According to the documentation, only half of an embedded tile will display when using a half-width font, since the other characters are only 1/2 tile wide.
It looks like using the embed function goes from "easy" to "impossible" if you're using half-width, since you have to duplicate and then edit every single tile that might possibly be embedded. Is thay right, or am I missing something?
Also, this post from February claims that embed literally can't produce full-width tiles even with the workaround.
Am I missing something, or are my options:
- Use fullwidth font,
- Duplicate every tile in my game just for embedding, or
- Don't use embed?
Impossible is not the right word. Conquest of Helios is one example of a published game using half-width fonts with embedded tiles. Every icon in the UI and dialogue is a full tile of 2 embedded, and during events such as Plague or Raiders the image you see is made up of combined 4 to 8 or more embedded tiles.
You can produce full width tiles, it’s just a lot of extra effort and annoying. Could certainly use some quality of life updates for sure. But let’s not exaggerate the depth of the task required.
It sounds like you're confirming everything I said, with exception of my choice of the word impossible.* Is that right? Like, are you saying that in Helios you made a new copy of every tile you planned to embed, shifted four pixels to the left? Serious question, I really feel like I might be making this more complicated than it needs to be because I'm misunderstanding.
It's obviously use-specific, and of course it isn't literally "impossible." I meant more like a challenge difficulty rating from "easy" to "hard" to "impossible." I would give manually duplicating and editing tiles to use a function the highest difficulty rating of anything in Pulp, especially since embed is really just a faster (in fullwidth) alternative to "draw."
It goes from a single step to add unlimited tiles (add "{embed:tilename} to your string), to one step plus about three steps per tile, and if you forget to duplicate the tile or rename it improperly, your game crashes.
*Excepting also that the bug report from February no longer seems to be accurate.
I'm referencing about 600 unique tiles when my game is finished, about 60 right now, so I think draw is just a better option for me unless I switch to full-width font.
If you really need that many tiles embedded, then you're probably much better off switching to a full width font, or faking your dialogue with window, label, and draw. ("Faking" all of your dialogue windows may prove to be more annoying than duplicating tiles though)
#JustPulpThings 
Yeah, I'll probably just avoid it and use draw instead, if there's no terrible penalty. Or I could use an elaborate sprite import system to create them automatically when I'm done...hmm, that's a possibility.
A little grumpy since this could be fixed so easily. I originally hoped, for instance, that depending on whether the embed was on the left or right side of a tile coordinate, it would show the appropriate half of a tile, or that embedding twice would switch from left to right.
Clearly not what the devs intended, like how drawing in player-oriented mode is a hassle because devs figured we would use it for making "HUD elements" lol. I guess that's part of the fun/challenge of Pulp.
Definitely #justpulpthings.