Outline .ttf fonts

[thezombiecow]

Was anything ever done about this?

The spaced out sentence is the way AGS displays outline fonts right now. it's not too bad, but the longer the sentence, the worse it gets.

Basically, I've got a lovely .ttf font in use, but auto-outline isn't quite thick enough to render it readable in all colours on certain backgrounds. Ideally, it'd have a 3+ pixel outline thickness.

I've tried making my own outline font, but instead of centering the specified outline font directly behind spoken text on a per-character basis, it does so simply as a larger font... so I get the issue as described above in 2003; at the start of a sentence the two fonts are aligned, by the end they're well out of whack as the outline font is larger...

Is there a known workaround for this that I've missed?

[Vince Twelve]

Yeah, the inability to read outlined .ttf fonts on busy backgrounds because of the too-thin outline is the reason I decided to build a speech bubble system into Resonance so that the fonts were always on a plain background.

The ability to customize the auto-outline would be ideal, for me.  Being able to change the thickness and the color would be sweet.

I wouldn't be able to use it in Res, but would definitely make use of such a feature moving forwards.  Especially if the outline was anti-aliased.

[GarageGothic]

If you don't mind using a custom speech function (shouldn't be a big deal now that the dialog system supports real scripting), then check my two posts at the end of this thread for a workaround. You will have to mess around a bit with the coordinates to get a 3-pixel instead of a 1-pixel outline, but you shouldn't run into the problem of the outline becoming offset.

[thezombiecow]

Thanks guys. Nice to know I'm not missing something simple.

The overlay system seems nice, but I'm slightly nervous about using it at this stage. I might keep tweaking and see what I can come up with.

I'm currently struggling to convert from ttf to .FON via bitmaps - everything's coming out oversized and out of place one I import it into AGS. Is there a well-known procedure for this?