Hello everyone

I'm trying to make a simple game. I need to render the text, but I cannot actually use TTF_font cause I am not using any specified font - I've just created my own, little modified one. Anyway I try to render it in this way:

I have class Text which load many font grids. Then I have a method:
[source lang="cpp"]SDL_Surface* Text::Prepare_Text_Image (string txt, int type)[/source]
where obviously txt is the string wanted to get and type is the type of font I'd like to use.

In this function I load wanted font grid to
[source lang="cpp"]SDL_Surface* temp;[/source]
and then I create surface where the text will be rendered:
[source lang="cpp"]SDL_Surface* txt_image = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_SWSURFACE, spacing*txt.length(), spacing, 32, 0,0,0,0);[/source]
where spacing is just the size of a letter in grid.
Then I blit it like this:
[source lang="cpp"]SDL_BlitSurface(temp, &letter_clip, txt_image, &offset);[/source]


And I end up with an image like this one:

The problem is that even when i use colorkeying then that ugly black background disappers but there is this color around each letter. Of course grid is in PNG file without background. I tried also to fill this txt_image just after creating it and before putting letters onto it with other color and it is ok. I mean there is no black background but red around each letter. So it seems that problem is with creating surface with channel alpha.

I've read dozens of topics but none gave me an answer because either they sent me to non-existing pages or the answer was really too complicated for me. I've even found this one: http://www.gamedev.n...litting-in-sdl/ but I don't understand anything from the answer from Sean Ridenour.

PS: Do you have any idea why around this red ball - the avatar - there is that ugly background? It seems that channel alpha doesn't work there either. I need also to rescale it cause it doesn't appear in proper circle, but nevermind ;)

Thanks for any answers

You mean when I use colorkey? Yes everything appears but there is that colour around these letters which I would like not to have. I just create surface with alpha channel... completly blank, transparent etc. then on that surface put a letter which has also transparent background so that there will be only the text.

Actually I produced all of these images in Gimp. They're all PNG files. When I open them in editor the background is transparent. Of course I made a little blur effect around the edges so that it looks smoother when I put it on the surface of the image. Is there any specific option to turn on or off when I'm saving these files? Of course I deleted the background and in PNG files are only letters or this avatar.

As I said, I believe that the problem with the text is that I cannot create a surface with alpha channel, because putting letters on the surface don't change background - I've checked it with filling the surface txt_image with red color just after creating and before putting letters, then the background is red as I've filled it. I also created this surface with extra space adding 1 to the text.lentgh() and then multiplying it by spacing. Then this black rectangle appers in a place for that "ghost" letter so it seems that this surface doesn't have channel alpha at all and is covered with black colour after creating.

It's hard to tell what you could be doing wrong without the whole function. Either way, when you loaded your images, I would guess you converted them to the display format using the SDL_DisplayFormat(). Of course that's a guess, but if you did do this, you'd want to convert it with SDL_DisplayFormatAlpha() instead. Another thing to do would be to check if the same problem occurs blitting a letter individually. If there is, the problem happens when it gets loaded. If there isn't a problem when you blit a standalone letter, then the problem is occurring when you're loading the letters as a string. That could help narrow down the problem.