A simple wrapper for handling various font sizes for a given font family with ease in MonoGame.
While MonoGame allows you to provide a scaling factor when drawing text, it will probably look blurred because it is effectively up-scaling or down-scaling the bitmap generated from the size you provided in the original SpriteFont file. The alternative is to load all the font sizes you need for a given font family and use them interchangeably, but even then it becomes a chore to load and manage them. Hence the creation of this little wrapper.
In a nutshell, it's just a simpler way to load font families with different sizes, managing and drawing text using them.
Note: You can still use the scaling factor to your advantage. If you have loaded a SpriteFont with size 36 and there's this one part where you want to draw some text with size 38 but haven't loaded a SpriteFont for that size, you can simply pass 38 to Font.DrawString along with the automaticScale parameter and it will find the closest size available and scale accordingly. Alternatively, you can also pass the scaling factor manually as you would normally.
Just copy the Fontclass into your project and you're ready to go.
When loading your font families on the MGCB Editor, just make sure you load them using the NAME_SIZE template (eg. Arial_32) or change the Font.LoadSizes method accordingly.
# Initialize the wrapper in the LoadContent method
Font.Initialize(_spriteBatch, Content);
# Load your array of sizes for a given font family in the LoadContent method
Font.LoadSizes("Arial", new int[] { 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 72 });
# Get all available sizes for a given font
List<Font> fonts = Font.GetAvailableSizes("Arial");
# Write text to the screen by specifying font name and size in the Draw method
Font.DrawString("Arial", 32, "Hello, world", new Vector2(8, 8), Color.White);
# Write text to the screen with automatic scaling factor as fallback if specified size doesn't exist
Font.DrawString("Arial", 66, "Hello, world", new Vector2(8, 8), Color.White, true);For compatibility and ease of use, the methods normally used by MonoGame's SpriteFont and SpriteBatch are implemented using the same names. So SpriteBatch.DrawString becomes Font.DrawString where the first two parameters are font name and size respectively instead of a direct SpriteFont reference. The same thing happens to SpriteFont.MeasureString where you can call Font.MeasureString and pass either a Font object or a font name and size along with the text to measure.
Here's a simple example.
# In the LoadContent method
Font.Initialize(_spriteBatch, Content);
Font.LoadSizes("Arial", new int[] { 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 72 });
# In the Draw method
List<Font> fonts = Font.GetAvailableSizes("Arial");
for (int i = 0; i < fonts.Count; i++)
{
Font font = fonts[i];
Vector2 measuredString = Font.MeasureString(font, "Hello, world!");
Font.DrawString(font.FontName, font.Size, $"Hello, world! {measuredString.X},{measuredString.Y}", new Vector2(8, 72 * i + 8), Color.White);
}If everything goes according to plan, you should see something like this.
Feel free to contribute if you feel like something could use some work.