New features for next release

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Carsten
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New features for next release

Post by Carsten » 2008-11-08, 23:29

As announced in our previous news item, we're developing a set of exciting new features for the next release of the Ca3D-Engine:
GuiEditor-preview1.png
Among the already finished items is the new GUI Editor: A convenient graphical editor for editing GUIs for use in Ca3DE. The resulting GUIs can be used both in 2D (e.g. for the console, player HUD or the main menu) as well as directly in the 3D worlds as game elements. See the GUI Gallery for some examples - updated today! :up:

We're very proud that in our implementation we managed to beautifully combine two normally totally opposed concepts: Our GUIs are conveniently edited in the new graphical GUI Editor and still customized in a very powerful and flexible manner by easy to understand Lua scripts.

The GUI Editor is a component of the Ca3DE World Editor "CaWE", and it employs a new advanced user interface style that is already familiar to many users from other contemporary applications. We are currently working to extend the same user interface technique to the well-known Map Editor component of CaWE as well.
FontWizard-preview1.png
Also finished is the new Font Wizard that you can use to convert regular font files for use in Ca3DE GUIs.
The conversion is fully automatic in just a few simple steps, and the Font Wizard guides you through the process. The image to the left shows the second to last and last steps of the wizard.

Under the hood, we employ the FreeType Font Engine, and thus our Font Wizard supports all font types that FreeType supports: Among others, these are TrueType Fonts (*.ttf), OpenType Fonts (*.otf;*.ttf), PCF Fonts (*.pcf), BDF Fonts (*.bdf), Windows Fonts (*.fnt), etc.

Besides these, more new features and changes are already under development, and we will update you as soon as they are finished! :wohow:
Best regards,
Carsten
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Stephen
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Re: New features for next release

Post by Stephen » 2008-11-10, 06:54

I'm looking forward to playing around with the GUI editor! And I think that someone needs to use the font wizard to replace Arial with something better in the engine. Is it even leagal for you to distribute Arial without licensing it through someone like Linotype? I'd just look for a cool open source typeface which could be freely distributed legally.
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Carsten
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Re: New features for next release

Post by Carsten » 2008-11-10, 10:28

Dear Stephen,

thanks for asking this question - it's a crucial one!

The Font Wizard serves two purposes:
  • Convert fonts so that they can be used for 3D rendering, and
  • avoid legal problems.
Both goals are achieved by converting font files into a set of texture images. The left screenshot of the second to last step of the Font Wizard above shows such a texture image that it created from the original font file. As obviously not all characters fit into the black rectangle and we also need multiple resolutions of the texture image files, clicking on the "Click to see complete preview" button shows a preview of all generated texture images of all sizes and resolutions. (The Font Wizard also creates a look-up table so that later individual characters can be located in the set of images.)

The texture images and look-up tables are used by the Ca3DE GUI system for the actual rendering of the fonts in the 2D and 3D GUIs. That means that no system font files have to be shipped with the Ca3D-Engine at all. This strategy is legally safe and commonly practiced by most advanced engines and games.

From an artistic viewpoint, I wholeheartedly agree with you: We should really replace the current font by one of the many great good-looking and free fonts! :up:
Best regards,
Carsten
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