Spritefont

From BluWiki

[edit] Spritefonts

by Benjamin Hale

Part of a series of XNA Tutorials.

To begin using spritefonts, one must add a spritefont reference to the project.

• Right-click the "Content" in the solution explorer.
• 

  
• Add...
  • New Item...
  • Select the "Visual C#" category
  • Choose "Sprite Font" and give it a name.

This creates an XML file delineating a font.

Example spritefont file without documentation:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<XnaContent xmlns:Graphics="Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Graphics">
  <Asset Type="Graphics:FontDescription">
    <FontName>Arial</FontName>
      <Size>14</Size>
      <Spacing>0</Spacing>
      <UseKerning>true</UseKerning>
      <Style>Regular</Style>
      <CharacterRegions>
        <CharacterRegion>
          <Start> </Start>
          <End>~</End>
        </CharacterRegion>
      </CharacterRegions>
  </Asset>
</XnaContent>

[edit] Properties

• FontName: The name of the font one wishes to use.
• Size: The size one wishes, in points.
• Spacing: Spacing between letters, in pixels.
• UseKerning: Kerning or no?
• Style: Bold, italic, regular.
• CharacterRegions
  • CharacterRegion: Which range of characters one wishes to use; inclusive.
    • Start: Beginning character; HTML character entity.
    • End: Ending character; HTML character entity.

[edit] Notes

One can use scaling while drawing strings to simulate different-size fonts, but this detracts from quality; going from a smaller size to a larger makes the string blocky, and going from a larger size to a smaller produces resolutio artifacts.

[edit] References

Microsoft, MSDN Library, January 2009