Release: Localization Part 1 - Fonts

Today, TaleSpire gets to say:

As we now have Talu, a font that supports much more of the Latin character set, with Cyrillic joining the party, too!

This release is the first in a series coming out over the next half-year as we push to complete the long-awaited localization project. So what is this release, and what is it not?

It is the first release containing our new font.

It is still being fine-tuned, and at least one notable glyph is missing in action (see further down for details), but we are very happy how it's turned out.

It is the first release featuring fallback fonts.

It is exceptionally rare for a font to support all languages. Instead, fallback fonts are specified so that, if the player needs to write something the main font doesn't support, the text system can use the other font instead. In this release, I've also added fallbacks for Greek and Japanese. These are not officially supported yet! However, by adding them, we can gain real experience with how fallbacks work in the wild, which will be invaluable when we support them officially. We do not yet have any support for right-to-left writing systems. We would love to get there, but we don't know what roadblocks lie ahead, so no roadmap on that one.

This is not the release that unlocks the translation system.

We demoed in-game tools for localizing TaleSpire on a stream AAAGES ago. However, they got stuck waiting on a bunch of other stuff. Now that the font is out, getting the translation system into your hands is a high priority for us. This will start with **big** UI cleanup behind the scenes. There's a lot to say there, so I'll leave that for future dev-logs.

It's a neat font!

Talu is a serif typeface with inspiration in carved Roman lettering. Specifically drawing from capitalis monumentalis (monumental capitals) found in inscriptions like the Trajan. It was adapted in proportion and design for better readability in UIs and screens, including lowercase-specific adaptations. As with all of TaleSpire, the work is human. Sergio (@elTzimmy) has really put in the time, not only creating a beautiful font, but also working with us directly, helping us find our way in the knotty forest of writing systems.

Known issues:

1. Plenty of UI elements are not set up to handle languages properly yet.
2. The ampersand is currently a little square! That'll be fixed next week.
3. Lots of poor layout choices due to us choosing not to redesign everything in this one release.
4. Misc small issues coming from having prodded every single piece of UI in the game.
5. Some subtle fringing on small letters at lower resolution (rendering issue).

Only 2. is a font issue. The other three join the list of existing UI bugs we will be working on.

And now, onward!

It feels great to get this particular wagon rolling again. I hope you enjoy what this new font brings, and the future releases it has unlocked. As always, you can hear about progress in the dev-logs at https://bouncyrock.com/news, and we'll be back very soon with more releases for you. Until next time. Enjoy!