Missing Pericles font causes mysterious build failures about monogame.samples HOT 12 CLOSED

I was receiving build failures that only indicated MCGB.exe crashed with only an exit code as feedback.

It would be good to reproduce that crash. It should have given you a more clear error message like:

font.spritefont() - Error:  The font "Pericles" was not found!

That would have made things much easier to figure out.

Still... yea the samples need to include any custom fonts it uses.

from monogame.samples.

@tomspilman Yes, I would think the same build output you see in the Pipeline editor when building there would be the same output in the VS output windows. I.e. MSGB.exe compile step would have its output piped to the VS output window. Maybe it would be appropriate to have verbose switches to limit output to warnings/error by default so as not to clutter the output.

from monogame.samples.

Yes, I would think the same build output you see in the Pipeline editor when building there would be the same output in the VS output windows.

It should be. Are you saying you saw different output in VS than you saw in the Pipeline tool?

from monogame.samples.

Correct. When the font was not installed on my computer, when building from VS, a "MGCB has stopped working" dialog appears and the error in the Error List is:

The command ""C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\MonoGame\v3.0\Tools\MGCB.exe" /@:"C:\Users\aaron\Downloads\MonoGame.Samples-develop\MonoGame.Samples-develop\Platformer2D\Content\Platformer2D.mgcb" /platform:WindowsGL /outputDir:"C:\Users\aaron\Downloads\MonoGame.Samples-develop\MonoGame.Samples-develop\Platformer2D\Platforms\WindowsGL\Content\bin\WindowsGL" /intermediateDir:"C:\Users\aaron\Downloads\MonoGame.Samples-develop\MonoGame.Samples-develop\Platformer2D\Platforms\WindowsGL\Content\obj\WindowsGL" /quiet" exited with code -532462766.

If I look at the build output there is an unhandled exception from MGCB:

1>  Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
1>  Parameter name: index
1>     at System.Collections.Generic.List`1.get_Item(Int32 index)
1>     at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Serialization.Compiler.Texture2DWriter.Write(ContentWriter output, Texture2DContent value)
1>     at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Serialization.Compiler.ContentWriter.WriteObject[T](T value)
1>     at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Serialization.Compiler.SpriteFontContentWriter.Write(ContentWriter output, SpriteFontContent value)
1>     at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Serialization.Compiler.ContentCompiler.Compile(Stream stream, Object content, TargetPlatform targetPlatform, GraphicsProfile targetProfile, Boolean compressContent, String rootDirectory, String referenceRelocationPath)
1>     at MonoGame.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Builder.PipelineManager.WriteXnb(Object content, PipelineBuildEvent pipelineEvent)
1>     at MonoGame.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Builder.PipelineManager.BuildContent(PipelineBuildEvent pipelineEvent, PipelineBuildEvent cachedEvent, String eventFilepath)
1>     at MonoGame.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Builder.PipelineManager.BuildContent(String sourceFilepath, String outputFilepath, String importerName, String processorName, OpaqueDataDictionary processorParameters)
1>     at MGCB.BuildContent.Build(Int32& successCount, Int32& errorCount)
1>     at MGCB.Program.Main(String[] args)

from monogame.samples.

@AaronLS - Yea... that should have been handled a lot cleaner. A) the font processor should have failed when the font wasn't found B) the XNB writer should be capturing content building exceptions and reporting a good error message.

I'll see about correcting both of these in the pipeline code.

from monogame.samples.

For now I've just submitted a PR to change the font used in the sample to Arial. #33
This ensures that all machines will be able to build the samples without extra stuff

from monogame.samples.

Simply shipping the font with the source code doesn't help as fonts need to be installed. So this should be shipped at part of MonoGame since that's what XNA 4.0 Game Studio did (note that 3.x did NOT - developers had to install it themselves)

I have no clue if the license Microsoft got with Ascender allows us to do that thugh - someone else would need to determine that http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/utility/font_pack

Here's the spritefont schema http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447759.aspx - it doesn't allow multiple fonts to be selected like CSS. Its pretty rare you would want that - fonts are so different in sizes that even a simple font switch can totally change the game layout.

Obviously the font processor needs a better error but installing the XNA font pack would be a much better solution if legally allowed.

from monogame.samples.

it doesn't allow multiple fonts to be selected like CSS

Yea... you don't want the font selection to be fuzzy like that. It should always select the desired font or error out.

I think we support looking for the font TTF in the same folder as the .spritefont folder. That is as good as we can get I think without requiring users install the font into the system.

from monogame.samples.

Well that's a cool feature that XNA didn't do and would work well for samples since we can ship the TTF with the sample.

from monogame.samples.

I think we support looking for the font TTF in the same folder as the .spritefont folder.

Nice. Side-by-side like this is really great because it makes it easy for others to get-latest and compile without interference from variations in their own local environment.

from monogame.samples.

without interference from variations in their own local environment.

Yeah... that is exactly why we wanted that feature.

from monogame.samples.

@AaronLS can you close this issue since it is no longer an issue?

from monogame.samples.