So I took a brief break from lighting code today, and laid the foundations for translation support in VectorStorm.  Basically, game code now requests coded “string keys” from the localisation system, and the localisation system provides the matching translated string from a data file.  I have this all working right now, but am missing a few pieces.

First, the whole VectorStorm string and font system is based upon ANSI strings;  it’s not Unicode-compatible;  it’ll take some work to make them it happy with extended character sets (I may just skip that for now).

Second, I’m not sure how to best select which language string table to load.  Maybe I should just put that into the “Preferences” section of the games I release;  that’d be simpler than trying to automatically select an appropriate language based upon system locale settings or etc.

Work’s still very busy and tiring, so not getting as much done on this home stuff as I’d like.  But still slowly making progress.