Topic: NEW VERSION!!!

[James]

NEW NEW NEW feature!

Check it out!

http://laserboy.org/code/LaserBoy_2013_01_19.zip

In this version, you can tap the F3 key at any time and LaserBoy will capture whatever is in the window and save it to the drive as a bitmap in the same folder as LaserBoy.exe. The new file will be called screen_capture.bmp. You must rename or delete this file in order to do it again. LaserBoy will not overwrite the file if it already exists. It will be the same size as the window that LaserBoy populated when the capture was made.

James. 

[James]

New and improved font rendering capabilities!

Cleaned up the font rendering tool.

Added better default values for faster, more intuitive operation.

Added a whole new system for rendering variable spaced fonts!

Added two new parameters to the [Tab] settings menu

One to control the size of each mono spaced font glyph as a percentage of a max glyph filed size

and another to control size of the gaps between variable spaced glyphs as a percent of the width of the letter x from the rendered font.

I also fixed up the font files lucida.ild and courier_new that have come with earlier version of LaserBoy, renamed them with a prefix of font_ and added a few other nice fonts to the distribution.

http://laserboy.org/code/LaserBoy_2013_02_18.zip

[Shadow Panther]

I'm trying this version on OS X, and display colors are reversed again. I remember we've figured out how to fix that, but that fix didn't seem to make it into your main code.

[James]

That's weird because meeble just compiled the version before this one and it works for him.

What was the last version that worked for you?

[Shadow Panther]

I see in my Skype logs, that we fixed that color issue almost a year ago, in March. And I tried _removing_ that fix (commenting out *_BIT_SHIFT defines for OS X, leaving only defaults). It works! So, seems like OS X or SDL was fixed in the meantime and color bytes are no longer inverted.


Update: Okay, I don't know what just happened, but after updating macports, colors flipped again and I had to revert *_BIT_SHIFT defines to their OS X variants.

[meeble]

I will be attempting to compile the latest build in OS X 10.8.2 tomorrow - I'll let you know if everything goes smoothly.  FYI, I didn't see any color inversion in the previous build of LaserBoy.

[James]

Thanks to both of you for working with me on this!

Please feel free to contact me on Skype if you have any questions or if you need to tell me something!

I really enjoy working with both of you!

I have an idea of what it might be. I updated SDL to the current version of 1.2.53. SDL is supposed to be the same interface for all the operating systems it supports.

When I was working with Shadow Panther before trying to get LaserBoy to compile and run in Mac OSX, I had to put code in there to rearrange the order of the RGB bytes. Maybe they added that same idea to the latest version of SDL and now they are being rearranged OUT OF ORDER!

Look at the bottom of LaserBoy_macros.hpp for the byte order statements.

James. 

[meeble]

FYI, I just installed the 2013_02_18 version of LB on OSX and all went smoothly.  Nothing new cropped up since the last version.

[James]

http://laserboy.org/code/LaserBoy_2013_02_28.zip

This version has much better font rendering!

LaserBoy was designed to use an ILDA file of 94 frames. Each frame contains a glyph in the order shown below:

//--------------------------------------
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
: ; < = > ? @
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
[ \ ] ^ _ `
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
{ | } ~
//--------------------------------------

All of these frame sets are named with a prefix of 'font_' so they can easily be sorted out of the rest of the ild files with LaserBoy's file name completion functionality.

The new version of LaserBoy comes with:

font_arial.ild
font_comic_sans.ild
font_courier_new.ild
font_impact.ild
font_lucida.ild
font_times_new_roman.ild

Previous versions of LaserBoy were able to render mono spaced fonts based on a constant width of filed for each glyph.

A new feature in LaserBoy is the ability to render fonts with a variable glyph spacing, based on the actual width of each glyph.

New parameters were added to the [Tab] value settings menu for controlling the width of each mono spaced glyph field as a percentage of a square area larger than any glyph, and to control the width of the gaps between variable spaced glyphs as a percentage of the width of the letter 'W' of the font being rendered.

Also, most of the rendered segment input interfaces, found in menu 'm render segments by coordinates', now have default values making them faster to get through and easier to understand.

To render text into a frame:
From the main menu, go into menu 'm'.

Use the 'p' key to select a color.
Use either the 'o' or the 'q' key to render a mono or a variable spaced font.

Notice the default value of the baseline start X of -30000.
Accept this value by hitting [Enter].

Notice the default value of the baseline start Y of 0.
Accept this value by hitting [Enter].

Notice the default value of the baseline end X of 30000.
Accept this value by hitting [Enter].

Notice the default value of the baseline end Y of 0.
Accept this value by hitting [Enter].

Notice the default value of font name.
Accept this value by hitting [Enter].

At the prompt 'text to render' type the desired string of text to render from the ASCII glyph set shown above.
Submit the string by hitting [Enter].

A string of text will be rendered on the baseline defined between the coordinates of (-30000, 0) to (30000, 0) in short integer coordinate space (-32767 to +32767).

Note: Each individual glyph might be made of two or more separated segments, but they are all (individually) bonded together with 'lit black'. So each glyph is considered one whole lit segment and moving, scaling and rotating will effect the entire glyph.

If you find the new font rendering improvements interesting, you might also like to read this:
http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?topic=557.msg6399#msg6399

James.