FancyText - LiveSplit Component

FancyText is a controller component for LiveSplit. It does not draw text of its own; it targets other components in the current layout and applies richer text effects to their labels/times.

The current focus is text only. Layout background, border, and rounded-window work belongs in the separate FancyBackground component.

What It Does

• Targets all components or selected components from the current layout.
• Supports multiple FancyText instances in the same layout.
• Adds configurable text outlines with custom color and size.
• Adds configurable text shadows with custom color, mode, offset, size, fixed low-cost blur, and strength.
• Adds 3-color gradients.
• Can use each label's existing color as the middle gradient color, so multi-color components keep their color identity.
• Works without replacing or patching LiveSplit.Core.dll.

How It Works

FancyText installs in-memory hooks when the component loads:

• LiveSplit.UI.SimpleLabel.Draw for stock LiveSplit text.
• A small external text hook for known components that draw text manually, including SplitDetail and TotalTimeloss.

FancyText also wraps layout components with lightweight draw-context proxies. This lets each FancyText instance know which layout component is currently drawing, so selected-component targeting can work.

The proxies mirror only global-font metadata explicitly declared by the wrapped component. Legacy Text components keep their native left/right font controls instead of being opted into a different settings interface. FancyText also repairs missing legacy Text font values when a layout created by a newer Text component is opened with an older one.

LiveSplit.Text Compatibility

LiveSplit.Text 1.8.31 is the recommended version when separate font controls are needed for the left and right text values. This is the settings interface with an Override Layout Settings checkbox and Choose button under each side.

Newer LiveSplit.Text versions replaced those controls with LiveSplit's single component-level Font Overrides panel. FancyText respects that metadata when it is present, but does not add it to legacy Text versions.

The 1.8.31 component has been tested with a current LiveSplit core, including:

• Opening legacy Text settings through FancyText.
• Loading layouts that omit the old Font1 and Font2 values.
• Changing either Text font and saving it back to the layout.
• Rendering custom-font text while FancyText effects are active.

Targets

• Disabled: this FancyText instance does not affect anything.
• All Components: applies to supported text in every component.
• Selected Components: applies only to checked components in the target list.

The target list refreshes when layout settings open. The Refresh button recreates the current FancyText instance with the same settings, which helps when components were added while the Layout Editor was already open.

Text Gradient

FancyText has two gradient modes:

• Gradient with existing colours: color 1 -> each label's own color -> color 3.
• New Gradient: color 1 -> color 2 -> color 3.

Gradient direction can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal down, or diagonal up.

Outline

The outline section can override LiveSplit's normal outline color/size. Size is absolute pixels; 0 disables the outline.

Shadow

The shadow section can override LiveSplit's normal text shadow.

• Normal draws the shadow behind the text.
• Outside Only clips the shadow out of the filled text shape.
• Blur is a fixed, low-cost blur approximation designed to avoid per-frame bitmap blur work.
• Size expands the filled shadow shape around the normal shadow offset. It steps by 1% for finer control.
• Strength increases shadow opacity without repeated drawing loops.
• Clip row optionally keeps shadows inside their row. By default, shadows may overflow across rows and columns.

For performance, blur is intentionally a checkbox instead of a free numeric blur radius. True bitmap blur is expensive on rapidly changing timer text.

Installation

1. Build the project in Release mode.
2. Copy the compiled DLL:

bin\Release\LiveSplit.FancyText.dll

into your LiveSplit Components folder.

3. Restart LiveSplit.
4. Open Layout Editor.
5. Add FancyText from Media.

To use the legacy left/right Text font controls, fully close LiveSplit, back up the existing Components\LiveSplit.Text.dll, and replace it with the optional 1.8.31 compatibility binary. Keep only one file named LiveSplit.Text.dll in Components.

Building From Source

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2022 or MSBuild/dotnet capable of building .NET Framework projects.
• .NET Framework 4.8 Developer Pack.
• LiveSplit.Core.dll and UpdateManager.dll in packages\, or references supplied from a LiveSplit checkout/install.

Build

dotnet build .\FancyText.sln -c Release

Output:

bin\Release\LiveSplit.FancyText.dll

When this repo is cloned next to a LiveSplit checkout, the build also copies the DLL and PDB to:

..\LiveSplit\artifacts\bin\FancyText\release\

Set CopyToLiveSplitArtifacts=false to skip that local copy:

dotnet build .\FancyText.sln -c Release -p:CopyToLiveSplitArtifacts=false

GitHub Actions

The build workflow restores and builds FancyText.sln on windows-latest, then uploads:

bin\Release\LiveSplit.FancyText.dll

Development Notes

Important files:

File	Purpose
FancyTextComponent.cs	LiveSplit component entry point and component identity.
FancyTextSettings.cs	Compact settings UI and XML persistence.
FancyTextRuntime.cs	Target detection, component wrapping, and effect resolution.
FancyTextSimpleLabelHook.cs	Hook path for stock LiveSplit SimpleLabel text.
FancyTextExternalTextHook.cs	Hook path for supported manual text drawing components.

Before publishing a new build, test:

• All Components targeting.
• Selected Components targeting.
• Adding a component after FancyText already exists, then using Refresh.
• Multiple FancyText instances with different targets.
• Existing-colour gradients on components with multiple label colors.
• New Gradient mode.
• Outline size 0, small sizes, and large sizes.
• Normal shadow and Outside Only shadow.
• Blur enabled on static labels and on the main timer.
• Strength values above 1.
• SplitDetail and TotalTimeloss targets.
• Opening Layout Settings with both legacy and current LiveSplit.Text.dll builds.
• Text component font overrides while FancyText is active.
• Legacy LiveSplit.Text left/right font controls remain unchanged.
• Custom-font Text labels remain visible after the font dialog closes.

Credits / Third-Party Notices

FancyText is a custom component for LiveSplit.

LiveSplit is licensed under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2013 Christopher Serr and Sergey Papushin.

Some implementation patterns, including component structure, layout settings integration, rendering behavior, and component factory registration, were developed with reference to LiveSplit and existing LiveSplit components.

For more details, see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

License

FancyText is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.

LiveSplit and related LiveSplit assemblies are licensed separately. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.