Add option to change Language

[WilliamMacau]

Add option to change Language... baybe in the Miscellaneous menu, or the Player Setup ?

[Kinsie]

ZDoom uses your OS language by default, since that's a reasonable, sane assumption. You can change it by typing "language (three letter language code)" into the console (for example, "language enu" for US English).

Since there are currently 40 different languages technically supported (with many more likely to be possible come The Great Unicodening) there isn't really a way for the current menu system to support such a thing without making you press the left or right key like 30 times so that you can play Doom in Esperanto.

[Graf Zahl]

... and that's precisely the reason why there is no menu entry

[Nash]

The Great Unicodening

I wonder how will that end up looking like for languages like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic etc? Assuming the non-standard alphabets will be vectorized (because I'm sure there's no way any artist would want to generate ten billion STCFN* variants used for the various strokes in those languages), will the UI contain a mishmash of gritty STCFN* graphics and clean, vectorized characters coexisting with each other?

[Graf Zahl]

The fact that the entire engine is written around bitmap fonts has so far prevented any actual planning of a transition. In practical terms it won't ever work out.

[Kinsie]

The Great Unicodening

I wonder how will that end up looking like for languages like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic etc? Assuming the non-standard alphabets will be vectorized (because I'm sure there's no way any artist would want to generate ten billion STCFN* variants used for the various strokes in those languages), will the UI contain a mishmash of gritty STCFN* graphics and clean, vectorized characters coexisting with each other?

The fact that the entire engine is written around bitmap fonts has so far prevented any actual planning of a transition. In practical terms it won't ever work out.

A while back, two of the JPCP devs (Tooooasty and Nanka Kurashiki) made an experimental WAD that abused a custom-made smallfont and a custom LANGUAGE definition to implement what I think is a chunk of Katakana into ZDoom. The pixel-art Japanese symbols made for this could possibly be used as the start of a JP language smallfont, should the authors allow it (Go through TerminusEst13, he can handle the language barrier).

[PlayerLin]

A while back, two of the JPCP devs (Tooooasty and Nanka Kurashiki) made an experimental WAD that abused a custom-made smallfont and a custom LANGUAGE definition to implement what I think is a chunk of Katakana into ZDoom. The pixel-art Japanese symbols made for this could possibly be used as the start of a JP language smallfont, should the authors allow it (Go through TerminusEst13, he can handle the language barrier).

I check the wad and wow, that's serious hacky thing I even see.
I can read its readme file...just too lazy to translate it...

Also, only Katakana characters, no hiragana(Okurigana, the way Japanese using their language), not even Kanji(based on Chinese, also huge amount of characters too) at all, the language just too complicated for DooM engine's bitmaps-based menu/system.

I don't think any developer(s) would bother with that kind of implements...even with proper unicode chatacters > its own pixel-arts would be better, but the problem is the pixel-arts itself I guess... unless the engine can render characters with system's own font(s) or something...