Whats a good way of ensuring that a player has all the fonts to play a game? My current project uses 3 different fonts in text objects throughout it;
-Arial
-Small Fonts
-System
I need to somehow make sure that all of these are installed on the computer of the player, otherwise I've noticed TGF will simply change them to be displayed a different font that will obviously not fit (for example, changing small fonts to Times New Roman because thats all the player has)
Is there some way I could install these during runtime if they aren't detected, or package them in the installer?
First, you could include those font files in the Game´s folder, then make the game copy/move those fonts with the FileObject extension from the Game´s folder into the Fonts folder (C:\Windows\Fonts on windows etc.) (that will install them).
Bleh, too tired to think of a better idea. Sorry.
If that won't work, just include those fonts and tell the player to install them manually, perhaps?
Though I think most people already have those fonts anyway-
Yeah I was googling each one, and I think Arial and Small Fonts come preinstalled on basically every computer made since 1981. So maybe I don't need to worry about that.
But what exactly is the "System" font in TGF? Is that the default for TGF and will run regardless of OS fonts, since I can't find anything on google or my harddrive about it.
I'm pretty sure system will just default to the default font or something. I can never get the copying to work to th fonts folder, the operation happens but the fonts just don't appear :\
DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
17th December, 2007 at 02:38:41 -
System, Fixedsys, Times new Roman, Arial, Courier, Courier New, Wingdings... Those are all ancient fonts basically any Windows PC has. And then there are newer fonts that everyonce has anyway, like Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet and probably some others.
Aside from the Text Blitter solution, you could also try using the ActiveX object to embed a Flash movie inside your frame. Since Flash movies can embed fonts, you can then pass parameters to them (eg. "Hello World") to change the contents of the text fields. This is sometimes used on websites, albeit not for large chunks of body text. I'll make an example if the above makes no sense.
Anyway, with those fonts you listed it should be pretty safe to assume that 99.9% of players will already have them installed.
I uninstalled Arial before to make programs use my default font instead (Lucida Sans <3).
It's very rare for people to uninstall fonts like this, and even if they do, it's safe because Windows will use the default font instead.