I notice we can't use most utf8 characters in chat (i.e. japanese kanjis), nor in names. Is there a reason for this ?
Thanks,
Red
The by the games used fonts do not support UTF8 at all and are basically limited to the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic char tables (U+0000 to U+04FF).
There have been/are some translation mods avaible at the workshop for Korean and Chinese adding given chars to the fonts but i do not recommend using them if not really needed as they increase the VRAM usage of ns2 by about 300 MB.
Why not use another font for those characters ? (i.e. dual-font system, as Windows system pretty much; one can switch between writing style and even if latin characters are used, the font is obviously different). HL2 mods allow it (for instance in console w/ alt+shift with the other keyboard(s) installed).
It is a bit sad because it restricts (well... prevent) the use of the mother tongue of a lot of asian countries and therefore their ability to play (not everyone speak English). I can also think of Arabic / Persian and similar languages. Knowing that China population is more than 1 billion I'd believe it would be a non-negligible pool of players to get (Probably 1.5G+ with Japan and others).
You can't expect newcomers to go to the workshop and search for additional chars/languages to make them able to play and communicate in their language. This while hoping that the servers and other users did the same (Taken from google translate @ Korean Translation Mod : " if the server and use the same mode or you can chat with each other"; so from what I'm understanding I'd need to install it too).
Imagine having to download a game in Chinese and install an English language pack...
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited August 2015
@RedSword Like Ghoul said, it increases your VRAM by a lot, due to the way fonts work in the engine.
It's an american made game, natively in English, that supports multiple languages already (including French, German, Spanish, Polish and Russian) - but we cannot natively support the 5,000+ languages on this planet without the serious consequences for everyone like those mentioned by Ghoul. This is why there are mods.
I would have zero expectations of a game made in Chinese to natively support so many languages.
English, maybe, due to it's popularity in use.. but even then I would not expect it.
What ? I'm not asking to support multiple languages in the way you mean it. I mean to at least support their font so their characters can be used. Iirc, for instance, you could see arabic in CSS, while it isn't a supported language (look up the list).
The use of unknown characters could be shown as the old character square when someone doesn't have it (default thing... remember Starcraft where there was a sh*t ton of UMS with ◻◻◻◻◻◻◻ as a name, or open notepad if you can't see chinese character and paste some of them; something like ◻). Doing so, I strongly believe it wouldn't have to increase VRAM, as the system font/default can be used (i.e. when playing a Valve game, I believe some user read Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters as ◻).
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
Its a little more complicated RedSword. Spark does not use vector fonts, but bitmap fonts. Which means, it has a bit texture somewhere with all possible characters in it, in multiple resolutions. Sadly this cannot easily be changed right now and involves some patents so we can't really work around it.
But be sure that if any idea pops up on how to solve the issue, it will certainly be considered. Its just that right now we don't really know how to solve the issue without greatly increasin RAM usage.
Is the patents you're referring to in the Spark engine itself ? Is the font part handled in the closed source part ?
Also weren't my examples also in bitmap fonts (Starcraft, Valve games) ? Note that I do understand why you say that though (it's limiting the RAM, per character, per resolution).
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
The patents have something to do with using vector fonts, which are much smaller than bitmap font. As far as i understand UWE would have to buy a licence for that patent, which costs quite a lot.
All that said, there is one item in trello that wants to address your issue:
Comments
The by the games used fonts do not support UTF8 at all and are basically limited to the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic char tables (U+0000 to U+04FF).
There have been/are some translation mods avaible at the workshop for Korean and Chinese adding given chars to the fonts but i do not recommend using them if not really needed as they increase the VRAM usage of ns2 by about 300 MB.
It is a bit sad because it restricts (well... prevent) the use of the mother tongue of a lot of asian countries and therefore their ability to play (not everyone speak English). I can also think of Arabic / Persian and similar languages. Knowing that China population is more than 1 billion I'd believe it would be a non-negligible pool of players to get (Probably 1.5G+ with Japan and others).
You can't expect newcomers to go to the workshop and search for additional chars/languages to make them able to play and communicate in their language. This while hoping that the servers and other users did the same (Taken from google translate @ Korean Translation Mod : " if the server and use the same mode or you can chat with each other"; so from what I'm understanding I'd need to install it too).
Imagine having to download a game in Chinese and install an English language pack...
It's an american made game, natively in English, that supports multiple languages already (including French, German, Spanish, Polish and Russian) - but we cannot natively support the 5,000+ languages on this planet without the serious consequences for everyone like those mentioned by Ghoul. This is why there are mods.
I would have zero expectations of a game made in Chinese to natively support so many languages.
English, maybe, due to it's popularity in use.. but even then I would not expect it.
The use of unknown characters could be shown as the old character square when someone doesn't have it (default thing... remember Starcraft where there was a sh*t ton of UMS with ◻◻◻◻◻◻◻ as a name, or open notepad if you can't see chinese character and paste some of them; something like ◻). Doing so, I strongly believe it wouldn't have to increase VRAM, as the system font/default can be used (i.e. when playing a Valve game, I believe some user read Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters as ◻).
Red
edit : i.e. http://www.steamgamers.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-52897.html ; the dude see squares, and he's not suffering from additional characters (beside not understanding them, but same goes for cyrillic and/or other languages for most of us).
But be sure that if any idea pops up on how to solve the issue, it will certainly be considered. Its just that right now we don't really know how to solve the issue without greatly increasin RAM usage.
Is the patents you're referring to in the Spark engine itself ? Is the font part handled in the closed source part ?
Also weren't my examples also in bitmap fonts (Starcraft, Valve games) ? Note that I do understand why you say that though (it's limiting the RAM, per character, per resolution).
Red
All that said, there is one item in trello that wants to address your issue:
https://trello.com/c/LkfKfS5W/485-rewrite-fontmanager-to-support-fonts-with-large-number-10000-of-characters
So keep out an eye on this to see if its moving.