Loading font in Monogame

Question

This question is probably a duplicate but I'm still asking it since it's all yesterday that I'm trying to get this done without any success. I followed many solutions and tried even more libraries which were either outdated or they simply didn't work. Right now the most reasonable method I found is

• Open the Content Pipeline;
• Create a new Content if there isn't any;
• Right click on Content -> Add -> New item -> SpriteFont Description -> Give it a name;
• Click Build;
• Go to the output directory, grab the XNB file that was created and put it in some folder of the project, under Content;
• Change the properties to Content and Copy if newer;

And I use it like this:

private SpriteFont font;

font = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("NameOfXNBFile");

spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null, null, Global.Camera.TranslationMatrix);

spriteBatch.DrawString(font, "Some Text", new Vector2(100, 100), Color.White);

spriteBatch.End();

I don't have any errors, the text is simply not shown. I think I could be close to a solution since one and only one single time the text appeared, but as the fool I am I happily closed the tabs of countless tutorials and made some changes which led the text to never show again.

Answer 1

What I wanted was instead something HUD-like.

To make it always appear on top, simply draw it last.

spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend);
spriteBatch.Draw(someTexture,...);
spriteBatch.DrawString(...); //Will overwrite someTexture
spriteBatch.End();

Alternatively, there are overloads for Draw(...), DrawString(...), etc. that allow you to specify the layer depth used by spritebatch to sort sprites.

spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend);
spriteBatch.DrawString(,,,,,,,,,0); //Will overwrite someTexture
spriteBatch.Draw(someTexture,,,,,,,,100);
spriteBatch.End();

But you can also use multiple batches:

spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend);
spriteBatch.DrawString(,,,,,,,,0);
spriteBatch.End();
spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend);
spriteBatch.Draw(someTexture,,,,,,,,100); //Different batch; will overwrite text
spriteBatch.End();

if you know how to change fontsize and other properties like the font itself (I don't like Arial this much) I would be extremely happy.

• Right click on Content -> Add -> New item -> SpriteFont Description -> Give it a name;

This creates a .spritefont file which contains very simple XML pointing to a particular [font]-[size] which is then used to build the XNB spritesheet. You can edit the .spritefont file with Notepad.