I'm currently working with 7 other people on a project, and they get mad at me if the build fails because they don't have a font installed that I'm trying to use. Is it possibly to put a truetype font in the content folder and have the Content Pipeline build the font based off of the file instead of fonts installed on the system?

I understand I can probably write my own custom importer/processor, but I'm hoping there is some way around it.

Thanks!

No it doesn't work like that.

If you are just shipping between the developers you could jsut copy the .xnb file as part of your source. Of course unless you have a license that allows this you would be wise not to publish a game using this.

In general its best to use fonts with open licenses and then all your dev team can freely install the font.

See the font FAQ http://forums.xna.com/thread/6966.aspx

I'm not trying to get around licenses or anything, all the fonts we use are open. I just don't want to inconvenience the team with having to install the fonts on their systems. It would be really convenient if the font could just sit in the Content folder upon spritefont Content Pipeline building. I'm assuming this is not easily possible.

Not at all possible... well not unless you write your own ttf file parser...

Given the memory and disc space on most developers machines the only reason outside of license restrictions I can think of is the time it would take to install... and since that takes all of 10s per font they could probably have them installed in less time than it takes to write this thread! Tell your developer buddies to man up and just install them ;-)

Haha alright. It was worth a shot. Thanks.

You could use a bitmap font instead of a truetype.

One of the utilities on this website can convert truetype to bitmap format for you.

this is perfect! i didn't even see that there was a texture processor for the fonts

More info about bitmap fonts here and here.