title: Drawing readable text in DirectX 9/c++
body: <p>I want to display character's names over their heads in my first person game(using DirectX 9 with c++). I am drawing the text in the proper location using D3DXVec3Project to get the screen coordinates, but just displaying text there with a D3DXFONT isn't very readable. It needs to have a background sprite (or some other way of presenting a texture) underneath so that the text color shows up against the background. In short, I just want to draw a dark box texture underneath my light colored text.</p>
  
  <p>I want to have something similar to the text box at the top of this screenshot from "Morrowind": <a href="http://nerdtrek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Morrowind-Screenshot.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://nerdtrek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Morrowind-Screenshot.jpg</a></p>
  
  <p>What would be a reasonable way to do this? I tried simply loading a sprite and drawing it there, but even if I center it on the text's location, I really need to be able to stretch it arbitrarily to match the length of the string of text that it's accompanying. </p>
  
  <p>Any links, recommended reading, or examples would be much appreciated. Thanks for your time.</p>