Send menu text to printer?
Hello everyone,
I am enjoying Adventure Creator and the possibilities that it offers. Thank you Chris!
I am usually working on 1st person adventure games with puzzles, and I always include a lot of info in diaries/journals.
For some reason, in my new project I would like to allow the player to send the content of the diary menu to his printer in order to have it on paper if they want to.
However I don't have programming skills and it seems that AC doesn't handle it natively (or at least I have not found out).
Does anyone know of an easy way to send the content of an AC journal/menu to the printer? (even if it temporarily switches from the game to Windows desktop)
Thanks in advance for your help!
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Welcome to the community, @Simon_ASA.
It's less a case of what AC handles natively, and more about what Unity does. If it's possible to write a custom script that uses Unity's API to access the printer, then AC could be used to trigger it via e.g. the Object: Call event Action.
Unity doesn't natively support printing, but it can be added through custom DLLs - see for example this page.
I would recommend playing with this in a fresh project and seeing if you can get it to print text set directly in the script - as opposed to a pre-authord PDF file. If this is possible, we can then see about having that text pulled in from an AC Journal menu element.
Hi Chris!
Ah yes, I am using the Object: Call event already for other things, so hopefully I'll be able to use it for printing the diary. I know I can link events to a menu button too, so that would be perfect to make a Print button.
I am going to look at the custom DLLs with your example. I'll see what I can do with it... I don't know if I will succeed to understand how it works, knowing my poor level with these things lol, but sometimes I'm surprised!
I will keep you updated about my progress! Thanks a lot for all your help. You have already done such an awesome work with AC, it's the best and most complete Unity plugin without a doubt, with a lot of documentation and your support on these forums since so many years. So great!
Hello @Chris
I have made several tests with the SmartPrint plugin. The sample scene is actually working well and I can easily use the DLL and the provided script.
Unfortunately it won't work for me.
First of all there is a kind of copyright (This project may not be reproduced or selling anywhere without prior written permission of Electronic Brain).
2nd, it adds a header picture on each printed page: I could replace it with a custom header, but it wastes ink for the people who will print, and I try to avoid wasting too much ink and paper
3rd issue is that the current script prints a form, but I don't know how to link it with a AC journal.
Last issue is that it prints text only and not pictures.
Anyway it seems that it's too complicated with my limited skills. Thanks nevertheless for providing this option, it remains an interesting way to print from Unity if anyone else needs it.
I am trying to find another solution to solve my problem of printing documents. This is what I try to do now: I'd like to provide various documents to the player (either in a AC journal, directly in Unity, or in an external file), and I want the player to be able to print them when they have been unlocked in the game.
I am making a first-person adventure game (kind of Myst-like) and my games require the player to take notes on paper. However I would like to simplify a part of it, by providing some elements of my puzzles to the player on paper directly...
So I was thinking that instead of a AC Journal, the diary could be in a PDF file in the game folders for example. It could then be possible to enter a password while playing the game (I know how to do it with AC in an input menu), and then if the password is correct, Unity would open the corresponding document.
The main issue with this, is that the documents could be easily found in the game folder and opened at any time... I know that it's possible to give a password to a zip/rar archive, or to a pdf document, but then how to link it with Unity, wihout asking the player to write it again? ... Well I don't know... If someone had an idea, that would be great!
Maybe there is another way to do it?
I would imagine there may be security concerns about being able to print text that cannot be accessed by the user directly, but the topic of printing itself is not AC-related.
I would recommend looking for advice on Unity's forums. If you find a working solution, I can advise on how to have AC trigger such behaviour via e.g. a custom script.
Ah yes, thanks Chris. Sorry if I was off topic, I didn't realise it.