Font

[Aspiring]

I've run into a problem using Irrlicht's font class, the examples show that when you are finished with it you call its drop() function.

However, when I do this and then later in my program ask the engine for the same font, it will return me a pointer pointing to garbage and cause my program to crash.

With textures there seems to be a function called removeTexture() so that the engine knows it's been deleted, but I can't find a function like this for fonts.

Can anyone help me please

[hybrid]

There's no such thing ATM. Even the patch in the tracker doesn't always work as expected, due to internal changes of the engine. However, a proper usage of drop should always lead to a working app. Moreover, the mem doesn't really leak, it's just not freed completely (but still some internal pointers do know about this issue). So unless you use hundreds of fonts you shouldn't notice this problem.

[Aspiring]

It's not really a memory leak that's the issue, but when I call drop() the engine doesn't seem to realise I've deleted the font, then later when I ask for the same font it will return me a pointer to the font that was deleted, thus a corrupt/invalid pointer which I can't use

[rogerborg]

I've run into a problem using Irrlicht's font class, the examples show that when you are finished with it you call its drop() function.

Uh, I'm having a bad Monday: which example shows calling drop() on a font?

[Aspiring]

Heh, I just looked through all the examples for it finding nothing.

I swear I remember seeing it somewhere, I'm not crazy


Oh well, the question still stands, is there a way to release the memory being used by a font and still be able to re-load it later on?

[JP]

the font's texture is loaded by the driver as you'd load a normal texture and it doesn't seem to be removed, so maybe try removeTexture(font filename) after you drop it... although that may not be safe unless it's actually deleted by the drop...

although that shouldn't actually stop it from being reloaded as the texture cache should provide it...

[rogerborg]

the font's texture is loaded by the driver as you'd load a normal texture and it doesn't seem to be removed, so maybe try removeTexture(font filename) after you drop it... although that may not be safe unless it's actually deleted by the drop...

although that shouldn't actually stop it from being reloaded as the texture cache should provide it...

Uh...

1) Don't drop() it. Fonts are "add", not "create".

2) There's no method to remove a texture by name. You can however retrieve the texture by name and remove it.

Code: Select all

		gui::IGUIFont * bigFont = smgr->getGUIEnvironment()->getFont("../../media/bigfont.png");
		
		video::ITexture * fontTexture = driver->getTexture("../../media/bigfont.png");
		driver->removeTexture(fontTexture);

[robmar]

with large 2D font textures, is there a newer method to handle fonts?

Also, with XML font names, how can the texture be retrieved?