Ambiera ForumDiscussions, Help and Support. |
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Hi, I've just noticed that my coppercube exe's do not distribute the fonts used to make them!  This means that when anyone else plays a game.exe that I've made in coppercube, they must also install the required fonts before running the game. Is this normal? It seems very strange that the used fonts are not automatically packed/embedded with the game.exe file. Is there a way to embed the required fonts inside the exe please? I don't want the user to have to install my fonts (not only is it a hassle, but some of them are expensive commercial fonts I've purchased - so I don't want to give them away). Only reason I even noticed this is because I uninstalled my fonts. All of a sudden, ALL the text in my coppercube game.exes look completely wrong and have defaulted to using system fonts. Is Coppercube restricted to using only default system fonts (such as Ariel, Comic Sans, Papyrus.. etc) or is there a way to use different fonts? Thanks. |
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You can create a custom installer for your game, that will also install the required fonts to the client system. Yeah, coppercube doesn't pack Font files with the game. |
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Ah, OK - no worries. I assumed it would automatically pack the fonts with the exe. I'll just make an installer instead. Thanks for that. |
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Let me know how you go with your installer idea and how you did it. I know that 'FontReg.exe' can install your font to the clients pc either with notice or silently but was Windows 7 - unsure in Win 10 or not... I don't like the fact it might not work or client doesn't accept to do it manually so maybe I was going to have transparent png images with the text on it in each language and just show that instead - might be bit lower resolution but should work... what do you think ?? |
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a few years ago, I worked on a game using the Mac OS version of CC - and the Mac version would not change fonts or font sizes. Niko told me that the only work around (in the Max OS) was to do as you say, to make .png images with the text (font and size desired) and use them. so I tried.... it didn't really go well and in the end, Niko game me the Windows version of CC to be able to use fonts as I needed. anyway, making the .png images turns into a lot of extra work.... |
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I think sprite fonts are great! They allow for baked-in shadows, bevels, multicolours, scaling and zoom effects, transparency/fading etc. In terms of appearance, I would that some oldschool hand-drawn sprite fonts (Amiga era) look way better than most modern true-type fonts - especially for gaming. I used some in CasEvac but the only problem I can see, for me, is that there is no real 2D sprite-sheet support in Coppercube - so I wouldn't know how to use bitmaps (instead of fonts) to display more complex variables. Thanks for the help. I'll definitely look into it more. Will let you know if I find a decent font installer. |
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....Another workaround solution may be to embed the fonts to a universally complient document (such as pdf) and then get coppercube to somehow call the embeded font from that document, rather than trying to use a system font. This would allow for easy distribution of the font across different operating systems and would also prevent font permission/install problems by negating the need for a 3rd party font installer. Obviously the only issue is that Coppercube does not natively call embedded fonts, it uses system fonts. Obviously all systems do have some sort of function/API/dll for calling embedded fonts, so it must be possible somehow? |
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Just found this command to temporarily load a font into memory to be used by any application... "fontview.exe directory/fontname" Good thing is that the system doesn't need elevated permissions and also doesn't need rebooting before using the font. Bad thing is that "fontview" does use some system resources (2MB) and also requires a separate instance for each custom font used in Coppercube. But at least it seems like a simple workaround (for Windows/Wine) which can be called from a .bat file (or possibly even directly from a ccb call during the start of a scene)? |
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Sound good Veganpete - might try that method. I have just checked and the 'FontReg.exe' method it will install the font in both Win 7 & 10 but will ask the user whether to allow it to do this or not....they might not...but on accepting it immediately works at least and then permanent. |
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Thanks Robo! - glad to know fontreg works with Win10 too. |
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