[SALE 50% OFF] AltSDK: AltPaint + AltSketch + AltAssets + AltStudio (Frameworks, Editors..)

Hi AltSoftLab developers,

As I can see, you realized System.Drawing like interface for your library and ported on it a lot of useful libraries. Do you have plans to create compatible alternative to System.Drawing or something else?

Mike

 

Hi there,

I have a project - the port of famous Neverball native C game to C#. The macro level is already done. There are PhysFS, some Maths and render on C Wrapper. I want to make it full in managed C# and have just only .NET externals. So I want to try to implement some features on AltSDK to lesser external native dependancies. Just for tests I replaced implementation of font rendering by SDL with AltSketch (screenshots attached). All works well! Thanks for your asset!

 

Thanks! It's my diploma student project of porting some C-coded game to native C#. There are a lot of work... But maybe I'll publish it then.

 

Native game source code is GPL, so my will be too. Ok, I'll share it some later

 

Thanks. It's really helpful that AltSketch can be used not only in Unity. No, I don't want to port this game to Unity because firstly it's under GPL and I can't use it as commercial. Also it's too much work. I haven't too much free time

 

There is AltGUIControlDevelopment project in AltGUI SDK Tools. It's like AltGUIControlHost Example with a moved sight. What is AltGUIControlDevelopment for?

 

I tried it. It's amazing and very useful method! Hope AltGUI will grow up!

 

Super! Can't wait!

 

To see your development of the plug-in is particularly powerful, is I need, so I purchased your ALTSDK (Pro) version, your plug-in to me a lot of help, thank you very much!

We have encountered a number of problems in the use of the use, so to help you, hoping to get your help, I would like to reflect the problem to your forum, but I am not here to register and log in, so I take the liberty to send you e-mail to seek help

First of all, I have to say that I have encountered problems, I mainly use the Gmap of your package, see your case, found that the Gmap map is acquired from the Internet, and very smooth, but I need to read the map from the local resources and load into the unity. Local resources I can download it through the open source Gmap program, the data format is.GMDB. After research I have been able to load the local map resources, can be displayed in the unity, but some of the problem is that some pictures can show some pictures can not show, print out the length of length, found that the smaller length can be displayed, the larger length can not show.





I just wonder if this length is the reason. If this is the reason why the solution? Now the real cause of the problem can not find, I really can not solve, hoping to get your help!

If this is not the length of the cause, then how to load the local map resource file to the unity.

In addition, Professional this compressed file in the package should be the source code, but it is not complete, if you can, then I hope you can send a complete source code.

Hope to get your reply, thank you again!

 

I just purchased AltSDK and I am running some tests using Unity3d, 5.02.I found that I am able to draw text onto a texture using Windows, but not on Mac after building the project on Windows or on Mac.

m_font = new Alt.Sketch.Font("Open Sans", 14.0);
m_fontBrush = new SolidColorBrush(Alt.Sketch.Color.FromArgb(255, Alt.Sketch.Color.White));
m_rect = paint.ClientRectangle;
graphics.DrawString ("Graphics Plot", m_font, m_fontBrush, 350.0, m_rect.Height-40.0)

I have tried font family names "Arial", "Helvetica", "Open Sans".
When I run the project on Mac from Unity, I see the text. But when I run the built .app file on the Mac, the text does not appear. I suspect that AltSDK cannot find the font in the built app.
(the Mac is running OSX Yosemite 10.10.5)

Any ideas? How to I make sure the font is loaded correctly on a built project on the Mac? Is there a resource that I need to include?

 

In AltSDK, it seems that the Dashstyle for drawing lines is ignored.for example:

m_axisPen.DashStyle = DashStyle.Dot;
graphics.DrawLine (m_axisPen, pt1, pt2);

This only draws a solid line. It does not matter which DashStyle I try.
How do I get dashed or dotted lines?

 

Is there any formal documentation with AltSDK? I could not find any.
I would like to have a list of classes, public methods and properties (Doxygen style).

Also, a PDF document listing the minimum package install to get System.Drawing equivalent functionality (without all the NPlot, OxyPlot, NGUI, Awesonium, GMAP stuff) would be great!

 

Thank you for your report.

