Decals = images. So you can now have drawings and illustrations and so on in your readables along with your text. There are other new features too.
Quote:
8-bit Anti-Aliased Fonts
------------------------
A font format, that uses the full 8 bits (for 256 shades), for anti-aliased fonts was added. For better quality,
especially with 32-bit rendering, where the old 16 shades might be too limited. The file format/type value is 2,
otherwise they work like format/type 1 AA fonts.
Additions to Books/Readables (T2)
---------------------------------
Books can now have images on specific pages and locations, up to 32 images (aka decals) per page. The decals are
specified in the same .STR files as the book text, using the format:
page_<pnum>_decal_<dnum>: "<over text> <X> <Y> <image name>"
<pnum> - page number, same as the one used for page text
<dnum> - decal number, starts at 0 up to 31 (all decals on a page must use consecutive numbers, no gaps)
<over text> - 0 = text will be visible over the decal, 1 = decal will cover any text under it
<X> - X position of top-left corner of image (the entire book screen is 640x480)
<Y> - X position of top-left corner of image
<image name> - name of image file, must be located in "Books\" or a sub-directory of it (backslash characters
must be written as double backslash "\\" because "\" is an escape character)
For example to display a decal "Books\decals\inksplat.tga", over text on page_2, it would look something like:
page_2_decal_0: "1 100 230 decals\\inksplat"
Decals should always be true-color images to ensure that they are correctly displayed even when 32-bit textures
aren't enabled. Using palette based images may result in an incorrect palette being used unless the image uses
the same palette as the book art. If the decal image contains an alpha channel it will automatically be drawn
with alpha blending, allowing decals to nicely blend with the book background. When drawing text over a decal
it's highly recommended to use an AA font, otherwise there will often be ugly artifacts. Using AA fonts will
improve quality in general, even if not using decals, as they blend correctly with the background.
Book texts and decals can be edited while the game is running and the .STR file will be reloaded every time the
book is brought up, by using the "test_book_ex" command or by enabling auto-reload with "toggle_book_autoreload".
It does require closing and opening the book/readable, but beats having to restart the game.
Text color for books (when using font types that allow custom text color, i.e. AA or 1-bit fonts) can be defined
with a config var per book art. For "Books\pbook" that would be done like this, "color_books_pbook 100 30 220". In
addition each book .STR can set a custom text color by defining "text_color", which overrides any config var. For
example:
text_color: "120 55 206"
The book .STR may also specify a custom font with "font". This also allows having a collection of AA fonts in a
single directory, instead of multiple copies of a font in each book art directory that wants to use it. A font is
specified with a resource base path ("intrface", "books" etc.) and the font name with any sub-dir. Examples:
font: "books fonts\\handwrite1"
font: "intrface fontaa12"
Support for leading whitespaces, in order to for example center a page title, has also been added but is not enabled
by default in order to not break any existing content. It has to be enabled for each book .STR that wants to use it
by adding a "no_trim" value like this:
no_trim: "1"