I am relatively new to android programming and was wondering if would it be better to add an image that uses a custom font, or just add the custom font and set it as the typeface of a textview? In terms of memory footprint and performance. Thanks
Using a .ttf file for Font is always better than to have images for texts because:
Less intensive on memory
Easy to scale text across various screen sizes, using desity independent text size units : sp
It's always better to use TextView. You can be certain that no matter what's yout device is if you use a TextView your app will never have all kinds of blur, visible pixels or all other stuff that you can't avoid with small images. Also you have to take care of memory. I know that it's probably small image, but when you've got a lot of them there has to be some kind of memory protection - and that is another work to do.
It's hard to find correct font size - sometimes it's all depend on your device. But that's why you have all this possibilities with different values folders. You can read more about it here: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/providing-resources.html
Another thing is, you don't always have to put your custom font manually in every TextView.
Just extend TextView class and use like normal Android component. You can see how to do it here:
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-extend-androids-textview-to-use-custom-fonts/
Related
In LibGDX, I am currently trying to achieve the effect of a pixellated GUI, meaning the buttons are pixellated, like an 8-bit theme.
When I make my GUI elements, such as a TextButton, I am using images that are small, say 34x16 pixels, but I am rendering them on a large resolution like 1920x1080. What is the best way to render such a small image at a high resolution?
My thoughts were to use stage.setViewport(WIDTH,HEIGHT), and set the width and height to a scaled down resolution, so the gui elements wouldn't be so big. This works, however when adding elements things go wrong.
This my stage/table currently, using a scaled down resolution. I am adding widgets using to the table like this:
table.add(playButton);
table.row();
table.add(title);
but as you can see, the table.row() makes a row that is much too large, perhaps a row fit for a larger resolution. Is there any way to change the gap that is made by the row? I would have thought that the gap would be zero, and by using table.add().pad() you could change the gap, but I am not doing any of that.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Ninepatch
This is a common issue in all apps. To overcome this, images which can be safely resized in parts are used. they are called ninepatches.
Here is a nice Tutorial about using them in libgdx.
Distance Field Fonts
Although you haven't mentioned it here, you'd also find font sizing (pixellated fonts) as an issue. For that Distance Field Fonts are used.
Hope this helps.
I would say don't worry about scaling them up and making the virtual resolution bigger. If you want to see picture still pixelated when you scale it use Texture filter. For your case you want to use Nearest filter. use it like this:
yourTexture.setFilter(TextureFilter.Nearest, TextureFilter.Nearest);
where yourTexture is the texture that you have all your bitmaps and skin elements on. If you are using texturePacker than you can specify the filter before packing too. Or just open the .pack file and on the top you will see filtering options, and edit those to Nearest.
I need to know how my game can handle all these screen sizes i have seen a few options including:
Re sizing the elements to fit the screen
Making assets in lots of different sizes
I'd like to know which is more efficient ?
What are my other options ?
How would i go about making it work ?
So far i am just making my screen fit to the android device i'm testing on and this could lead to failure in the future if i do not set this handler up
Thanks
well if you are using libgdx then you dont have to worry about screen sizes. just use its camera class and set its viewports accordingly . refer this link for camera
Also you dont need to make android handlers for it.
This website talks about how to handle this problem http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html.
It claims the best practices are:
Use wrap_content, fill_parent, or dp units when specifying dimensions in an XML layout file
Do not use hard coded pixel values in your application code
Do not use AbsoluteLayout (it's deprecated)
Supply alternative bitmap drawables for different screen densities
The problem is not with the dimensions of the screen, rather the density of the screens. Using dp to set the size for elements is the most common way.
Ok, so I have this map and I have various sliders on the right. After changing slider values and pressing 'Execute' button, some provinces in the map below should change colour.
However, I don't know how to implement the map below. I have used 33 png drawable for each province. I have set them all to have a same big rectangle dimension so that they'd align themselves.
I am getting an 'Out of memory on byte allocation' error.
I assume this is because of all the large drawables I have.
I'm new to android and I want to ask, is there a way to implement this without the error?
Also the map should always be displayed on the left side of the screen so the images always have to be visible.
I would recommend making a SVG and changing the colors programmatically.
Graphics are hard to scale and are heavy space users, scalable graphics are slim, look great everywhere (device size and dpi) and easy to manage (single file instead of 33).
So I am developing a very simple app, mostly for personal use, am am looking for a simple solution to a simple problem.
In its simplest form I am looking for a way to have a line of text with just one or two words blurred out. Basically I am looking to blur text beyond readability but still hinting at what is hidden. Kind of a knowledge / memory app to help memorize some definitions by prompting with a few key words.
I am having issues finding a simple way to accomplish this. Am I just missing an attribute to blur text?
I have thought about:
overriding say the textview onDraw but that seems overkill and I am unsure if there are any methods available to easily blur text.
using the toHtml and trying out the new CSS3 blur effects but I don't think that that is a reasonable solution and I am not sure that the Android platform supports all the CSS3 format, if any.
the simplest and most desirable solution in my book was to find a font (ttf, off, etc) file, derived from a common font, that is already blurred as I described, and use that alternating with the non blurred version of that font to achieve the desired effect.
make the described font but that just plain requires too much time on my part and the outcome is not necessarily good :)
I have thought about some alternative ways to simulate this effect but they all result in fading the text, which is undesirable, since I want to have some visual prompts to indicate the obscured texts length.
Any ideas? It's been years since I have developed in Java and I am unsure what is available and what the Android OS supports.
I haven't looked into using these properties for only part of the text, but TextView has some possibly useful properties related to text shadows. Using something like the following XML attributes, you could hide the actual text and just show a blurred shadow.
android:textColor - #0000 (fully transparent so that the crisp text is not shown)
android:shadowColor - #FFFF (or whatever color you want to appear)
android:shadowDx - 0 (the shadow is in the same horizontal position as the text)
android:shadowDy - 0 (the shadow is in the same vertical position as the text)
android:shadowRadius - Depends on how much you want to blur. A very small non-zero value, such as 0.001, will be sharp. Larger values blur more, and at some point the shadow becomes illegible.
I have an image file that has all the character sprites that I will be using in a game, and I want to make a layout that will allow the user to cycle through each image to be able to pick which one they want. So, I have one large image, and I need to render just a small (32 x 32) section of it at a time. Is that possible with the layouts or will I have to use a canvas, and manually do most of this?
Yes Try using scrollX and scrollY. You can set these properties programmatically or in the layout xml.
That said, loading just the small images that the user needs to see is preferred to loading a large image containing all. If your image is really large you might want to consider the first option.