AltSketch is responsive to process fonts. And in most cases it doesn't depends on any OS. But running game in Unity Editor is differs from Standalone application. So my question is: are you trying to draw on AltGUI control, or just dirrectly on bitmap? This question is because of: we moved out some system or .NET dependent functionality to PCLTools class. It's need to initialize it before any operations on AltSketch and AltGUI. For this purpose used AltGUIIntegration.Initialize() static method that is called from any AltGUI control. You need to call it before any manipulations on AltSketch.

But in all cases it's strange that in Windows standalone app font works, and in Mac - not. Firstly before working with fonts please check "(new InstalledFontCollection()).Families" - is this collection empty or not. If it's empty, so no any font is found.

For the finding fonts we use PCLTools.LoadSystemFonts() func. You can debug it's process. For the more correct fonts finding you can comment InstalledFontCollection.LoadCache(); call. InstalledFontCollection.LoadCache() used to load previously found fonts fastly. It's important to detect that fonts can be found dirrectly in Game Standalone mode. So comment it.

And the last thing is AltGUIIntegration.InitializePlatformSpecificTools(). In this procedure we load a Zipped resource file into AltSDK Virtual File System. "Open Sans" font located in this resource. Please check if resource "...bindata = UnityEngine.Resources.Load..." loaded sucessfully.

 

Also you can do a little test by loading fonts dirrectly into InstalledFontCollection (AddFontFile, AddFontStream static method) or to PrivateFontCollection (AddFontFile, AddFontStream or AddMemoryFont instance methods). How to work with InstalledFontCollection or PrivateFontCollection examples you can find in MSDN or other web sources - all like working with System.Drawing.

 

We are already commented almost all public and protected functionality in code. You can look at it in IntelliSense and Assembly inspectors. It's in assemblies XML files in "AltGUI\_Integration\_bin" folder. Of course we'll genereate an Doxygen after the nearest release.

Ok, we'll make a manual with structure description. And also we'll create the AltSDK Control Panel (UnityEditor extension) that we'll process the AltSDK asset structure (add/remove components, settings, options, etc.)

Just for now I'll give you a little guidance:

• As you want to use just a System.Drawing like functionality, you need only AltSketch library. This library located in "AltGUI\_Integration\_bin" asset folder
• The second thing you need is PCLTools realization of AltSketch core abstraction. It located in "AltGUI\_Integration\PCLTools" folder. You need all files in this folder
• The last thing is to initialize PCLTools before any manipulations with AltSketch. Just call "Alt.PCL.PCLTools.Initialize();". You can call it anytimes and anywhere because PCLTools has an initialization flag. So if it's already initialized, it's just don't anything
• Also you maybe want to load additional resources into AltSketch (for example fonts) from the zip container or something else special. You can look how to do it in "AltGUI\_Integration\AltGUIIntegration\AltGUIIntegration_Unity.cs" src file in func InitializePlatformSpecificTools()

Hope this will be helpful for you

 

Does this mean that you'll fix this before the next release, or it will be fixed with the next release?
Since I need to show dotted lines on my graph (I have multiple plot lines) I will have to wait until fixed.

Can you tell us when you plan to release next? (when is very soon? )

 

AltSketch: Working on the Font Load problem on the mac.
I did a build (Mac OSX x86_64) and ran in game (not in Unity).

In PCLTools.LoadSystemFonts() I found that on mac it is using the Linux path instead of the MacOSX path:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.   else if (pid == PlatformID.Unix)
3.   {
4.   //Path.Combine(home, ".fonts");
5.   fontsDir = "usr/share/fonts/truetype";
6.   }
7. #if !WINDOWS_PHONE && !WINDOWS_PHONE_7 && !WINDOWS_PHONE_71
8.   else if (pid == PlatformID.MacOSX)
9.   {
10.   //  Path.Combine(home, "Library", "Fonts");
11.   fontsDir = "Library/Fonts";
12.   }
13.  

I changed the code to use the MacOSX path (Library/Fonts). But it still does not work.

In InitializePlatformSpecificTools(), the resource for bindata is loaded. (not null)
But none of the font families are loaded on Mac. This does work on Windows.

