I'm using Visual Studio Express 2013 and I had to compile SFML 2.1 from the github repo. Everything went fine, I was going through the tutorials and they all worked. When I get to the one on fonts and text, trying to load the arial font fails everytime. I've been using google and trying all suggestions. I have the arial.ttf file where the .sln file is, where the .exe is, and where the .vcxproj, and none of them work. I also tried using an absolute filename to the arial.ttf in the Windows\Fonts folder, and nothing.
When I try to run the program from explorer or the command prompt it crashes and I can't see what messages are displayed other than a bunch of hyroglyph looking characters. But when I run it in the IDE, it still does the same thing, but I can scroll up and see the error message that is printed:
Failed to load font X8 arial.ttf
And followed by a bunch of strange looking characters. Any ideas?