Monday 28 March 2016

Signed Distance fields fonts

I'm currently working on a hobby game project for Android using the JPCT opengl library .
While doing this i noticed that i would have to either use androids standard UI widgets or "BLIT" ui objects using JPCT's blitter.

Neither of these were suitable to me as i wanted to build a spatial UI type

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4286/game_ui_discoveries_what_players_.php?print=1



I found a potentially good way to do this reading about "Signed Distance Fields".  This method also interested me as it was an excuse to work with graphics shaders.


Not wanting to reinvent the wheel i first learn how this version for the Cinder library worked https://forum.libcinder.org/topic/signed-distance-field-font-rendering .

Then translated it into something that would work as a GLSL ES shader for the JPCT Library.

I ended up with with this, The image below is a screenshot of the program i made running on the android emulator using different font set's i imported as PNG's

These include a Rongorongo font http://www.dafont.com/rongorongo.font
And a Hieroglyph font http://www.dafont.com/meroitic-hieroglyph.font








Here is a link a github project af this project here https://github.com/lawlessc/distance-field-glyphs

Below are some screen shots of a later version of my signed distance fields being used my game , running on an Android device . 





 




The main menu buttons. The play/pause toggle button and the "awesome face" button attached the planet are all done using signed distance fields.  The other four buttons that are in ever screen shot are standard android UI buttons i'm using to test some features.










Monday 21 March 2016

Who runs TheLiberal.ie?

                             

Publishing this post so it's recorded somewhere a little less ephemeral than Twitter just some of what "theLiberal.ie" is upto.


Background.

TheLiberal.ie is am Irish "newsite" renowned for lifting stories from elsewhere and running questionable competitions to increase it's popularity on social media.

But it's also used to push the far right wing views of its founder Leo Sherlock and his Sister Cora Sherlock who runs the Irish anti-choice group "Pro Life Campaign Ireland". The following will just be demonstrating Cora's link to the site and some interesting posts from one of their admins in the run up to the marriage referendum.


Facebook Insights is a tool used for analyzing traffic coming from Facebook to a website.
Domain Insights shows all referral traffic to your domain from Facebook, including when people link to your site in their Facebook status messages, clicks on social plugins such as the Like or Share button, and more. Domain Insights also provides sharing metrics and demographic information per domain and per URL so you can optimize your content for sharing and better tailor your content to your audience. 
Site owners add tags containing their admins Facebook ID to the headers on the page. 
 property="fb:admins" content="1234" />
.


TheLiberal.ie has two of these tags. One corresponds to the Facebook account of Cora Sherlock herself suggesting she has strong role in the running of the site the other ID included belongs to a "David Knight".



546782817 Cora.
100003753785672 David.

This is in the source of every page served by TheLiberal and anyone can view by simply right clicking and selecting "View Source" on any of their websites pages. 

The numbers  can be added to the facebook url by anyone leading them back to those profiles.


.
With Cora Sherlock this closely involved it's impossible to believe anything published particularly in relation to abortion , reproductive choice  and the 8th amendment could ever approach being unbiased :





But as promoters of the far right they're not focused on just single issues. As the other tagged admin "David Knight" demonstrated on TheLiberals Facebook page in the days before the marriage referendum trying to confuse voters.





Shouldn't  need more to conclude that Cora Sherlock , "David Knight" and their site TheLiberal probably aren't the most trustworthy sources for news, even now when the independence of a lot of other Irish media is questionable.



Note 22/06/2017
The tags referencing Coras account appear to have been removed now.