TEXT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

Description

A framework which provides a simple way to draw text with complex styling in GameMaker Studio 2.3+. This was designed to allow developers to quickly draw stylised text with complex animations whilst avoiding common headaches by including automatic scaling and format management. The interface for creating text with these styles was implemented so that adding a new style is as simple as adding a style modifier to your pre-existing string.

Text Objects

To draw text to the screen you must either create a new String Container through the TextManager.newStringContainer() method or instansiate a new Text object.

The following code creates a new Text object, assigns it a position to draw the message, and aligns it appropreately. When passed a regular String expression the Text object will simply draw its default fomatting.

	var text;

	text = instance_create_layer(0, 0, layer, Text);

	text.defineText(RoomCentre.x, RoomCentre.y, "this is sample text");
	text.alignment.define(fa_middle, fa_bottom);
	

The Colour Tag

To stylise any Text object simply add a Tag within a Tag Container: <>, before any string you would like to modify. The following code uses the Colour Tag to change the colour of the drawn text.

	var text, sampleString;

	text = instance_create_layer(0, 0, layer, Text);

	sampleString = ("<Colour: White>this is <Colour: Pink>sample text");

	text.defineText(RoomCentre.x, RoomCentre.y, sampleString);
	text.alignment.define(fa_middle, fa_bottom);
	

The Style Tag

To add custom animations to any portion of string use the Style Tag. The following code combines the Style and Colour Tags to animate and colour the latter half of the text. To combine various Tags, list them within the same Tag Container and seperate each with a commar.

	var text, sampleString;

	text = instance_create_layer(0, 0, layer, Text);

	sampleString = ("<Colour: White>this is <Colour: Pink, Style: Shaky>sample text");

	text.defineText(RoomCentre.x, RoomCentre.y, sampleString);
	text.alignment.define(fa_middle, fa_bottom);
	

Examples

	var text, sampleString;

	text = instance_create_layer(0, 0, layer, Text);

	sampleString = ("<Colour: White>this is <Colour: Pink, Style: Wavy>sample text");

	text.defineText(RoomCentre.x, RoomCentre.y, sampleString);
	text.alignment.define(fa_middle, fa_bottom);
	

	var text, sampleString;

	text = instance_create_layer(0, 0, layer, Text);

	sampleString = ("<Colour: White>this is <Colour: Pink, Style: Flashing>sample text");

	text.defineText(RoomCentre.x, RoomCentre.y, sampleString);
	text.alignment.define(fa_middle, fa_bottom);