Text and Fonts

The gameplay::Font class is used to draw 2D ASCII text.

Note: Unicode is currently not supported.

##Converting a TrueType font to a "GamePlay Bundle" file

You must convert the TrueType font to a "GamePlay Bundle File" and include the .gpb file in your project. The .ttf file does not need to be included.

• 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.

  gameplay-encoder -s 28 myfont.ttf

• The gameplay-encoder will output a .gpb file.

• Copy the .gpb file to your game's resource directory.

Note: Pre-compiled versions of gameplay-encoder is available in GamePlay\bin after Installing External Dependencies.

Drawing text with a Font

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 Glyphs and Words

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.

Examples

All of the samples use Font::drawText() to render the framerate.