12-21-2018, 02:13 AM
I'm working on an example project that I intend to write a tutorial about. It's for using the tilemap and tileset structures in tilengine to render text. A lot of the games that I would like to make would involve a healthy amount of text, and using sprites for that amount of text would not be very good for performance. Coming up with a workable solution for text rendering led me to the idea of using a tilemap layer instead.
I wouldn't use the term "required." I was actually able to cook up a font graphic within the limitations currently in place. But I did have to go back and re-design the font graphic after I found out about the power-of-two thing. I had originally planned on making every letter 6 pixels tall by 12 pixels wide. I had to adjust them to be 8 pixels by 16 pixels instead. I'm interested in non-power-of-two tilemaps because it would give me greater control over text features like letter spacing and line spacing. With my current prototype, the line and letter spacing have to effectively be baked into the texture itself.
The prototype has been going well. I'm confident that I can cook up a system that at least approximates the kind of text rendering you see in games like Zelda, or the classic JRPGs. I even think I will be able to construct basic text boxes to go along with them.
I wouldn't use the term "required." I was actually able to cook up a font graphic within the limitations currently in place. But I did have to go back and re-design the font graphic after I found out about the power-of-two thing. I had originally planned on making every letter 6 pixels tall by 12 pixels wide. I had to adjust them to be 8 pixels by 16 pixels instead. I'm interested in non-power-of-two tilemaps because it would give me greater control over text features like letter spacing and line spacing. With my current prototype, the line and letter spacing have to effectively be baked into the texture itself.
The prototype has been going well. I'm confident that I can cook up a system that at least approximates the kind of text rendering you see in games like Zelda, or the classic JRPGs. I even think I will be able to construct basic text boxes to go along with them.