GZDoom localization development thread [Split]

[Graf Zahl]

Why are you surprised? It's Unicode, albeit limited to characters below 65536 and no right-to-left handling, of course.

[Kostov]

Why are you surprised? It's Unicode, albeit limited to characters below 65536 and no right-to-left handling, of course.

It’s not so much surprise as much as excitement. This is the first port that’s made localizing so convenient and that’s added Unicode support, isn’t it?

[Graf Zahl]

I'm not sure about the first supporting Unicode text - but I know for a fact that Quasar once proudly proclaimed that Eternity was strict ASCII and would remain so...
And most of the rest never went beyond Dehacked string replacements.

[Nash]

Perfect. Now all we need is a tool to generate the 10 trillion PNG files needed for every character in the language! ;)

(Too bad Spidey's Font Generator only does ASCII)

[Xaser]

This is hella exciting news -- we've tossed around the idea of translating Square before, but it's been mostly a pipe dream until now 'cause of the lack of engine support. Emphasis on "until now."

...I guess this is a bit off topic in regards to the Russian translation project, technically, but this seems to have turned into the "GZDoom localization development thread" so here we are.

[Kostov]

...I guess this is a bit off topic in regards to the Russian translation project, technically, but this seems to have turned into the "GZDoom localization development thread" so here we are.

I say it’s best we move this. I’ll go ask Graf to make a topic in the development blog section.

[Rachael]

I moved this to General.

The Dev Blog section is a news forum - this kind of a topic would not be appropriate because the opening post is not typed up in a news-casting type way. That forum has its posts syndicated to the website - https://zdoom.org/blog

I don't mind putting it there if the original post is altered to fit that format and intended viewership.

[Graf Zahl]

I think it'd be far better to let the feature mature a bit and then think about crowdsourcing proper localization for other languages - provided that someone is interested in doing these things.
THAT could be put on the news or blogs page, but right now this is merely a feature discussion.

[Marisa the Magician]

I split the thread as requested (I hope I did it right).

[Kostov]

Well, now that the thread is separated from the actual translation, we can get more comfortable with these discussions. If anyone’s curious, this is everything I proposed to Graf in a PM in order to fully get the translation working as a part of GZDoom (keep in mind that not necessarily everything is agreed upon, and these are just my suggestions):

• Convert the BIGFONT format into individual characters and into Unicode
  • (Heretic and Hexen already have this, really, so perhaps it would be worth it to look at how they handle it and apply it to Doom and Strife?)
• Add more text-based lumps and files into the second language.enu file; namely:
  • filter\game-strife\acs\strfhelp.o (source: strifehelp.acs in gzdoom.pk3)
  • CLUS#MSG and WIN#MSG lumps from Hexen
  • MAPINFO files from Hexen and Strife
• Alter chatting so that it inputs symbols based on Unicode and not the Windows-125* codepages:
  
  
• Filter graphics and sound files based on whatever language is chosen—the translation contains graphics and flats redone in Russian, and we’re working on a voiceover for Strife
  • In addition, the translation alters Hexen’s ACS scripts to accomodate the length of Korax’s revoiced lines in Russian, but this may be too much to ask to turn into an engine addition
• Convert the console font to Unicode (not sure how this will be done, as there are some other graphics in the confont.lmp file)

Lastly, if Graf does manage to make the BIGFONT format dependent on individual images and Unicode, it might support capital letters in there too. Currently, BIGFONT only supports what are considered lowercase letters by Doom’s graphic standards. Note the uppercase O on this, which is part of DOOM.WAD’s graphics:



compared to what appears in GZDoom’s options menu, where all glyphs are the same size:

[Kinsie]

Lastly, if Graf does manage to make the BIGFONT format dependent on individual images and Unicode, it might support capital letters in there too. Currently, BIGFONT only supports what are considered lowercase letters by Doom’s graphic standards. Note the uppercase O on this, which is part of DOOM.WAD’s graphics:



compared to what appears in GZDoom’s options menu, where all glyphs are the same size:

There's a modified DBIGFONT available by way of Jimmy that is fully set up for upper/lower-case: DBigFont Upper



I also found this spritesheet in my resources folder, credited to Eriance, which might be useful:

[Graf Zahl]

The case sensitive BigFont should work for most internal engine use (i.e. menu and level summary screens), but of course we cannot guarantee that some mods run afoul of the larger characters. People tend to use the worst methods to place text, based on assumptions made on the font that would no longer apply. The limited options of ACS's HudMessage make it particularly easy to do this wrong.

[Kostov]

There's a modified DBIGFONT available by way of Jimmy that is fully set up for upper/lower-case:

That’s all taken care of. I talked to Jimmy about it, and he showed me this exact spritesheet (though, to be doubly sure, I ripped as much as possible from Doom myself). I’ve also decided to make my own palette conversion of all letters from red to gray, and I only have to ask Amuscaria for permission to use the uppercase B, X and Z.

[Graf Zahl]

The BigFont as single characters looks like it's working now. So if you want to add something there, now is the time.

[Jimmy]

As Kinsie mentioned, a "more complete" BIGFONT is available for use on R667 if so desired. I've posted the font sheets below.

- Please feel free to add the symbols that were missing before - this includes "@", "$" and "&".
- Note that there is extra space around the apostrophes (both ' and `), the ":" and ";". This could also be applied to other characters like the "=".
- I would also STRONGLY urge the extra touch (that I've done here) of making sure that the outline is all one consistent shade (I went with palette index 106), and that there is no bleeding of this color into the actual letter shading.



There's alternatives for the extra characters here which will match up better with the main menu graphics which have uppercases.
Bear in mind that here I've taken the "!", "?", ".", ",", ":" and "-" from the Doom main menu graphics, most of which are larger.