This package draws text in the style of the game Paper Mario. It supports coloring and jittering text. The code is mostly decoupled from pygame, and pygame is actually unnecessary if you're OK with writing your own font class. So, if you want this kind of functionality in your OpenGL app, go for it! Glyph drawing classes are ridiculously short (see util_pygame.py for an example).
So, how do you use pmtext?
There are two important modules.
import pmtext.para # General stuff
import pmtext.util_pygame # Pygame-specific stuff
I'll show you how to use them. Grab a cool font from dafont.com and make sure it's in the TTF format. Then, plop in into the same folder as your Python code. Let's write a script:
import pygame
import pmtext.para
import pmtext.util_pygame
# Initialize Pygame
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((640, 480))
pygame.font.init()
# pmtext font
font = pmtext.util_pygame.TTF('FONT_NAME.ttf', 12)
This script loads a font, but does nothing. Let's fix that.
# Continued from above
p = pmtext.para.Graph(font)
p.color(0, 0, 0)
p.string('Hello ')
p.color(255, 0, 0)
p.string('world')
p.color(0, 0, 0)
p.string('.')
You now have a paragraph that can be drawn on any Pygame surface. I like to draw text onto the window, for everyone to see. Let's do that.
# Draw a white background
screen.fill((255, 255, 255))
# Draw a paragraph
p.draw(screen, 0, 0)
# Update the window
pygame.display.flip()
# Wait a bit
pygame.time.wait(2000)
Now run the script. You should see some cool text.
That's almost all there is. Read on if you want a typewriter effect or glyph jittering.
That is, text that appears over time. The typewriter effect can be
added by wrapping a pmtext.para.Graph in a pmtext.para.Typewriter.
p = pmtext.para.Graph(font)
t = pmtext.para.Typewriter(p)
# Queue up some content for the typewriter
t.color(0, 0, 0)
t.string('Hello world.')
t.newline()
t.wait(10)
t.string('Are you flat?')
Then, every frame, send the typewriter a pulse message before
drawing.
t.pulse()
t.draw(screen, 0, 0)
This is an absolute MUST for an RPG. Well, not really, but it adds new dimensions to dialogue and can come in handy. What you've gotta do is write a function that returns some kind of offset for the glyph to be drawn at.
import random
# The current frame/step of the game.
# Increment every time you call pygame.display.flip()
game_frame = 0
def jitter(char_index):
'''Angry text motion.'''
x = random.randint(0, 1)
y = random.randint(0, 1)
return x, y
def singsong(char_index):
'''Happy text motion.'''
x = math.cos(float(game_frame + char_index) / 2)
y = math.sin(float(game_frame + char_index) / 2)
return x, y
p = pmtext.para.Graph()
p.shake(jitter)
p.string('Hello ')
p.shake(singsong)
p.string('World')
p.shake(None)
p.string('! Now back to normal.')
The shake functions always take one argument, char_index, which is the current character index in the paragraph.
The pmtext module is licensed under the WTFPL. You can use it
for whatever you want.