A few problems I´m having

[lennon]

I just begun to prototype my game and for the moment I'm just learning about the engine.
These are a lot of questions , the first three are more important to me. Any help would be appreciated:

1- FONT QUALITY AND HOW TO MAKE A NON-AUTOMATIC OUTLINE FOR .TTF?: The docs mentioned something about getting more res on the fonts. I really think I need it, here is an image with what I want (in green) and what I get (cyan). Also, I'm wondering if I could make an outline font that is completly black (filled) but just more thick -since for what I read the color font would be super imposed on top of it, who cares if it's hollow or not, nobody would see the hollowness anyway... and I guess this way the Anti-aliasing won't give this much trouble-. Regardless of that, my question is: How can I do this outline font? I've seen solutions for other file extensions but not TTF. Keep in mind that I'd like a method that allows me to set the outline widith to my pleasure (look how thick is the outline I used in the image). Do I really need a font editor for this? (any tutorials would be helpful, I'v already read the wiki)

2-BLINKING ANIMATION INTERVAL??: I want an animation for the character, of him constantly breathing (the blinking is incorporated in the cycle), and I want it to play whenever he is at rest (say, everyframe). So I tried to put my frames on a blinking view and attach it to the propper slot as I had done with the other animations. I set the blinking interval to 0 to avoid having some delay before the loop started again, but it didn't worked, using 1 wasn't good either. Anyway I don't get it, even with such a small numbers of intervals how can it still take such a long time before actually playing the animation.

3-OPTION-OFF FOR ENTRY POINT?: So, say I have a long entry point for a dialog. How do I make it play only once without using an if statment? With other options I can use the "option-off X" command... but is there anyway to use this command with the entry point as well?

4-PURPLE ICON BAR: I probably won't use this GUI, but it could be useful for now. Yet, for some reason, the icon bar and the inventory menu look purple and duplicated. I guess it must be something about the graphic resolution, since the same error is not happening with the rest of the menus.

5-INPUT FOR THE BORDERS OF THE TEXT WINDOW NOT SHOWING IN THE PROPERTIES?: The manual seems to suggest that there's an item in the properties of the GUI text window to hook up a graphic, but I just don't see it there. I figure I could search for a script comand to find the file, I just feel like I'm missing something that apparently is there somewhere. This one is not that urgent and I'm probably gonna figure it out by myself (and I don't think I'll use this box anyway, I'm just curious)

[Khris]

Hi lennon,

1. The problem is that using AGS' Speech and a TTF font makes it impossible to a) set the outline's width, b) auto-generate the outline that thick. You'd need to create the outline font yourself, and if you want multiple levels of thickness throughout the game, you have to add multiple outline fonts.

There are two solutions I can see:
-a custom speech function that draws the outline (downside: a custom say function, so you have to use Character.Say in dialog scripts, and you lose stuff like automated voice speech)
-use the spritefont plugin, but you won't get an outline like in your picture. It allows you to use arbitrary graphics for the letters, but if they already have an outline, the non-outline parts can't be as close together

(also, just wondering: what you get is teal, what you want is more yellow than green. You should check your monitor settings )

2. You use the IdleView for that, not the BlinkView.

3. Just move the once-only stuff out of the dialog script.

Code: ags

  if (Game.DoOnceOnly("talk to guy")) {
    player.Say("Hello there!");
    cGuy.Say("Nice to meet you.");
    // ...
  }
  dGuy.Start();

Note that you can use standard scripting in dialogs though, you just need to indent the lines by atleast one space.

4. The default icons are 320-res and 8bit. If you switch to high-res without changing the GUI size, this will be the result, afaik. But they are butt-ugly, you shouldn't use them, and the cursor ones are superfluous anyway.

5. You have to click the corner / edge buttons themselves to change the images. Or select one in the dropdown menu on top of the GUI properties.

[lennon]

Well, you managed to answer all of my questions! Thanks!!!!!!!!!!
I guess then that the biggest problem I have with AGS has to do with the fonts. It's a very important feature, and hopefully it'll improve in the future. I'm still not too crazy at other stuff related to how graphics are managed, it's a pitty since the design of the engine is so great. Anyway, this has been a lot of help. I really appreciate it!