Text Methods....

I was hoping for some answers to this as well, at the moment I'm using one 256*256 tga file with all the characters on it and I adjust the tu & tv coordinates to show one character at a time.

Yea, thats what I was thinking of doing, but i was wondering if there was a more optimized way of doing it.

I really don't know, I haven't had time to check it out properly yet. I thought of using surfaces as well, but I'm sure I remember that matrices can be used.

Actually I have a nifty book that I found that explains how to use surfaces for tilling a map for an rpg, but I dont think there would be a difference for text.

I'll post the snippet of the code later, but my grandma just came.

Ttyl.

Have you guys tried using the ID3DXFont interface? It's optimized and *very* flexible.

can you use custom bitmaps? I like being able to make my own fonts. If so, can someone point me towards a good tutorial?

The recommended way is to use one large texture in video memory with all the printable characters on it, and adjust the texture coordinates appropriately for each letter.

How you get this texture depends. You can load it from a custom image file, or you can generate it at runtime (i.e, use GDI to draw the characters onto the texture when your app loads).

ID3DXFont is also a very viable alternative. It's very fast and reasonably flexible. It should usually do the trick unless you have some specific feature that ID3DXFont does not posess.

Quote:

Original post by Holy Fuzz The recommended way is to use one large texture in video memory with all the printable characters on it, and adjust the texture coordinates appropriately for each letter. How you get this texture depends. You can load it from a custom image file, or you can generate it at runtime (i.e, use GDI to draw the characters onto the texture when your app loads). ID3DXFont is also a very viable alternative. It's very fast and reasonably flexible. It should usually do the trick unless you have some specific feature that ID3DXFont does not posess.

... or you fancy learning it for urself.

Go with textured quads, look at my site for one in my X-Engine i wrote ages ago.

See sig.

ace

Quote:

Original post by ace_lovegrove Quote: Original post by Holy Fuzz The recommended way is to use one large texture in video memory with all the printable characters on it, and adjust the texture coordinates appropriately for each letter. How you get this texture depends. You can load it from a custom image file, or you can generate it at runtime (i.e, use GDI to draw the characters onto the texture when your app loads). ID3DXFont is also a very viable alternative. It's very fast and reasonably flexible. It should usually do the trick unless you have some specific feature that ID3DXFont does not posess. ... or you fancy learning it for urself. Go with textured quads, look at my site for one in my X-Engine i wrote ages ago. See sig. ace

Well, the OP's asking for a function to print text, not how to; it sounds like they just want to stick text on the screen without having to roll their own. Also, as the previous posters and the forum FAQ says, ID3DXFONT is very fast and it's very doubtful you could write a faster solution. It's really simple to get working, too. I like it :]