Unicode in Blitz3D, possible?

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Unicode in Blitz3D, possible?

popcade(Posted 2006) [#1]
I know B3D doesn't support it, however this camp up to my mind from another game dev kit, as B3D supports DLLs, I only want it to "display" some texts in multi language.

This is the primary idea:
Make a seperate file with unicode string tables, and store the strings in it. When loading it(by string handle number), use freetype to render it on B3D DXSurface.

Don't know it well ever success, however this is the most wanted feature in B3D for me. Although I'm migrating to Cipher currently, still think B3D is the most powerful game developer language available, and want to extend it.


Pinete(Posted 2006) [#2]
Completely agree..

my knowledge with blitz is limited and cannot go so far, but
I think your way to approaching is good.

I think all could start with a unicode file hosting all
the strings of the game, after that, in order to make it
more flexible, make bitmap fonts with some utility or generator capable of do it and as last step, render them
to screen..

In a few lines all seems very easy! ;)

regards!


octothorpe(Posted 2006) [#3]
I heartily agree with Pinete's suggested approach and suggest UTF-8 as an encoding scheme.

If you're adamant about having a DLL do this for you, consider posting to the Blitz3D Userlibs forum.


VP(Posted 2006) [#4]
I've got a bitmap font function which has space reserved for unicode (see my sig).