Cross-Platform Game Programming with gameplay3d/Text and Fonts

Importing fonts into gameplay3d Gameplay3d supports TrueType fonts, but these must first be converted to a gameplay bundle file (see ../gameplay3d_Design_Concepts#Creating_and_importing_assets) before use in your project. Use the following steps to import a font into your project: Find or create a TrueType font file (.ttf). Pass the .ttf file to the gameplay-encoder command line tool and specify the size you want. A pre-compiled version of gameplay-encoder is available under GamePlay/bin: gameplay-encoder -s 28 myfont.ttf The gameplay-encoder will output a .gpb file. Copy the .gpb file to your game's resource directory. (The .ttf file does not need to be included.) Import your font into your project as follows: // Create a font from the gpb file Font* _font = Font::create("res/myfont.gpb"); Drawing text with a Font To render using a font: first, call Font::start() on your font instance to start text drawing; second, call Font::drawText() to draw some text at a defined location. There are four different overloads for this function, the parameters for which can be found in Font.h; and finally, call Font::start() to finish text batching for the relevant font and render all drawn text. Here is an example of loading a font and using it to render the game's frame rate on the screen. void MyGame::initialize() { // Create a font from the gpb file _font = Font::create("res/myfont.gpb"); } void MyGame::render(float elapsedTime) { // Clear the frame buffer clear(CLEAR_COLOR_DEPTH, Vector4(0, 0, 0, 1), 1.0f, 0); // Draw the text at position 20,20 using red color _font->start(); char text[1024]; sprintf(text, "FPS:%d", Game::getFrameRate()); _font->drawText(text, 20, 20, Vector4(1, 0, 0, 1), _font->getSize()); _font->finish(); } void MyGame::finalize() { // Use built-in macros to clean up our resources. SAFE_RELEASE(_font); } Batching It is possible to call Font::drawText() multiple times between Font::start() and Font::finish() in order to draw different text in different places with the same font. High-quality text using distance fields Since version 2.0.0, gameplay3d supports distance field fonts. You can read more about distance field fonts in the Valve paper Improved Alpha-Tested Magnification for Vector Textures and Special Effects but, in short, distance fonts look a lot better than bitmap fonts, particularly at high magnification! To create a distance field font, use the -f:d option parameter when running gameplay-encoder, e.g.: gameplay-encoder -s 50 -f:d myfont.ttf