Text is hidden/invisible

I am using the Mac SDK and am trying to draw some text in my game. I create a new font using playdate.graphics.font.new() and verify that it is properly set. In my update function, I then set the font and draw the text. I can see that the text is being drawn because the area where it should be is highlighted when I select 'Highlight Screen Updates'. However, the text is not there. I have removed the background to verify that it isn't behind any of the other sprites as well. Any thoughts on what may be going on?

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In order for text to coexist with all sprites you need to draw it into a sprite of its own. That could be the spirte background, or something else.

There are some other threads on this

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What's happening here is it's drawing the text, then gfx.sprite.update() sees a dirty area and clears it before drawing sprites. If you call playdate.graphics.setBackgroundColor(gfx.kColorClear) the sprite update won't clear the background, which may or may not be what you want--you'll have to clear that area yourself if the contents change. It's usually easier to do what Matt suggests and either draw the text into an image and set that on a sprite, or draw the text in a sprite's draw() callback.

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