Forums » Impact Engine » new ig.Font('...') in IE9 intermittently works

The following is a simplified version of my main.js

ig.module(
	'game.main'
)
.requires(
	'plugins.box2d.game',
	'impact.font',
)
.defines(function(){

  Game = ig.Box2DGame({

    font: new ig.Font('assets/game/some_font.font.png'),
  
    // ...
  
  });
  
  ig.main('#canvas', Game, 60, 1500, 844, 1);
  
});

In the game&039;s #draw method I have something like this

this.font.alpha = 1;
this.font.draw(this.score, ig.system.width - 16, 16, ig.Font.ALIGN.RIGHT );

In IE9 the font intermittently displays. On every hard refresh, the network panel in the devtools shows the font file being requested via HTTP and the request completing successfully. It is seemingly random whether the font will display within the <canvas> or not for any given refresh of the game page, as though there is some sort of race condition involved between the font loading and the game starting.

The same problem is present in the jumpnrun demo, suggesting this is not an issue specific to my game, but rather with Impact.js itself.

This is a real issue for me; I bought the license after explicitly informing the client that the game would be supported back to IE9.

I'm sorry, but I can't reproduce this. The font always renders correctly for me in IE9.

IE uses hardware acceleration to draw everything, so this issue may be related to your GPU or graphics drivers. If you can, try the game on another PC or update your driver and see if makes a difference. I understand that this is not ideal, though.

As a workaround, you could also use the Canvas font drawing methods directly, instead of using Impact's Bitmap fonts. E.g.:

ig.system.context.fillStyle = '#ff00ff';
ig.system.context.fillText('foobar', x, y);

IE uses hardware acceleration to draw everything, so this issue may be related to your GPU or graphics drivers.

I neglected to mention one thing which, from your response, is more than likely the cause of my problem.

I only have Windows virtual machines available to test on. I'm running IE9 through a Windows 7 install from mondern.ie, and definitely had very low GPU memory allocated and 2d acceleration disabled.

I should not have been so quick to blame Impact; I thought I had been very thorough in my testing. It appears I need to use a better tool to test with.