Text Blitter not having the full ASCII set?

[Julian82]

Hey guys,
I need to prepare my game for a Japanese localization and I'm hitting a brick wall with the text blitter object I'm using.
I want to use romanization for this, so the standard ASCII set should do it in theory. Unfortunately, it does not seem to recognize some special letters. I find them in the blitting mask, however (using the standard mask that comes with the object).

Can someone help: Here's my simple example for download.

Thanks a lot!

[Yves]

Are you talking about the 'ū' for example? It's not a standard ASCI character, its code is 363 (> 256). You have to use characters that are defined in the character map.

[Julian82]

Ah ok, I did not notice at all but it makes sense. So I'll probably have to go with a font-based solution then, to have them all supported. Or is there an option to update the text blitter, so it can display non-standard characters too?

[Julian82]

Also, does somebody know a good font setup/ font that is suitable for low resolutions, like a 8x8px letter size, that does not appear blurred?

[Yves]

Ah ok, I did not notice at all but it makes sense. So I'll probably have to go with a font-based solution then, to have them all supported. Or is there an option to update the text blitter, so it can display non-standard characters too?

At some point we developed a Unicode version of Text Blitter but it had important issues and we couldn't release it. Perhaps we could redo it, but we are a bit busy right now. I'll check it later this week if possible.

[Julian82]

At some point we developed a Unicode version of Text Blitter but it had important issues and we couldn't release it. Perhaps we could redo it, but we are a bit busy right now. I'll check it later this week if possible.

That's highly appreciated, Yves! I'll chat with our Japanese partner about the importance of those special letters today, maybe we can go with the standard set too. I'll let you know. Cheers

[Julian82]

@Yves : Just found a font that solves all my problems. It supports Roman and Cyrillic script without blur or scaling for various low-resolutions, as well as Hiragana and Katakana, which are the character sets needed for Japanese translations. Just simplified Chinese is missing, it seems.

Here's the link. The font is completely free. It's said that it's based on a font used for the GBA. Glasstown Font