Java Game Development - 6 - Making Text Smooth Video Lecture | How to create Games in Java - Gaming Development - Software Development

what is going on guys welcome to your
sixth I think Java game development
story and in this tutorial we're going
to be fixing our text on the screen now
we got our text to print out on the
screen successfully or hopefully you did
but there is a little thing that kind of
annoyed us with it you probably can't
see it right here but if you made it on
your full screen you can see that the
edges of the letters especially where
sloped like on the W and on the G the
bends on the G it was kind of jagged e
letters and this is because the text
wasn't anti-aliased and when you just
have up here normal in the window it can
be ragged around all the edges but we
kind of want to give it a nice clean
look because we don't want these people
to think we're a crappy game program we
want to give them a nice interface with
some smooth looking text and this is
going to help you for the rest your game
development so here's how you do this
now in order to make text anti-aliased
what you need to do is well the first
thing I'm going to teach you is what
kind of object is this now you usually
paint with paint method right here and
this pretty much paints everything on
your screen and the parameter that's
passed in is it as you can see a
graphics object called G but actually
ever since they started passing these in
a while ago they actually whenever you
pass this in it isn't a graphics object
even though it says it it's actually a
graphics 2d object and why they don't
change the dead graphics 2d I don't know
but graphics 2d that class is actually a
subclass of the graphics class so
whenever you pass in this object even
though it tells you it's a graphics
object in reality it's a graphics 2d
object so why am I telling you this
because we're going to test if it's a
graphics 2d object and pretty much test
what version of Java they have so let's
go ahead and make a if statement if that
GU passed in is the instance of and what
this means if it is in the class
graphics 2d and again this may
if G is an object of type graphics 2d
and since I have the most up-to-date
version Java and new probability - and
let's run a really old computer this is
going to be true so what this means is
anything in our if block is gonna happen
so this is always going to happen it's
not like an error checking where it's
only going to happen in a rare case so
this is going to always apply true so
what we need to do to make our text good
is give it Java a hint of how we want to
render it in other words change the
rendering properties but the first thing
we have to do is explicitly convert that
G to graphics to G or excuse me a
graphics 2d object and this is because
well I'll tell you why and I'll tell you
right now whenever we call a method in
the method we're going to be using
called set rendering hit and this is
going to allow us to change the
rendering settings
aka make our text smooth but we can't
make it on a graphics object we can only
make it on a graphics 2d object and even
though that this is in in honesty a
graphics 2d object we need explicitly
tell it again that is graphics 2d object
so let's go ahead and put graph graphics
to dg2 we're making a new object here
graphics 2d object and we're going to
typecast it graphics Judy and we are
going to typecast G and what this means
is pretty much this we're going to take
that old G object which we didn't really
know what was it graphics was graphics
2d it doesn't matter anymore because now
we're typecasting it in a graphics 2d
and this means no matter what this is no
matter if it's a string or an integer
right now it's graphics 2d object and
we're storing that in a variable called
g2 or an object whatever you prefer
and now we can apply graphics 2d methods
to this new object so let's go ahead and
do that right now
g2
and the method we want is set rendering
hint make sure you don't put hints its
hint
now the key as you can see it takes two
parameters the hint key and the hint
value the key is what do you want to
change and we're going to put text and
the value is how do you change it in the
value for us we're going to put
anti-alias it and this means make it
smooth so the key is the text and the
value is make it smooth but it's you
can't just write that because you know
they'll be a little too easy Java has
special keywords you got to use so
rendering hints the key underscore text
anti-aliasing just like that and let me
see if I can type my window up a little
bit so I get all this hopefully you guys
can see that and this is pretty much
what you want to change we want to
change the text and we want to change
the anti-aliasing attribute of it now
what do we want to change it to well we
obviously want to turn anti-aliasing on
so here's how we do that
rendering hints with s dot value
underscore Oh what is it text and
underscore I'm afraid to pick one of
these right here anti-aliasing on right
there so what we said is ah right we
converted this to a graphics 2d object
so we can use the method set rendering
hint in the rendering hint says all
right what do you want to change well we
want to change the text and how do you
want to change it we want to change
anti-aliasing on aka whenever you have
text make it smooth and now here's what
happens if you're running a version Java
that needs the graphics 2d object then
we take care of that right here but if
you're running an old version then we
can just skip this whole entire thing
right here and just print it like normal
right here so if you're running on an
old version then your text isn't going
to be
smooth but still going to work it's
still going to pronounce so that's why
we need this little if statement right
here so 99% of time this is going to
check to be true and it's going to make
your text smooth so I know you guys
can't see it but I'm going to run it
anyways make sure I didn't mess up undo
my code for the sake of this tutorial
and yep on my screen I know yours is
black but my has now smoothed X instead
of jagged X so instead of these jagged e
letters right here yours would be
perfectly smooth and I'm sorry I can't
show T on my screen but my screen
recorder since we have access to the
graphics car now it just won't let you
do that but thank you guys for watching
and hopefully you understand kind of
what I was saying and pretty much in
order to use this method to make it
smooth we needed to change this object
into a graphics 2d object and now that
we change the settings and draw it out
it's going to draw it out with those new
settings so like I said thank you guys
for watching in the next story we're
going to be going over how to add images
in well yeah probably just going to go
over how to add images in your game so
again thank you guys for watching don't
forget to subscribe and I'll see you
next tutorial