Code (csharp):

1. FontFamily[] families = new InstalledFontCollection().Families;

Have you tested this on the mac yourself?

 

A little more on the Mac font loading problem.

The path for loading should be /Library/Fonts (leading slash /). After modifying the code, I then get a full list of FontFamilies loaded. And text now appears in the full build. But only Open-Sans (like Arial) appears. If I change the font name to Mono or something else, I still get the same Open-Sans font.

One more thing. After loading the font like this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. m_font = new Alt.Sketch.Font("Mono", 14.0);
3. Debug.Log("font loaded: " + m_font.Name);
4.  

I see that it reports back "Arial". Since I do not have the code for Alt.Sketch, I cannot debug further.

 

Hi jkraptor,

Thanks for your report! We already made some changes and will check all tasks before the next release.

Just for now you can play with these things:

• It's bad that the same font cache used for Windows and Mac. So you can comment in LoadSystemFonts() "InstalledFontCollection.LoadCache();" and "InstalledFontCollection.SaveCache();". Font searching will be slow, but more true. You can comment "InstalledFontCollection.LoadCache();" only once and the cache will be resaved
• You can comment loading VFS to remove "Open Sans". It seems that it appears twice and the engine can halts because of it and no loads other fonts

 

I made a mistake before. The font name should have been "Andale Mono" not just "Mono", when I corrected that, it now shows the correct font in the unity build. It also shows the correct font in a game build. Thanks for the help. I'm having a little trouble to get the drawString() call to look good on the control, but I'll play with it and see if I can improve (I tried Smoothing None and Antialias both).

 

Hi jkraptor,

Good news! Thanks for report. Please report if you'll detect some differences between System.Drawing and AltSketch in results of any API funcs and logic

 

Hi community,

As AltSDK is a very complex solution, we decided to create some special forum threads showing a different areas of AltSDK and answering on questions about it. So we added a third special forum thread related to the base subsystem of AltSDK solution - the main graphics layer named AltSketch Graphics - Fast Draw Vector Geometries, Fonts (C# FreeType port), Image I/O, etc. AltSketch Graphics - Fast Draw Vector Geometries, Fonts (C# FreeType port), Image I/O, etc.

You are welcome to look & discuss it!

AltSketch Unity Vector Text Double Path Transform


AltSketch Unity QuickFont


AltSketch Unity OxyPlot


AltSketch Unity AltNETType

 

Hi,

What is the (main) difference between AltSDK (Indie), AltSDK (Indie Advanced), AltSDK (Professional)?

 

Hi ZJP,

All licenses are equals by functionality, but differs by source code opened parts and license agreement.

By license:

• Commercial organizations and users that represent Companies must purchase Professional license
• Small Indie Teams (2-3 developers) can purchase Indie Advanced or Professional - one license for all developers
• Indie developers can purchase any license

By opened source code parts:

• Indie License has a minimum part of opened source code (all AltSDK Extensions are closed sourced for this license)
• Indie Advanced - has many opened source codes (all AltSDK Extensions open sourced for this license)
• Professional - the most open sourced part

The core AltSketch and AltGUI assemblies are closed sourced for all licenses.

Read more at AltSoftLab download page

 

Thanks for this fastest response

 

Hi there,

Did I right understand that all described tools on the top of this thread are just in one asset named AltSDK? Thanks

 

Ok, it's nice. What are minimum Unity requirements for asset?

 

Hi there,
There are Alt.Data & Alt.Xml subsets in AltSketch module, and in your components (as I see) you use these API instead of standard System.Data and Xml assemblies. Why? API seems equal

 

Hi SartrH,

We are focusing on absolutely multiplatform solutions (Unity, Mobiles, Silverlight, etc.). Several parts of AltSDK uses System.ComponentModel, System.Data and System.Xml tools. But on some platforms these tools are not available or has too limited functionality. So we implemented our own realization of these namespeces (based on Mono realization) and include it in AltSketch core (the most base of AltSDK). Also AltSDK has custom realization of some parts of System.IO and System.Threading namespaces because it's not available on PCL and even not equals on several Unity target platforms. And now AltSketch, AltGUI, AltAssets depends only on System assembly on both assembly versions: NET & PCL.

