Problem Rendering TTF_Font Textures to one Texture with SDL2

Question

I'm trying to render multiple lines of text to one texture so I only have to render one texture to the screen. However, when I use a dstrect argument in SDL_RenderCopy the text doesn't show up and when I use NULL for the dstrect argument it does work, but it is stretch to the entire texture which I don't want. I've checked the values of the dstrect (x,y,w,h) and they all seem to be at the right values when I try to render.

Here is the creation of the "Font Texture"

void Font::setMessage(std::string textureMessage, SDL_Color textColour){

if(text != NULL){
    SDL_DestroyTexture( text );
    text = NULL;
}

//contents is a string
contents = textureMessage;

//Render text surface
SDL_Surface* loadedSurface = TTF_RenderText_Blended( fontType, contents.c_str(), textColour );

if( loadedSurface == NULL ){
    std::cout << TTF_GetError() << std::endl;
}

if( loadedSurface == NULL ){
    //Error Check
    std::cout << "COULDN'T RENDER TEXT." << std::endl;
}
else
{

    //Create texture from surface pixels
    //text is of type SDL_Texture
    text = SDL_CreateTextureFromSurface( rendererPtr, loadedSurface );
    if( text == NULL ){
        //Error Check
        std::cout << "COULDN'T LOAD FONT TO TEXTURE." << SDL_GetError() << std::endl;
    }
    else{
        //w and h are int pointers to the SDL_Rect "textBox" offsets
        w = &textBox.w;
        h = &textBox.h;
        if( TTF_SizeText(fontType, contents.c_str(), w, h) != 0){
            std::cout << "COULDN'T SIZE FONT." << SDL_GetError() << std::endl;
        }
    }

}

//Get rid of old loaded surface
SDL_FreeSurface( loadedSurface );
loadedSurface = NULL;

}

And here is where I'm trying to render it to another texture:

    dstRect->x = xTemp;
    dstRect->y = yTemp;
    dstRect->w = messageLog.at(placeCount)->getW();
    dstRect->h = messageLog.at(placeCount)->getH();

    std::cout << dstRect->x << " " << dstRect->y << " " << dstRect->w << " " << dstRect->h << std::endl;

    if (messageLog.at(placeCount)->getSelf() != NULL){
        if ( SDL_RenderCopy(rendererPtr, messageLog.at(placeCount)->getSelf(), NULL, dstRect) != 0){
            std::cout << SDL_GetError() << std::endl;
        }
    }

Any ideas why giving an argument would make it not work but using NULL would?

Answer 1

By checking this link https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_RenderCopy the reason of your problems is clear. The srcrect parameter is a portion of the surface to print, if it is set to null, it will take the entire surface and dstrect is a portion of your destination surface, if it is set to null it will be stretched to fit the destination surface. If it does not show up, it is probably because of the x and y of the srcrect, if x > w then the portion of the source surface is out of it, therefore SDL_RenderCopy takes nothing and prints nothing.