[SOLVED] Why does the BitmapText I'm using have a black background?

[pspeed]

It’s related to this:

Alpha/Transparency Sorting, Your Z-buffer, and You

Since this comes up every three or four days, I decided to put together some visual aids. There is often a lot of confusion with how pixels get processed in relation to the z-buffer and why sorting is important. Most importantly it can be mind-warping trying to wrap one’s head around how to ‘fix’ the cases where proper sorting isn’t possible. Hopefully these diagrams help show the futility of it all… I mean the trade offs one has to make to get transparency looking its best in the general cas…

ie: you have a sorting issue.

Edit: note, Lemur ‘fixes’ fonts by turning on alpha discard if you load them through Lemur… but that’s only a partial fix. It will get rid of the blocky black background but then your text will have small borders where it has partial alpha. (And note, it’s technically not really a black background, it’s your ‘background in whatever color’ leaking through.)

Lemur also has a layered geometry comparator to force things to sort in a specific order. You can use this in your project, too… with or without the rest of Lemur.