 

AltSDK UNITY BACKEND STRUCTURE

AltSketch Unity Backend files placed in the _Backend folder. Backend solves
all rendering operations. It includes:

Unity_Renderer - single render context handler (like render to Screen or to Texture)

Unity_RenderManager - common settings, textures container

Unity_RenderPrimitive - single render data processor

Unity_Texture - operates with Texture2D & RenderTextures


Also Backend contains BrushMaterial-s (placed in _Backend/BrushMaterials folder). Brush materials solve
to operate with Brush settings and move it to render pipeline. BrushMaterials includes:

Unity_SolidColorBrushMaterial - SolidColorBrush processor

Unity_LinearGradientBrushMaterial - LinearGradientBrush processor

Unity_RadialGradientBrushMaterial - RadialGradientBrush processor

Unity_ImageBrushMaterial - ImageBrush processor

Unity_ExtBrushMaterial - ExtBrush processor

 

Interesting... Thanx for reply. As I understood right it equals to Mono? How you implemented it on those platforms that are not supported by default?
In previous post you anounced a new release. What's new?

 

Hi community,

As AltSDK is a very complex solution, we decided to create some special forum threads showing a different areas of AltSDK and answering on questions about it. So we added a fifth special forum thread related to SVG functionality of AltSDK solution - SVG Tools - Drawing, IO, Transformations, Unity UI & NGUI Controls. SVG Tools - Drawing, IO, Transformations, Unity UI & NGUI Controls

You are welcome to look & discuss it!

AltGUI Unity UI Integration - Lens Effect SVG


AltSketch Unity Geometry Bilinear and Perspective Transform


AltSketch Unity SVG Outline

 

Hi community,

As AltSDK is a very complex solution, we decided to create some special forum threads showing a different areas of AltSDK and answering on questions about it. So we added a sixth special forum thread related Alt.FreeType - first & ONLY ONE in the World pure C# full FreeType port + Alt.QuickFont

You are welcome to look & discuss it!

In this topic we present the innovative part of AltSDK Asset - pure C# full FreeType port. It's the first and the only one known C# port of FreeType Font library. So you can use Alt.FreeType at runtime and don't care about any native-dll dependancies or wrappers compartibility. It's a pure C# CLS compliant 100% managed, without unsafe blocks port of wonderful font rendering library Freetype for MS .NET / Mono (including Silverlight / Moonlight). It is presented as a subsystem of AltSketch in Alt.NETType namespace.

Unity Geometry Polar Transform


Unity UI Integration


AltNETType

AltNETType uses "ANT_" prefixes at code elements instead of native FreeType "FT_" prefixes; the core class named "ANT". Instead of FT_Init_FreeType & FT_Done_FreeType need to use ANT_Init_AltNETType & ANT_Done_AltNETType.

As we can't provide compilation time configuration of FreeType like parameters, so we decided to realize real time configuration parameters. These parameters placed in Alt.NETType.ANTConfig configuration class. AltNETType changes the behavior depending on ANTConfig settings.

AltNETType supports the following font formats:

• TrueType fonts (TTF) and TrueType collections (TTC)
• Type 1 fonts (PFA and PFB)
• CID-keyed Type 1 fonts
• CFF fonts
• OpenType fonts (OTF, both TrueType and CFF variants) and OpenType collections (OTC)
• SFNT-based bitmap fonts
• X11 PCF fonts
• Windows FNT fonts
• BDF fonts (including anti-aliased ones)
• PFR fonts
• Type 42 fonts (limited support)

You can play with Alt.FreeType on AltSoftLab with Web Demo

You can look at some screenshots presented below and much more in AltSoftLab Screenshots Gallery

Vector Text Outline Transformations


Texture Atlas


QuickFont



Windows Phone Vector Text


AltNETType (kerning + centering)


AltNETType (transformation + centering + kerning)


Unity UI Integration - Geometry Sin Transform


AltNETType (Simple Font Cache Manager)


AltNETType (Outline Transformations - Invert)


Unity UI Integration - Vector Text Single Path Transform


Contour Tool (GeometryContour) and Polygon Orientation (Close)


Vector Text Single Path Transformer (Contour)

 

Hi Johnny!

