Hey guys I've just been playing around with allegro 5, and playing with examples from codingmadeeasy, this is an example from him, and It works fine when he compiles it. He is however using vs and i'm using codeblocks. The code is

[code]// C++ ALLEGRO 5 MADE EASY TUTORIAL 5 - FONT & TEXT
// CODINGMADEEASY

#include <allegro5/allegro.h>
#include <allegro5/allegro_native_dialog.h>
#include <allegro5/allegro_ttf.h>
#include <allegro5/allegro_font.h>

#define ScreenWidth 800
#define ScreenHeight 600

int main()
{
ALLEGRO_DISPLAY *display;

if(!al_init())
{
al_show_native_message_box(NULL, NULL, "Error", "Could not initialize Allegro 5", NULL, ALLEGRO_MESSAGEBOX_ERROR);
return -1;
}
display = al_create_display(ScreenWidth, ScreenHeight);

if(!display)
{
al_show_native_message_box(NULL, NULL, "Error", "Could not create Allegro 5 display", NULL, ALLEGRO_MESSAGEBOX_ERROR);
return -1;
}

// You generally want to do this after you check to see if the display was created. If the display wasn't created then there's
// no point in calling this function
al_set_new_display_flags(ALLEGRO_NOFRAME);
al_set_window_position(display, 200, 100);
al_set_window_title(display, "CodingMadeEasy");

al_init_font_addon();
al_init_ttf_addon();

ALLEGRO_FONT *font = al_load_font("font.ttf", 36, NULL);
al_draw_text(font, al_map_rgb(44, 117, 255), ScreenWidth / 2, ScreenHeight / 2, ALLEGRO_ALIGN_CENTRE, "www.codingmadeeasy.ca");

al_flip_display();
al_rest(10.0);

al_destroy_font(font);
al_destroy_display(display);

return 0;
}
[/code]

The error given is ..

Assertion failed C:\ ...
File:allegro-5.0.x/addons/font/text.c
line 73

expression : Font

So my original though was maybe I needed to use my own font, So I downloaded it from urban fonts, placed it in project folder and set it up to use it, the font name is molten and was set accordingly and doesn't give the error when it pops up...but after a few seconds it crashes..

and advice/help appreciated.
thanks for reading.

Use <code>, not [code] to show code in your post.

If I'm not wrong, al_load_font() (Actually, al_load_ttf_font(), since you're using a truetype font) returns NULL on error.
Check if variable font isn't null after loading. If it is, a problem happened while loading it. You can try changing the folder it is placed. Also, try checking if the font's name(and extension) is exactly the same of what you're trying to load.

for that you can just test it against NULL.

ALLEGRO_FONT *font = al_load_font("font.ttf", 36, NULL);
if(font == NULL) return ERR_CANT_LOAD_FONT // fictitious error constant. You might want to return 1 or any other non-zero value

alternatively,

ALLEGRO_FONT *font = al_load_font("font.ttf", 36, NULL);
if(!font) return ERR_CANT_LOAD_FONT // fictitious error constant. You might want to return 1 or any other non-zero value

You mean the display or the text? I mean, is the text showing, or there's only a black window?

If you have a console, you should be able to see

#include <stdio.h>  //for fprintf()
#include <stdlib.h> //for exit()
if(font == NULL)
{
   fprintf(stderr,"Can't load font\n");
   exit(1);
}

That said, if it can't load the font it might be the compiler changing the directory, you can get around this with al_get_standard_path(ALLEGRO_EXENAME_PATH);

Two things:

1. You need to check the return result of al_load_font() IMMEDIATELY after calling it. Currently, you don't check the return until after your program has run its course.

2. al_set_new_display_flags() has to be called before calling al_create_display(). This is why the command is called "new display flags", since it only affects new displays created afterwards.

And what happened?

You won't see fprintf on Windows unless you build a special way. Try using al_show_native_message_box instead.

You could try passing an absolute path to your font. If that fails, you probably have a faulty installation of Allegro.

Thank you for the detailed post! Could I ask for a little more detail on how to use it though? I'm in a hurry so forgive my quick post, but you said linking to an allegro program file, which I don't understand, I installed it by drag and drop the bin include and lib folders.

I'm sorry for the hasty reply but College + work = pain in the ass >_<

Thanks again

Sorry about the hasty reply. But thanks a lot for your excerpt.

I'm pretty new to allegro and I won't lie that looks pretty scary..But id be a horrible programmer if I let everything scare me away

So from what youve told me I'm wanting to do something like this..

string *path = al_path_cstr("c:\...";
//then use 
al_get_standard_path(*path);

Thanks again for reading

I'm having trouble with step 3 of that. so far I have this
<code>
ALLEGRO_PATH *myPath = al_get_standard_path(ALLEGRO_EXENAME_PATH);
al_set_path_filename(*myPath, const char *filename = "drakon.ttf");
</code.>

so in the manual it gives this

void al_set_path_filename(ALLEGRO_PATH *path, const char *filename)

I'm at a loss here, I've already created my allegro path object, and declared my al_set_path_filename, so why created a function to set them again?

Thanks

More-so a lack of pointer knowledge. *'s indicate that you either want to create a pointer to a variable, that you want to grab the information from a pointed variable, or that a function wants a pointer as one of its arguements.

Like:

int *PointerToInt;
ThisFunctionWantsAPointer(PointerToInt);
ThisFunctionWantsAnInt(*PointerToInt);

Or, you can grab the pointer of a non-pointer variable using an ampersand, like so:

int MyInt;
ThisFunctionWantsAnInt(MyInt);
ThisFunctionWantsAPointer(&MyInt);

You might want to check his code again:

ALLEGRO_PATH *myPath = al_get_standard_path(ALLEGRO_EXENAME_PATH);
al_set_path_filename(*myPath, const char *filename = "drakon.ttf");

Particularly the second argument to al_set_path_filename.