Text or draw image?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/Text or draw image?
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| ok, I have created a pause menu that displays a quad (textured) with alpha transparancy (a see through grey background), I want to put text on top of that i.e. Game Paused, Resume game, Quit game. Would it be faster to use draw image with bitmap fonts or using the blitz text command? Kind Regards, Gamzman |
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| forgot to mention, 3D stuff will still be displayed in the background hence the alpha transparancy on the quad, but it will not be active. |
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| Prolly fastest overall to use quads to display your letters. What about creating a texture, say 256x32 or something, and drawing onto the texture with the text command. You'll only need to do this once, and you can apply this texture to another sprite. Faster than the 2d drawing :o) But, if you wanting to stick to the 2d, then creating a image, and drawing the text to the image, then drawing the image every frame will be quickest. |
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| Using the Text command on textures is unreliable. It plain doesn't work on some GFX cards. You'll probably be better off rendering your text to the back buffer before copyrecting it to a texture. |
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| Ah, i didn't know that. Thanks, it might save me a headache somewhere down the line :o) |
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| No probs. :) P.S. Your missus was just on IRC. Seems like a nice gal. :) |
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| She is usually... :D (don't tell her i said that :S ) |
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| IRC? How do you guys all know each other!? |
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| It's a conspiracy. |
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| Talk on the forums, and go on the IRC channel :o) |
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| What's the IRC channel? |
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| What is a quad ? Only reason I ask is I've been using 3d Cylinders and am considering new options that are less 3d rendering intensive... |
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| A quad is basically a 3d square, 4 vertices, 2 triangles which you create in code using addvertex etc... It's very similar to a 3dsprite but any camera alignment has to be done yourself. The main usage, for me at least, would be for a 3d GUI or single surface particle system. Stevie |
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