How do you draw text?

How do you draw text?

• zocmer

  The XNA Framework in itself does not supply a way to draw text on the screen. You would have to either download a component to do it for you, like BitMapFont, or make one yourself. Or you could just create a text file with streamwriter, and put all the information you need to output in there.

  
  

• Matt McQuillen

  I tried using BitmapFont myself, but even though I copied all the code correctly from the example into my program, it tells me it cannot find the font. I included the .xml file and the .png file in the project. Could somebody tell me a detailed explanation of everything I need for the font to work correctly I need to know what I have to include where, but I think the code is fine.
  
  
  

• Angus Leeming

  Why not just use Console.WriteLine or System.Debug
  
  

• Pramod_SN

  yeh its really helpful.. but did anyone else experiance the problem of their 3D models looking messed up i thought it was the face normals but it could also be the transparency on the model.. basically i can look through the model and see his feet from a top down perspective.
  
  

• Ivan Tx

  Here you go -

  http://jubbernaut.blogspot.com/

  I've made a little blog to explain how to very quickly plot a font on screen. Including a font I drew with my own fair hand!

  The code has been simplified down to the bare minimum for ease of understanding - but a good font routine will have tons of options for transparency, scaling, kerning etc. And possibly different routines if you intend to plot a lot of text - some without the options to increase speed a little.

  I've lost count of the number of font routines I've written, from back when you had to redefine the character set using VDU 23 commands on the BBC micro. C# is the winner so far for easy to write code.

  Cheers,

  Robin Jubber

  
  

• JoshMartin

  Quick note - someone (anonymous) posted a question on the blog above asking "where do the characters come from" - well, in answer to your question Mr. Anonymous - with a call to the function along the following lines -

  draw_font( x, y, "here is my text" );

  and it will print out the entire line. If you need to include numbers, for instance checking a variable -

  draw_font( x, y, "this variable is " + some_variable.ToString() );

  Hope that helps

  Cheers,

  Robin.

  
  

• Fiddel

  The files are in a folder called Content in the project. They show up in the solution explorer.
  
  BitmapFont m_font;
  
  protected override void Initialize()
  {
  // TODO: Add your initialization logic here
  m_font = new BitmapFont("Content/times.xml");
  
  base.Initialize();
  }
  
  The error is thrown in the BitmapFont class after calling the BitmapFont constructor.
  
  
  

• Luc Pettett

  Hey Mike... I downloaded your BitMapFont class and it works great.. the only issue is now that i started to use it my 3d models look funky. It looks like the normals are all inverted. any suggestions
  
  Thanks,
  
  Beck
  
  

• BIGuy

  Yeh, bitmap font is great :)

  I use it so much I even made a static library and link it to my project every time I need it :D - I would use a DLL, but nobody likes those :|

  
  

• VS2005_evaluator

  I use BitMapFont as well, and just dump the data to the screen so I can see how the data I want to watch in real time changes as I play test the game.

  BitMapFont is available here.

  Mike Polzin

  WilderLand Software

  
  

• Vj5

  Thanks a lot, fellas. I already uses BitmapFont the first time one of you fellas posted a link.

  It works great. I use Comic :)

  
  

• Sunkyu Hwang

  Where did you put the image and XML files Are they in a sub-folder in the project If so, did you include the sub-folder in your path in referencing them Can you post the relevant code
  
  

• Jones Christopher

  If you're talking about mixing 2D and 3D see here.
  
  

• Shapupu

  Thanks alot Jim.. that was just what I was looking for... works great!
  
  - Wes
  
  
• How do you draw text?