Thank you very much for your team support and tens of emails at last months! Your team is the best! I successfully finished the work and took tha highest diploma mark!

I shared the source code of Neverball.NET on GitHub:
https://github.com/NeverballNET/Neverball.NET

 

Hi
I bought the Indie AltSketch when it was first released, how do I go about upgrading to the AltSDK?

 

Super! Thanks!

 

Thanks, I upgraded this morning.

 

Hi sicga123,

That's good! Soon there will be many new tools, features, subassets, etc. It will be fine!

 

You have a really interesting asset, but please, please, find a graphic designer who help you to promotionate your software, the tool is good, but the examples looks really bad.

 

Is it possible to render the surface directly on a render texture ?
Because I need to render it in 3D but there is a bug in unity which prevent World space UI to work in our context.

 

I have tested a lot of AlkSDK features and it is pretty nice, but when I profile the renderer, it looks like your component generates a lot of Garbage every frame (1mb ~). Are you aware of those crazy allocation and do you have plan to improve it ?

 

.net Garbage may be smart and fast, but the one included in mono used by Unity is pretty slow and unefficient.

 

Your Web build is faster than when I build the application or when I am in editor. Are you aware of performance issues with last Unity versions or special settings to setup the scene ?

 

Hello,
I'm a beginner in C# and Unity3D. I recently purchased AltSDK Indie Advanced license and I don't know where to begin.
The AltSDK demos are not simple to understand. How is the demos structured ?
The purpose of my project is to develop, in the first instance, a windows like application with unity by using some elements of GUI (as shown in AltGUI Native Demo --> GUI --> Gwen Skinned). Then, trace some plots where the data are read from a CSV file. For that, I can add plot in a graph or create several graphs and add plot to them. Evantually, the data scrolls in the plot as an oscilloscope like to display real-time data.
So, I know AltSDK for unity can do what I want because I've seen these in the demos but regarding to the code (poorly commented), I'm not sure to progress.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry for my english (not anglophone)

 

I've sent you an email to altsoftlab@altsoftlab.com. I'm always waiting response from you.

Thanks

 

I am attempting to integrate AltSDK into an existing project that uses Ionic.Zip. This is causing a conflict. I cannot remove the standalone version of Ionic.Zip.DLL since your implementation does not include all of the zip functions of DotNetZip, such as ZipEntry.ExtractWithPassword, or even ZipFile.Read(string filename). Unfortunately, you appear to have integrated DotNetZip into Alt.Sketch.DLL so I am unable to use AltSDK at all.

 

You've fixed it in the next version by doing a full implementation in AltSDK of DotNetZip? Or you've moved it to a separate namespace in your DLL? You should really ship with the Ionic.Zip.DLL rather than embedding it in your DLL, otherwise you lock the end user into duplicated effort, or stale features.

I'd also recommend taking a break from adding features and spend some time on documentation. Pointing users to the MSDN for System.Drawing is lazy and the sample scene provided is a mess.

 

That sounds great. What's the status of the RichTextBox? It quite nearly works. I'm looking for a solution for in-line formatting and that seems to be the best example in AltSDK.

 

New buyer here.

I desperately need to get my data tables exported to printable PDF and I can't get your asset to work (even using your un-touched example scene).

Please provide even just a basic example of how to export data to pdf that WORKS.

Thanks

 

Hi Mike,

I know its the weekend and I'm sorry for coming off as "hysteric".
Fact is not all of us get the luxury of clocking out for the weekend.
If you can't get to it until Monday than you can't get to it until Monday, but please refrain from sending me direct emails calling me names.

Another fact, forums are monitored by users and asset developers alike. I place the urgency in my post because if anyone who monitors this thread has any idea of what I might be able to try, I want them to know I'd be more than grateful to hear what they think, regardless of experience or proof.

Honestly though, I really don't want to use your product anymore, after what all happened, even if we did get it working.
You may not agree but in my mind and many others releasing a product that doesn't do as advertised and then turning around and calling the justifiably upset customer names when he or she asks for a quick fix is....well...extremely un-professional.

I'd greatly appreciate if you prioritized filing my refund first thing Monday. You already have my order # but if you need it again feel free to ask.