TrueType Fonts in libGDX

Yes you will definitely need to add the gdx-stb-truetype jars to your project as you stated in your edit. Here is how you will use it, pretty straighforward…

First you need to declare your BitmapFont and the characters you will use…

BitmapFont font;
public static final String FONT_CHARACTERS = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789][_!$%#@|\\/?-+=()*&.;,{}\"´`'<>";

Then you need to create the font…

font = TrueTypeFontFactory.createBitmapFont(Gdx.files.internal("font.ttf"), FONT_CHARACTERS, 12.5f, 7.5f, 1.0f, Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getHeight());
font.setColor(1f, 0f, 0f, 1f);

You can play with the arguments you pass to createBitmapFont() and you will see what they do.

Then to render the font you would do it as you normally do…

batch.begin();
font.draw(batch, "This is some text", 10, 10);
batch.end();