Displaying multiple lines of text

HawtSawce

Hi,

I need to place multiple lines of text on the screen, enough to fill the entire view space. I am aware of 'display text' and opton+enter. However, when I do this with more than 2 lines and left alignment, for each new line added the entire text box moves over 100 pixels-ish(I assume). While working in GameSalad it appears fine but on my iphone it won't even display because it is so far off. Is there a real proper way to display multiple lines of text without moving over a text actor hundreds of pixels?

Thanks in advance,

-HawtSawce

expired_012

You could just make your text using another program and then insert the text as an image. Or if you want to stick to making your text with GS, the only other way I could think of is to make separate actors for each line of text so that what you can position the lines of texts in any way you want by simply moving them

HawtSawce

Thanks for the reply. I was afraid someone was going to say make 1 text actor per line(way too many lines of text for this method). I had tried the text as png formats but thy came out looking pixelated on the iphone itself even though I saved them at 72 dpi 320x480 res.

firemaplegames

The .png method is the best. That way you can control the look and feel of the text.

It shouldn't look pixelated on the device. If anything it should look better as the pixels are smaller.

One thing to make sure of is that you are placing the image at whole pixels.

HawtSawce

I went and increased my photoshop file to 960x640 and now it looks fine with a larger file size of course.

What do you mean "whole pixels" firemaplegames?

Thanks again.

firemaplegames

If you double click on the actor in the Scene, you can set its position exactly. Because GameSalad is based on openGL, you can place things at sub-pixels. Just make sure your images are placed at 240 for example, and not 240.5

Since you are using the larger graphics, I assume you are targeting an iPhone4 and Resolution Independence?

HawtSawce

I am actually working with a iphone 3gs on iOS4. For some reason my 320x480 resolutions in photoshop, exported to GS, compiled and run on the iphone 3S looks very blurry.

firemaplegames

Make sure that none of your images have odd dimensions. i.e 234x46 instead of 234x45.
Any image with an odd dimension will blur.

Likewise, if you are using Resolution Independence, make sure all of your large graphics are a multiple of 4, otherwise when they get down-sampled for the older devices, they will have odd dimensions.

i.e a 70x70 pixel image now becomes a blurry 35x35 pixel image...

krousty_bat

oups, double post...

krousty_bat

krousty_bat said:
I'm trying to Display Two different Attribute Value, And all I have is an "Invalide expression" when putting both one after the other in the DIsplay Text Attribute...

can someone help me to make it work please ?
Thx

InLikeFlynn

I think you'll have to make 2 actors to display 2 attributes krousty_bat.

Asymptoteell

You could also just press cntrl return instead of just return.

Rob2

http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=10507

MotherHoose

@krousty_bat

1. the DisplayText has to be entered as an expression.
2. "1st Attribute".." , ".."2nd Attribute"

the . . between the attributes are very important; they tell the computer that there is more to come. (that you want the concatenation of the 2 or more strings.)

------
correctly entered multiple lines display perfect in GS Preview but in the GSViewer and on the devices anything over 3 lines (in my experience) shows up as a white box... save yourself the hassle... use an image.

MH

krousty_bat

Thx Everyone

@Rob2
Thx for the link, i'll check this out.

@ MotherHoose
The text displaying is for debugging purposes only ... so no Pics or final polish needed there.
I will try your solution, for I try the Ctrl+Enter and was never able to make it wok :P.