eatcomics wrote:Just so you know, most people I've talked to about the SDL TTF stuff have always just opted to create a png with all the characters and just blit the characters they need onto a surface. It seems to be the way to go, and that's what I do anymore. But yeah, don't just leave that leak in and keep using that function, it will only get worse.
My main complaint with this method is that, by using bitmap fonts, you lose scalability and virtually all of the kerning and metric information from FreeType. Writing an efficient font renderer using FreeType directly with OpenGL is trivial, gives good results, and can be altered to perform more advanced text drawing, such as extruded 3D glyphs, smooth scaling of glyph outlines, etc.
If OpenGL is out of the question and jmcintyretech wishes to continue using SDL_ttf, the most obvious optimization available to him is caching his text surfaces, I think. Something like this would work:
SDL_Surface* generate_text(TTF_Font* font, SDL_Color color, std::string text)
{
std::size_t len = text.size();
std::vector<SDL_Surface*> lines;
int width = 0;
int height = 0;
for (std::size_t off = 0; off != std::string::npos;) {
std::size_t next_off = text.find("\n");
if (next_off != std::string::npos) {
text[next_off] = '\0';
++next_off;
if (next_off >= len)
next_off = std::string::npos;
}
SDL_Surface* line = TTF_RenderText_Solid(font, &text[off], color);
if (line) {
if (line->w > width)
width = line->w;
height += line->h;
}
lines.push_back(line);
off = next_off;
}
if (lines.empty())
return SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_SWSURFACE, 0, 0, 24, 0, 0, 0, 0);
SDL_Surface* surface = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_SWSURFACE, width, height, 24, 0, 0, 0, 0);
SDL_SetColorKey(surface, SDL_SRCCOLORKEY, 0);
if (surface) {
SDL_Rect dstrect = {0};
std::vector<SDL_Surface*>::const_iterator it = lines.begin();
std::vector<SDL_Surface*>::const_iterator end = lines.end();
while (it != end) {
SDL_Surface* line = *it;
SDL_BlitSurface(line, NULL, surface, &dstrect);
dstrect.y += line->h;
SDL_FreeSurface(line); // clean up as we go
++it;
}
}
return surface;
}
class main_menu {
public:
main_menu()
{
static SDL_Color color = {0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF};
font = TTF_OpenFont("Arial.ttf", 32);
text_surface = generate_text(font, color, "New Game\nLoad Game\nOptions\nQuit");
text_off.x = (screen->w - text_surface->w) / 2;
text_off.y = (screen->h - text_surface->h) / 2;
}
~main_menu()
{
SDL_FreeSurface(text_surface);
TTF_CloseFont(font);
}
void draw()
{
SDL_BlitSurface(text_surface, NULL, screen, &text_off);
}
private:
TTF_Font* font;
SDL_Rect text_off;
SDL_Surface* text_surface;
};