How do you draw text?

Question

Since the XNA documentation is lousy, I'm gonna ask here.

How do you create text in XNA? I want to use it for debugging purposes :(

Answer 1

Why not just use Console.WriteLine or System.Debug?

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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

It works great. I use Comic :)

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

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 :|

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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

Answer 11

Thanks alot Jim.. that was just what I was looking for...  works great!

- Wes

Answer 12

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.

Answer 13

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?

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

Make sure that both the PNG file and the xml file are set to copyoutput = true (don't remember if thats the exact property name).

Answer 16

Thank you, that did the trick. The property was called "Copy to Output Directory" and I set it to "Copy always"