[Enhancement Ideas] True Type Fonts, JSON Support, etc.

[dolumchei]

hey electrogunner, just wanted to start out with saying this is pretty sick.
i like that you included SDL rendering and compacting all of the various file libraries into using just one. i made a mediocre opengl version but this is honestly pretty neat.
anyways,

TTF files instead of a proprietary font format would be great to include.
SDL has a ttf library so i assume that would be helpful.

This is honestly just a nitpick of the original framework but i seriously hate xml, and it would be interesting to see if a more modern format such as JSON would be included, i know theres various libraries out there but seeing one tailored to the popcap framework would be nice.

It would also be nice if some code was cleaned up, the original framework has random seperation chunks of comments and overall i think it would make it look prettier

im not great at writing but this is just overall a pretty cool public edit thats not just a copy of the patoke/minerrscale version.

[dolumchei]

also i dunno crap about licensing but i think you might wanna include the original popcap license but then again i dont know anything about licensing

[Electr0Gunner]

Hey

TTF fonts are already implemented with SysFont
Json is implemented for saving settings i believe
But not yet as global readers and writers
We will implement those soon.

[dolumchei]

oh nice
i also cannot seem to get system cursors to change by default, such as hovering over a clickable widget, hyperlink, etc
i see enforcecursor is implemented, but doesnt seem to change much, ive also tried setting mCustomCursorsEnabled.

[dolumchei]

figured out why but not sure if this is a good way of doing it
sdl_destroycursor basically is resetting it im guessing
for now i just commented it out

void SDLInterface::SetCursor(SDL_SystemCursor theCursorType)
{
	SDL_Cursor *aCursor = SDL_CreateSystemCursor(theCursorType);
	SDL_SetCursor(aCursor);
	//SDL_DestroyCursor(aCursor);
}

[YalekW5435]

This is why I would rather use a txt file for resource/assets reading instead of XML. The library used XML and people were required to know how to code in XML.
It also used Font descriptor txt files which were PopCap proprietary font files which used ImageFont and Font classes to read font data.
I do agree with the use of TTF and JSON support, it would be a nice change to the already (almost) crappy implementation of the original resourcemanager.

For TTF support:
You will probably need to modify the code in the font generator executables to accept TTF support as well. This includes FontTester.

For JSON:
The C compiler (On windows, being the same as C++: cl.exe) does not support xml parsing, and I dont know if it accepts json parsing from C either. You will probably need to write that all in C++. I saw this in visual studio 2022 and it kinda ticked me off right before compiling the old lib version.

Additional features should also include an image strip generator exectutable. This was used for PopCap's animations.

For BASS/FMOD:
For the love of god please stop using that. Even though BASS is open for free users, It is NOT open to commercial people (yes, I know, I dont want to say that, there are going to be people who still want to sell games with this engine), and even their tracker stuff is closed and you must purchase a commercial license for it. FMOD's source is completely closed for all public mediums. Best to use libOpenMPT if you want to use tracker offsets while remaining open.

[dolumchei]

i really hate xml syntax but thats just a personal preference
i think i also saw nlohmann's json library in here

i agree with bass, it might make sense to include sdl audio since this already has sdl rendering
along with tff support, the resource generator could also be improved possibly, you should fix one the file choosers to use the native explorer popup and it should be relatively simple aka just copy paste the other one

[ThePixelMoon]

i agree with bass, it might make sense to include sdl audio since this already has sdl rendering

does it look like sdl audio has mo3 support

[dolumchei]

i agree with bass, it might make sense to include sdl audio since this already has sdl rendering

does it look like sdl audio has mo3 support

Yes, https://github.com/WohlSoft/SDL-Mixer-X

[ThePixelMoon]

i agree with bass, it might make sense to include sdl audio since this already has sdl rendering

does it look like sdl audio has mo3 support

Yes, https://github.com/WohlSoft/SDL-Mixer-X

damn, @Electr0Gunner check this out

[Electr0Gunner]

i agree with bass, it might make sense to include sdl audio since this already has sdl rendering

does it look like sdl audio has mo3 support

Yes, https://github.com/WohlSoft/SDL-Mixer-X

damn, @Electr0Gunner check this out

SDL-Mixer-X supports MOD files, but not MO3's
they are different
mo3's are developed by BASS developers, and are just MOD tracker files but with OGGs and/or MP3's

SDL-Mixer-X is a good alternative
but we would have to fork it and add mo3's manually

[dolumchei]

but mo3 still Is a tracker file
it should work nonetheless but idk i thought i did it before ngl but could be wrong and i probably am

[YalekW5435]

Honestly LibOpenMPT should have been used here to support not just Mo3 but all sorts of other formats. I dont like how were restricted to just mo3.

[Electr0Gunner]

BASS already supports other types for tracker formats, mo3's are just their proprietery format thats included inside their library.
Yes their closed source nature is annoying.