How to create a CCLabelAtlas from a CCLabel? It should be possible, right?

cocos2d for iPhone » Programming » cocos2d support (graphics engine)

How to create a CCLabelAtlas from a CCLabel? It should be possible, right?

(8 posts) (4 voices)

Started 1 year ago by gaminghorror
Latest reply from hvtrung

Tags:

gaminghorror
Member
Is it possible to create a texture for use with CCLabelAtlas by means of rendering a sprite using CCLabel and a TrueType font?

I think it should work, has anyone tried it before? It would be a cheap and easy way to speed up font rendering without having to create your own bitmap font or trying to find one that fits your game and is free.

Here's what i was thinking in pseudo-code:
```
CCLabel* font = [CCLabel labelWithString:@"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" font:@"Courier" size:13];
CCLabelAtlas* atlas = [CCLabelAtlas atlasWithTexture2D:[font texture] string:@"HELLO ATLAS" width:26*13 height:13 startChar:(int)'A'];
```
What do you think of that? Could it be added to cocos2d as a feature?
Posted 1 year ago #
hm50
Member

Are you talking about adding any texture to fonts? That would be a great feature!! Have you tried this yet? I'm just a cocos2d noob, so I can't really give insight into the code.

Posted 1 year ago #
gaminghorror
Member

Yes, the idea is to create a bitmap font from a truetype font on-the-fly, during runtime.

I understand that one is not allowed to "bitmaptize" a truetype font and distribute such an image with your app, unless one has the license to the font. Which normally one doesn't, not even for the built-in fonts of our OSs.

I think that since the TrueType font is already rendered to a sprite, and this sprite is displayed, it should be legal to render the font's characters and use them as a bitmap font, as long as it is created during runtime. But i'm no legal expert. Technically it should be possible, i don't see why it shouldn't.

Any comments on that?

Posted 1 year ago #
gaminghorror
Member

Hmmm, maybe with a BitmapFontAtlas it would be possible:
http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/api-ref/latest-stable/interface_c_c_bitmap_font_atlas.html

Idea:
- render desired ASCII characters with fixed-width TrueType font via CCLabel
- use label's texture for use with CCSpriteSheet
- create BitmapFontAtlas with this spritesheet

Only change in cocos2d: CCBitmapFontAtlas needs to override the initWithTexture method from CCSpriteSheet. I may just try that over Easter. I'm posting it here just so anyone can yell:

"STOP! Don't waste your time, it won't work ..." ;)

Posted 1 year ago #
gaminghorror
Member

Hmmm ... looking at the code and docs i think this might work:

- create CCTexture2D using initWithString and using a string containing all needed characters in correct sequence (ABCDE...)
- use this texture for CCTextureAtlas' initWithTexture
- subclass or extend CCLabelAtlas to support initWithTextureAtlas
- this new init method will create the necessary quads in CCTextureAtlas for the given string (may not even need new code)

Of course that would only work well for a fixed-width font like Courier New.

Posted 1 year ago #
gaminghorror
Member

I got it to work with Courier/Courier New. It's ugly code though, need to clean it up before i publish it.

My attempts to make it work with Truetype fonts failed. The characters never aligned properly.

Posted 1 year ago #
krstn
Member

@gaminghorror
I know it was over a year ago, but I'm wondering how did it go?

I guess you didn't provide sources due to a lack of interest, hope this can change.
I'm looking for something faster to provide text on screen than labels.

Thanks,
Krystian

Posted 9 months ago #
hvtrung
Member
Hi there,
I just visit here when I'm dealing with Label and CCLabelAtlas.
And I end up with a solution: I use a CCLabelTTF together with a CCLabelAtlas. CCLabelTTF use to display characters, mean while the CCLabelAtlas take responsibility of displaying and updating numbers. Just in my case, the changing part just is the numbers only.
Just wanna post it here in hope we will have a good solution for this problem in the future.
The CCLabelAtlas just need to initialize as easy as this way for example:
```
CCLabelAtlas Label = [CCLabelAtlas labelWithString:livesString charMapFile:
					   @"fps_images.png" itemWidth:16 itemHeight:24 startCharMap:'.'];
```
Thanks,
hvtrung
Posted 5 months ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.