I'm creating a app in Unity which is quite text heavy. So far, all the text is handled through the OnGUI function. I think I'm going to run into problems later on.
So, is it possible to create text, (using true type fonts, not 3D text or bitmaps. Not using something from the assets store either!) without using OnGUI? If so, how do you make each of the text filds independent with different styles, positions & parents?
Check the AssetStore for 2D toolkit or NGui plugin, they are both great for Ui stuff
they contain nice ways to do gradients, fonts, and aligning to screen edges or parent handles
Another option would be Daikonforge:
http://www.daikonforge.com/dfgui/
The company I work for released a game using NGUI, not long ago, but we are switching to Daikonforge now, because it's deemed more Artist-friendly than NGUI.
Related
I am trying to make a copy of the popular browser game Travian.com. I am currently working on the maps and I was able to get the farms overview image as a png.
What I am trying to accomplish with that map is:
Each element (farm) should be clickable) and redirect to that specific farm page.
As you could see on the map, farms are not just simple squares.
Once I had the farms.png picture, I used on online tool to convert a png into a .svg file. Using a free software, I was able to draw circles around each map to build my svg.
This is the result:
I recently read about canvas and I was wondering if canvas would be a better option in my case rather using svg?
You need to try it yourself and see if it gets redrawn quickly enough that the game is sufficiently responsive for you. If the map is very detailed, the redraw may be too slow and make your game feel slow. You really need to try it and see. If it's too slow for you, then you may need to either:
use bitmap images, or
keep the maps as SVGs, but render them to a Canvas on first load. This way they'll be sharp at whatever resolution screen the user has.
I want to evaluate Libgdx for my app. I want the following things to be possible with Libgdx:
The dynamic loading of images. (✔ Texture)
Cutting images. (✔ TextureRegion)
Support of the multiple screens. (✔ Screen)
Recognizing swinging to the right, left, up and down in a defined area. (✔ GestureDetector)
Nice to have:
Styling of buttons. (?)
Standard elements like lists, ScrollViews etc.(?)
SVG graphics rendering (?)
I am thinking about the three problems. I read that GestureDetector should be very slow (500ms) and that SVG graphics are not natively supported and rendered with extensions very slow.
My third concern is that I can't just style buttons the way I want them to, for example: enter image description here
I would like to know if my requirements can be solved with the LibGDX functions and if they are good and easy to use.
Thanks for your advice!
LibGDX comes with a sublibrary called Scene2D UI, which defines a bunch of standard UI widgets which can be styled with JSON. It comes with different Button classes and ScrollPane which are your ScrollView substitute.
Docs you might want for Scene2D UI:
https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Scene2d.ui For the widgets
https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Skin For styling the widgets
In regards to SVG rendering, best option is to render them to PNG files if you want to use LibGDX alone.
Also, you may want to look into TextureAtlas for managing all of your TextureRegions, as well as AssetManager for managing all the external resources in your app https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Managing-your-assets.
It's a good idea to compile all of your texture files into a single texture, so that not many textures have to be bound and unbound in OpenGL, so have a look at this https://github.com/crashinvaders/gdx-texture-packer-gui this will help you produce a TextureAtlas automatically.
I'm trying to build a translator app which would be able to replace foreign text in the real-time, but after exploring possible approaches got a bit cornered.
Even though I was able to extract words images using Vision, I couldn't replace them in place in ARKit scene. Then I tried using ARReferenceImage and image tracking, but it needs to know the physical width of the target image which I can not guarantee, as the text could be on any surface from a book to a billboard.
Am I missing something? What would you guys suggest?
I'm kicking around an idea for a side project and am looking for advice on which direction to go in terms of technology. I've done some research already, but am still fairly confused as to what the realistic options are.
I'd like to make an interactive map based on a fictional world (think Middle Earth), including a timeline filter and a details section for additional information on an event or location.
Desired Features:
map on the left
details pane on the right
timeline slider/filter at bottom
Territories
color for political affiliation
displays details in details pane
labels
labels for cities
Hurdles:
Get a clean map image to work with
Map image into intermediate format (svg, geojson, topojson?)
Display map on webpage, style map, add animations, etc
Technologies
SVG
I'm pretty sure I could code all of this in SVG using events and boundaries. I've already been able to create SVG Paths from the image using GIMP, so converting the map into an SVG file seems plausible.
The issue with doing it this way is I would end up doing all the work the hard way when there seems to be lots of frameworks for this kind of thing already.
Kartograph
La Bella Italia is a very nice example and would serve as a good starting point. I love the trade route animations and the border styling with the glow filters.
The bonus here is that I know I can make an svg map, which is all this would need to get up and running.
My issue here is it doesn't seem like Kartograph is as rich of a platform as D3.js. I'm not sure if I can double dip and link some D3 stuff with the kartograph events. If I could, that might be the solution.
D3.js
The sliders, animations(hover and selection), and topojson seem like they would be perfect. But the main issue I have here is getting my image converted into a GeoJson format. From what I can tell these formats are strictly for Real World maps, using longitude/latitude.
So there you have it! I'm hoping there is some good news on how I might convert my map image into topojson so I can enjoy the benefits of D3.js. If not, I suppose I could just try kartograph and wire the events up with D3 controls.
Thoughts?
I'm currently writing my master thesis and I have the same topic like you had these days. I called my project Arda Maps. Feel free to ask me anything if have techonology questions.
I'm using the following frameworks/tools in my project:
QGIS
JQuery
D3.js
GeoJSON/TopoJSON
TimeGlider
is it possible to create a stroke with a dynamic width with SVG? I want to achieve a Calligraphy look like here, here or here.
Is this even possible? It seems customization of strokes in SVG is fairly limited. Even gradients in strokes seem to be non-trivial (see here).
There is a proposal to add into SVG standard a mechanism, that does exactly what you want:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/wiki/Proposals/Variable_width_stroke
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2013May/0041.html
There's even an example implementation available here:
https://rawgit.com/birtles/curvy/master/index.html
It is, however, by no means official and we cannot be even sure it'll ever be.
Until then you'll need to stick to Bezier curves and object filling:
You can also use calligraphic fonts, for example - Tangerine available on Google CDN:
This approach requires less work since you don't need to draw everything from scratch, but then again, using third party fonts leaves you with little control over the final result.
You can't dynamically adjust the stroke of a path element. However you could draw a path, use a fill color on it instead of stroke, then double back upon the letters at a slight distance away from the original line.
Also, if you are using the SVG on the web then you can use css fonts on text elements. There are some pretty good cursive fonts that you can use for free... just check google web fonts.