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Hi,
I need to put an alphabet letter on a Virtual Button.

I can see the Virtual Button but not the letter
I try with TextDepth but seems like that the letter "A" is always back to Button
Where is the bug in my code ?
I use Arial.ttf font

thank you

this is the code:

font=LoadFont("Arial.ttf")
tx2=createtext("A")
SetTextColor(tx2,0,0,0,255)
SetTextFont(tx2, font)
SetTextSize(tx2, 80)
SetTextPosition(tx2,200,200)
SetTextDepth(tx2,0)

AddVirtualButton(1,200,200,200)
SetVirtualButtonAlpha(1,255)
SetVirtualButtonColor(1,0,0,255)
SetVirtualButtonVisible(1,1)

Doesnt

SetVirtualButtonText( virtualbuttonID, "text")

do it?

yes, i tried also to include the line

SetVirtualButtonText( 1, "A")

But AppGameKit use always the default font and not Arial.ttf font

any idea ?

You can always make an image for it if all else fails

The letters are usually really small anyway, unless you increase the size of the button, so using an image works well because you have more control.

That is a bit disappointing. Not being able to set the button font AND not being able to make the text appear in front of the button

Those virtual button images are hidden away somewhere in the appgatekit resources. so changing them in there will change it for every single app we create.

I would just leave them well alone - not to mention are we allowed to.

I would -

- Create a 1x1 pixel mouse dot
- Create a sprite of that mouse dot
- Move the sprite to getpointerx() and getpointery()

do
- Create new sprite (your own image) - this is a button
- repeat for how many buttons you need
loop

- check collisions of the mouse dot and the button sprites
- if clicked on them then do something

If unsure, then I can provide some code

That is not what I meant.

I meant using the commands to do so... Home --> Commands --> Input --> SetVirtualButtonImageUp



There is a SetVirtualButtonImageDown too, if you want an effect when pressing it.

This method gives you full control of what you have on the button, when pressed or not.

Yeah, except it doesn't allow you to change the Font or more importantly Font size. We seem to need like a SetVirtualButtonFont and SetVirtualButtonFontSize for AppGameKit, which as far as I know do not exist as commands (yet?).

Especially Font Size is important. My Android phone has such a high screen resolution that any of the default text is like 4mm in actual height. I could also be wrong, but it seems the default text size also is very small, not taking into account any text scaling done by Android itself (assumption on my part, might not actually affect default text in AGK).

I would love the custom sprite button stuff to work by using something simple as GetSpriteHit at GetPointerX and GetPointerY location on the screen, BUT there seems to be a bit of an issue using that work around when you are using sprite user interface overlays that cover large parts of where a button should be. For example, lets assume there's a 'menu bar' for an Android app on top, with a transparent bottom area where the actual app runs / functions.

If you're going to use the GetSpriteHit stuff, you're going to get the ID returned from the sprite overlay (which has a bounding box across the entire screen), but not the images underneath which would be our custom buttons. Of course, I can crop the image so the bounding box is smaller, but it is kind of bad when you want a sprite that is on top of everything, even buttons when you scroll the screen using GetViewOffset commands.

So unless we can use other AppGameKit commands like maybe SpriteRayCast in some way and define which sprites on top to ignore, we would kind of need some additional commands to the SetVirtualButton commands. Don't get me wrong, I can add a text to the ButtonImageDown and ButtonImageUp using Photoshop, but changing text would be a huge time saver and wouldn't require loading in as many images, could re-use the same button backgrounds etc.

Anyone have some thoughts?? (By the way, wasn't there once this 'priority' feature that allowed you to scan for sprites underneath other sprites?)

(Also, yes, first post here. Thought I'd get back into game development again and came across AppGameKit 2 on Steam. Loving it so far!)

If you really want to take control over virtual buttons, the best way is to stop using them.

Seriously, they aren't designed for looking good and have limits that you've already encountered.

Instead, make your own virtual buttons, with a sprite and a text and all the control you'd ever need. It's not like the code is anything you won't have to deal with anyway, like detecting a sprite click, but it means you can alter text on mouse over, add any animation to the button you want, changing text properties... it all adds up to a lot of benefits. Frankly, I'd waste no more time on virtual buttons, and start making actual buttons - really I think virtual buttons should only be used for game controls, not menus... not if you want things looking nice with variable text.

Thanks for your comment. Yeah I have to agree with what you're saying.

Any ideas on how to deal with the sprite depth sorting though? I understand it's perhaps easier to just match the boundingboxes of a sprite as to not have transparent areas cover the sprite buttons you'd make yourself as you suggest, but it would be somewhat neat if we would get an option to scan for all sprites underneath in a certain location which would return their ID.

For example like a new GetSpriteHitThrough command, which would return a sprite ID just like GetSpriteHit, but instead of stopping at the sprite that's on top just return all sprite IDs encountered at that location regardless of sorting depth. That way more advanced user interfaces are probably quite a bit easier to program.

I don't think there's currently a way of ignoring transparent areas of a sprite with this, right? I mean, it's boundingbox-only detection, not 'visible pixel' detection. Anyway, I'm sure you'll get what I'm talking about. Would be neat if anyone has some additional ideas on this with AGK2.