Bitmap texts: just to not forget

[youle31]

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?420410-Dynamic-bitmap-text-in-UPBGE
13abc63#commitcomment-21835814

(I mark it as a bug just to not forget. I can try to restore it if you agree)

[youle31]

Voilà I restored it (it's dirt but it's just to open discussion): #470

[panzergame]

I'm not very sure of what is doing the usage of image material for text. In the file example file the color of the text is not taken in account, and only the alpha channel of the image is used.
@youle31, @DCubix, @lordloki : What's the difference between a custom ttf file ?

[youle31]

I never used this feature personnaly so it could be good to have opinion of the ones who use it.

on the net, there are old topics talking about (http://www.blendenzo.com/tutColoredText.html...) // oops I think I did a mistake in yhe link copy, sorry

[haidme]

@panzergame - It can be used for custom letters or images(instead of letters), custom fonts with effects on letters(glow,outlines,gradients..etc). Also for animating(images) using keys as keyframes. That's the difference. You might be able to create images in a custom ttf font, but not glow and other effects. Also it is way harder, than just to edit a bmp image. Also I suspect, for a text heavy UIs it will perform better than ttf fonts.
Overall it is not a huge feature, just I think it is nice to have it. It is not as flexible as ttf and has many limitations, like different language support, no textfields width out of the box and so on.
If someone is wondering how it works and looks, check out my games - they all use this feature instead of ttf fonts.

[youle31]

Oh, I didn't even noticed that in the .blend, object color was animated (the logic bricks are missing)

[haidme]

Yep, you can also animate the material color/alpha applied on the font.

[Akira1San]

If its using TexFace, the bf devs want to remove it. link: https://developer.blender.org/T51382

[youle31]

The feature is still in old bge. @panzergame : Did you included it in 2.8 upbge branch?

[panzergame]

@youle31 : For the moment no to limit compatibility between UPBGE and UPBGE 2.8 branch. I will work on this old feature later...

[youle31]

@haidme : Finally, as we go for very big changes when working on blender2.8, as this feature is badly documented, as it seems there are compatibility issues with some langages, and that the code seemed a bit old and doing a mix between blender sources and game engine sources (problem of design), as it's not a prior feature for the game engine, we won't restore it for now. It was interesting, but I think not important and used enough to be restored at the moment when we begin to work on merge upbge with 2.8. I'm sorry to have make you waste your time. Maybe in the future we could do a work on texts to have a better control on it, and have the possibility to use materials with an easier approach (material for all texts) but it is not for now. Anyway, thanks to have showed this feature to us that we didn't know. I'm sorry that it will cause a problem to you if you try to port your game to upbge... :/ Bye!