Bassam Kamal

Software Engineer | Game Engine Developer | CS @ UPEI

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OpenGL Text-Renderer

This OpenGL-based Text-Renderer uses a Font-sheet approach to dynamically shrink text to fit textboxes.

What has been done

  1. Unified Array Texture
    • All pages of a given font are merged into one texture array. This greatly simplifies binding in OpenGL and avoids multiple texture switches per letter.
  2. Multiple Font Sizes
    • By scanning filenames ("MyFont0.fnt", "MyFont1.fnt", etc.), you take care of all sizes
    • The program automatically picks smaller fonts if text won’t fit the bounding box at size=1.
  3. Wrapping & Truncation
    • Single-word overflow triggers hyphenation.
    • Forced breaks \n are accounted for.
    • If final text still exceeds the box height, it’s truncated from the bottom with an ellipsis ("...").
  4. TextTable Integration
    • Simple CSV-based approach to store multiple languages or dynamic placeholders (e.g., {scoreValue}).
    • Automatic re-substitution if the table changes language or placeholder data.
  5. Decoupled Rendering
    • TextRenderer only draws all boxes; each TextBox manages its own geometry.
    • This keeps it flexible for adding or removing text boxes at runtime.

You get a scalable text-rendering system that can handle multiple fonts, multiple languages, on-the-fly changes, and robust word-wrapping/truncation — all driven by array textures for efficiency.

  • Highlights:
    • Dynamic word-wrapping
    • Highly customizable
    • Integration with multiple languages
OpenGL Text-Renderer image