Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news
From: "Mario Wynands" <mario@sidhe.co.nz>
Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.programming.2d_graphics
Subject: Re: User defined fonts
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 13:50:56 +1200
Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE)
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Ed Fear <ed@directxbeginners.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7kgohf$4fj24@chuka.playstation.co.uk...
> I know this has popped up before, but it seems to have been deleted by
> Outlook...  anyway...  how the jeeves do I make my own font to use in my
> game?  I had an idea of creating a sprite for every character printed and
> just changing the u and v values of one big sprite but this is unwieldy
and
> silly.  How do you do it?  I think I remember Rad posting some code from
one
> of his projects, but it didn't help.  Can any of you?  Please?

Hi Ed,

There are a number of different ways you could implement user-defined fonts.
Probably the easiest is to use a set of predefined sprites and draw them as
necessary (that way you don't have to mess around with uv values as you draw
them).  It takes a little bit more memory than by having one sprite, but is
probably worth it for the simplicity.  I'll try to describe it below but it
could get a bit messy :)

First off define your sprites using something like

GsSPRITE letter_sprites[52];  // need 52 to hold upper and lower case if
required
GsSPRITE number_sprites[10];
GsSPRITE symbol_sprites[24];  // use as many symbols as you need

or to make it a bit cleaner and flexible to allow multiple font sets you can
wrap them up as a struct like

typedef struct
{

    int width;
    int height;
    int spacing;
    int multicase;

    GsSPRITE letter_sprites[52];
    GsSPRITE number_sprites[10];
    GsSPRITE symbol_sprites[24];

} CharSet;


Then in the initialisation section of your game set up the sprites so they
index into the font TIM


 // Set up letters (single case only)
 // the exact implementation will depend on the layout of your TIM
 for (i = 0; i < 26; i++)
 {
      LinkSpriteToImage( &char_set->letter_sprites[i],
GetTIMIMAGE(tim_index));
      char_set->letter_sprites[i].w = width;
      char_set->letter_sprites[i].h = height;

      if (i < 15)
      {
           char_set->letter_sprites[i].u = width + (i * width);
           char_set->letter_sprites[i].v = 2 * height;
      }
      else
      {
           char_set->letter_sprites[i].u = ((i-15) * width);
           char_set->letter_sprites[i].v = 3 * height;
      }
 }

// and then do all the digits and symbols....


Then when you are drawing text to the screen you do something like


  length   = strlen(string);
  for (i = 0; i < length; i++)
  {
       sprite = GetSpriteForCharacter(char_set, *string);

       if (sprite)
       {
            sprite->x = x;
            sprite->y = y;
            sprite->r = sprite->g = sprite->b = 128 + brightness;

            GsSortSprite(sprite, ot, 0);
       }

       x += char_set->width + char_set->spacing;

       string++;
  }



where GetSpriteForCharacter works out which sprite to draw along the lines
of


 // Make all one case
 if (character >= 65 && character <= 90)
 {
      if (char_set->multicase)
           character += 58;
      else
       character += 32;
 }

 // Check if letter
 if (character >= 97 && character <= 148)
 {
      index = ((int) character) - 97;
      result = &char_set->letter_sprites[index];
 }
 else
 {
      // Check if digit
      if (character >= 48 && character <= 57)
      {
           index = ((int) character) - 48;
           result = &char_set->number_sprites[index];
       }
      // Must be symbol
      else
      {

           switch (character)
           {
                case ' ':
                 result = &char_set->symbol_sprites[0];
                 break;

                case '!':
                 result = &char_set->symbol_sprites[1];
                 break;

                // I'm sure you get the idea...

                default:
                 result = NULL;
                 break;
           }
      }
}


Simple as that (if you understood any of that mess :) ).  There are a couple
Yaroze demos kicking around with similar sorts of implementations (the above
code is a derivative of one of those if I remember correctly) if you want a
full solution.

Let me know if you need more help in a specific area.


Hope this helps

Mario


Mario Wynands
Company Director/Producer
SIDHE INTERACTIVE
mario@sidhe.co.nz
http://www.sidhe.co.nz