Glyph Designer 1.3 Released
Today we released version 1.3 of Glyph Designer. If you are already a Glyph Designer user then this will be available through the auto update feature within the app. If your not already a Glyph Designer user then you can download the trial version which is also version 1.3.
As with the previous versions, all bar the export feature are available in the trial version.
So, what’s new in version 1.3:
- It is now possible to export the preview text. This produces a PNG of the text just as displayed in the preview view. This is useful if you want to create labels for advertising or you have static labels you want to generated and use in your game.
- When exporting it is now possible to select an option that causes a second PNG file to be generated. This file is the same as the normal texture atlas output apart from each glyph has a bounding box. This allows you to load both this and the texture atlas into a graphics package to make manual changes to the font. By using the outline view as a layer you can make sure your changes stay within the bounds of the glyphs and are then shown correctly when used in your games.
- A new export option has been added that generates the font control file in XML format. This is the same XML format that has been specified for AngelCode and provides direct compatibility with frameworks such as Sparrow.
- Another export option allows you to export the control file with the .txt file extension. This is the extension used with the Unity ZX GUI plugin and speeds up workflow when working with EZ GUI.
- Some internal enhancements around performance and general house keeping.
What did we fix in 1.3:
- Incorrect kerning information is no longer generated for some fonts that caused odd spacing to occur.
- xAdvance is no longer exported with a value of 0 when there should be a non-zero value produced.
- The char count in the font control file now holds the correct count. It was reporting too many glyphs previously.
- The font face information that can be set is now correctly set when loading a saved Glyph Designer project.
- The preview view no longer positions some fonts incorrectly. It was possible in version 1.2 to see fonts such as Zapfino have letters such as ‘p’ positioned incorrectly in the preview view.
There are still plenty of items on the todo list which we will continue to work towards. For now we are turning our attention to getting a new version of Particle Designer out.
Thanks to all those who have supported 71Squared by purchasing a copy of Glyph Designer. We hope you find the changes useful and that Glyph Designer continues to help you in your projects.
Mike & Tom
6 Comments
mike on March 28th, 2011
We did look at it, but after a few false starts and releasing it direct we’ve decided to no put it on the app store at the moment. The changed needed to support direct and app store and direct to the code were enough to stop us for the moment.
We will continue to review this going forward though.
Hope that helps.
Mike
SMorris on March 29th, 2011
First and foremost, fantastic app!
Nice idea on the second png export however what if I wanted to apply effects/dropshadows that aren’t available within GlyphDesigner – the bounding boxes are very close to the original character sizes. How would I expand these bounding boxes?
I see you can set the spacing out further but this doesn’t seem to have any effect on the bounding boxes.
Anonymous on March 30th, 2011
Looks good, but I’ve just noticed a typo in the in-app update information “A second texture atlas can not be generated…” instead of “…can now be generated” (Sorry to be petty! I love the GD really!)
Eskema on April 1st, 2011
Excellent work as usual Mike and company, export the sample text as an image is really a good feature :)
CraigOZ on March 28th, 2011
Hey Mike
any chance this and Particle Designer will be available to buy via the App Store?
Thanks
Craig