Why not remove low level Unicode support?
by William Todd Scott · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 10/07/2007 (12:32 pm) · 3 replies
Hi all,
I am posting this concept in the hopes of 1) getting some critical feedback or 2) finding some blatant flaw in my thinking....
The premise is as follows:
There is no need to have Unicode support in the lowest levels of the engine. It is only needed at higher levels (e.g. GUI system) when text is being presented to the player. So, why not remove all of the complexity of having Unicode support in the low level functions to help make the engine more stable?
For example, the engine currently has some Unicode code in the D3DAsserts. This seems to add complexity without providing any real benefit. Given that the entire code base is in English, having some asserts in a native language isnt' really that helpful. Additionally, having low-level support for Unicode file names also seems unnecessary.
I have no experience in making a Unicode compliant game, so is there some flaw with this concept?
Thanks
Todd
I am posting this concept in the hopes of 1) getting some critical feedback or 2) finding some blatant flaw in my thinking....
The premise is as follows:
There is no need to have Unicode support in the lowest levels of the engine. It is only needed at higher levels (e.g. GUI system) when text is being presented to the player. So, why not remove all of the complexity of having Unicode support in the low level functions to help make the engine more stable?
For example, the engine currently has some Unicode code in the D3DAsserts. This seems to add complexity without providing any real benefit. Given that the entire code base is in English, having some asserts in a native language isnt' really that helpful. Additionally, having low-level support for Unicode file names also seems unnecessary.
I have no experience in making a Unicode compliant game, so is there some flaw with this concept?
Thanks
Todd
#2
So, we definately need low level support for the PC, but consoles I believe would be fine.
Todd
10/07/2007 (1:33 pm)
Ahhh...Thank you.So, we definately need low level support for the PC, but consoles I believe would be fine.
Todd
#3
Localization is an absolute requirement to pass cert, and I'm reasonably sure it will require Unicode to support some of the mandatory languages (which is one of the reasons the unicode work was done--for MBU).
10/07/2007 (1:36 pm)
If you ever plan on going to console, you absolutely do not want to remove Unicode support :)Localization is an absolute requirement to pass cert, and I'm reasonably sure it will require Unicode to support some of the mandatory languages (which is one of the reasons the unicode work was done--for MBU).
Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
any country that has unicode signs in path names will not be able to play your game.
Above that it shouldn't be a problem to just let it in. The only non-unicode OS are Win98 and ME without the installed package. Both no problem as they don't play TGEA games anyway ...