_1SAZ_1 Member Posts: 397
    im no programmer but how does the LUA affect this problem?... don't other SDK's (namely Corona use LUA) ... do they have a similar kind of problem?
  • MotherHooseMotherHoose Member Posts: 2,456
    corona doesn't have a Lua engine … it just ports the lua to xcode …

    GS has a GUI that is a that is currently written in lua

    check out a GS build app's package contents … there is the MacOS unix platform and the lua (luo) engine
    and, that lua engine has the fonts defined (last time I looked!)

    @};- MH
  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    I bet you used to take clocks apart when you were younger, MH... ;-)

    ""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork        temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps

  • MotherHooseMotherHoose Member Posts: 2,456
    nope no clocks … just gyroscopes!

    @};- MH
  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    edited February 2012
    Gulp...!!

    ""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork        temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps

  • ultimaultima Member, PRO Posts: 1,207
    lol u guys brighten up my day.
  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653
    The easiest way to improve your fonts for iPhone and iPod Touch 4, is to make your scene 960x640, instead of 480x320.

    If your scene is only 480x320, then even though the graphics can appear high resolution ((if your art supports it), the font will act as if it's on a 480x320 screen. ie: it'll be really blurry. But if you lay out your scene at 960x640, and manually set the camera to be 960x640, the fonts will look much better.

    What would be better still, would be if Game Salad will just display the fonts appropriately without us having to do that.

  • gyroscopegyroscope I am here.Member, Sous Chef, PRO Posts: 6,598
    edited August 2012

    Hi @Hymloe

    How does making a scene larger affect the resolution of type created via a Display Text Behaviour? (If that's what you're suggesting...) Sorry, can't understand that one...

    Edit just read your post on another thread and see what you mean now with using camera... a good workaround! Only thing is, all other actors will have to be double the size as well surely...

    ""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork        temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps

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