you know how some characters you can barely see what it is?
thats because we're using Raster graphics for the characters.
but, wouldn't it be so much better to use Vector graphics like .SVG format?
i mean, as you can see on wiki ( url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics[/url] ) the difference is amazing.
if we used these instead we could make our fonts big with lots of detail and just scale it down for in-game.
would this be possible?
if it would, i could try making a .SVG copy of the current font....
Armagetron Font Improvement
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Lucifer
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Everything I learned about fonts, I learned from Google.
The answer to your last question is "no". The font rendering was totally replaced in 0.3.0, and that's what it takes to get a better quality font. Since the work has already been done in the trunk, we're not likely to put it in the stable branch.
The answer to your last question is "no". The font rendering was totally replaced in 0.3.0, and that's what it takes to get a better quality font. Since the work has already been done in the trunk, we're not likely to put it in the stable branch.
Be the devil's own, Lucifer's my name.
- Iron Maiden
B)
C)
The Raster fonts are used in the DOS. They're much smaller, and when resized they don't have smooth lines, but still appear pixelated.
There isn't any gradient affects, so no matter what they look pixelated.
Also, Raster fonts can be very small. Like around 8x12 pixels, and each font is equal in size, so no matter what they align with eachother going up and down.
Just open up a command line. You can see them.
Oh, and you can tell by looking at the "0" character, which has a diagonal line cutting through it in the Raster fonts.
There isn't any gradient affects, so no matter what they look pixelated.
Also, Raster fonts can be very small. Like around 8x12 pixels, and each font is equal in size, so no matter what they align with eachother going up and down.
Just open up a command line. You can see them.
Oh, and you can tell by looking at the "0" character, which has a diagonal line cutting through it in the Raster fonts.
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Lucifer
- Project Developer
- Posts: 8640
- Joined: Sun Aug 15, 2004 3:32 pm
- Location: Republic of Texas
- Contact:
Raster fonts are fonts that are rendered directly to screen from bitmaps. While you have a point, it's only a small one. 
It is more correct to call it a bitmap font or a pixmap font.
The letters are used as textures, and openGL does the rendering, as far as we're concerned.
For that matter, we get no gain by using svg for the same reason. At least, not without doing a whole ton of work. See, we'd have to parse the svg file, then for each frame compute the ideal vectorized version of each letter, render it to a pixmap, send it to the video card, and then watch it render. We'd probably lose performance thataway, in fact. I don't even think ftgl goes to all that effort for every letter, I think it just computes a best guess and reuses that for many consecutive frames, only recomputing when it needs to. Anyway, all the optimizations and bug-fixing we'd have to do to make svg work are taken care of by using FTGL, which renders truetype fonts for us.
Anyway, try to remember that arguing between "raster fonts" and "bitmap/pixmap fonts" is a pretty worthless use of time. Might as well argue the difference between sprites and blits/blobs on PCs.
It is more correct to call it a bitmap font or a pixmap font.The letters are used as textures, and openGL does the rendering, as far as we're concerned.
For that matter, we get no gain by using svg for the same reason. At least, not without doing a whole ton of work. See, we'd have to parse the svg file, then for each frame compute the ideal vectorized version of each letter, render it to a pixmap, send it to the video card, and then watch it render. We'd probably lose performance thataway, in fact. I don't even think ftgl goes to all that effort for every letter, I think it just computes a best guess and reuses that for many consecutive frames, only recomputing when it needs to. Anyway, all the optimizations and bug-fixing we'd have to do to make svg work are taken care of by using FTGL, which renders truetype fonts for us.
Anyway, try to remember that arguing between "raster fonts" and "bitmap/pixmap fonts" is a pretty worthless use of time.
Might as well argue the difference between sprites and blits/blobs on PCs.Be the devil's own, Lucifer's my name.
- Iron Maiden