You need to upgrade to SDL_ttf 2.0.6, and optionally, the latest freetype, if upgrading SDL_ttf doesn't fix the problem.I would like to be able to use true type fonts with pygame. I tried running the example script 'fonty.py' that comes with the pygame documentation but I get the error message "SDL_ttf render failed". I also get the same error message if I try using pygame.font.render. I have installed SDL-1.2, SDL_ttf-2.0.5 and pygame-1.5.6