Typography in Shepher/Supersheep
I can't remember if this has been discussed or not, but I was wondering what level of control there will be over speech text in the new Lassie. For example, will it be possible to set, not just individual colours for different characters, but individual fonts as well? Also, will it be possible to have a character say a sentence like "Thats a bit scary", and have the word 'scary' in a different font to the rest of the sentence (bad example I know, but you get the point)? Just wondering :)

Well, this certainly has become a popular request... However, I have to speak tentatively since I haven't written this part of the game engine yet. But, I've started making text parsing a standard affair within my development since that Peace Corps kids game (which keeps getting it's launch date pushed back by the client, btw. Now we're hoping for its launch in early April...) Anyway, there was enough weird content requirements that I started parsing everything in that game, both HTML and conditional text. Now that I've got a system down, I would say that you can expect to see some pretty cool stuff for future Lassie dialogue, like conditional blocks for custom messages. The details have yet to be fleshed out, but the Peace Corps game has some capabilities like this: "you have a mango in your inventory" Either way, there WILL be HTML text support, which will take care of size / color / bold, etc. Concerning the font item... I'll reserve statement on that for now. That's fairly tricky given that you'll need to set up embedded fonts in order for the text to display. It'll take some experimentation once the base system is built.

Sounds great :D