Fonts

[sprite]

Hi ,

Does LWJGL provide any support for fonts ?  I've been able to get a demo of bitmap fonts using textures and display lists running, but I'd like to use something other than a bitmap font : /  I am really at a loss for options.

(It doesn't have to be cross platform... I'm trying to make this work for WindowsXP)

^^
sprite

[princec]

If you want to use any other kind of font than bitmap fonts... chances are you're not writing a game But otherwise no, we don't support any other kind of font. I think you could probably do wonders using Java's fonts and extruding solids etc. from the Shape2Ds they produce but then again there's a few other things out there which might be simple, like the wgl font stuff.

Cas

[sprite]

Hehe I am writing a game  My problem is that I can't find any fonts.  The only bitmap fonts I've found are from the 2D font tutorial from gametutorials.com (ported to LWJGL by CH*MAN) - there are only two  Do you know of a good place to pick up more bitmap fonts ?

I'll look into java's stuff.

[psiegel]

Personally, I wrote a little script that uses AWT to load up a font and draws each ascii value from 0-127 to an image using that font, then saves it out as a png.  If you want to get fancy with it, you could even store each individual character's size calculated by FontMetrics for use when laying out your polygons.

A word for the wary though, you should look very carefully at the legality of distributing various fonts.  Many fonts are free for personal use, but not for commercial distribution.

Paul

[princec]

I render out my fonts beforehand too and keep a note of all the metrics.

RE: the legality of fonts, it is of course entirely legal to render them and distribute them in this format as a bitmap. The copyright is with the font file itself, not its rendered representation. Otherwise you'd have terrible difficulty if you worked in poster design etc etc wouldn't you

Cas

[mac]

Hi,

i throught using  in GL is not that Problem ?

- Jens

[psiegel]

I thought that might be the case, but I couldn't find any kind of legal language backing that argument up.  In the end, I decided to just avoid any problems by only using fonts that were clearly marked as free for commercial use.

Paul