Cyrillic font support for Jak 2 (Russian translation)

[Beekeepa]

Hi! I'd like to help get a Russian translation into Jak 2.

What's done so far: the Russian translation of game_custom_text for Jak 2 is 100% complete on Crowdin.
The blocker: font_db_jak2.cpp has no Cyrillic characters, so Russian text can't be shown. I noticed TODO cyrillic in the Jak 3 and Jak X font files, so I assume this has come up before.

Are you planning to add Cyrillic support for Jak 2 (or Jak 2/3 together)?
If so, what approach would you accept? For example, an extra font texture loaded on top of the original one, or texture replacement.
What glyph format do you need (size, grid, file type)?

Thanks!

[xTVaser]

i should remove it from crowdin then, shouldn't be there because yeah it's not possible to easily display russian characters because you identified the actual blocker -- Jak 2's game files does NOT include a cyrillic font. (I'll leave it there though since you've done it for now)

Cyrillic is already working in jak 3, those TODOs are out of date.

As for the approach, you have to come up with an entire system to inject a new texture, something that we cannot easily do. iirc the cyrillic character set is too big to just be an addition to the existing font files, but you can easily check this by looking at jak 3's font texture. If im mistaken and it is, then you could use the texture_merge feature, which i added a long time ago as a way to add additional character sets (with the limitation that you are limited by the available space in the existing font textures).

You will have to construct this new texture from scratch, copying the portion of the jak 3 font texture would go against our rules of not uploading original assets. Tracing over it would also be a violation, so hopefully it's a standard font?

Lastly, the game_custom_text you translated is like 1% of the overall strings, if we are going to actually add russian support to Jak 2, it should probably be fully translated -- you'll have to translate every cutscene, every hint, and every base game string. If not, then we waste that extra texture space that we can never easily reclaim.

[Beekeepa]

I enabled process_subtitle_text and re-ran the decompiler on my NTSC-U disc, but it found 0 spool subtitles. I see fi-FI is the only Jak 2 language with a filled “cutscenes” section. Where did the Finnish translators get the English cutscene text to translate from? Is there a way to extract it from the game?

[Aloqas]

I used the subtitle editor located in the top bar of the game window, you can't extract cutscene text as far as I know

[Beekeepa]

Quick update on the Russian translation for Jak 2 (screenshots attached).

Font: Russian letters fit into free cells of the existing font textures (codes 0xB4-0xF5), added via texture_merge. I drew them from scratch based on the open-source font Jost (OFL), nothing copied from Jak 2 or Jak 3. I also added the letters to font_db_jak2.cpp and their widths to font-data.gc.

Translation: UI, base game text and in-game dialogue are done. Cutscenes are in progress.

Testing: I built OpenGOAL from source and temporarily put Russian into the Finnish slot to test it. Menus and subtitles display correctly.

Next: finish cutscenes, add Russian as its own language, then open a PR.

Does this approach work for you?

[Beekeepa]

- Cyrillic is now in the Jak II font (А-Я, а-я, Ё/ё): glyphs added to the font texture, mappings in font_db_jak2.cpp, widths in font-data.gc. - All in-game subtitles and menu text are translated. - Cutscenes are done too: all 1408 lines across 113 cutscenes. To get the English source, I used the decompiler's process_subtitle_text on the STR files with a small patch so it actually writes out the text (dump_text is off by default). The lines match subtitle_meta_en-US.json frame for frame. - Tested locally with Russian in the Suomi slot: everything builds with no errors, and cutscene subtitles show up in game.

[TolkFe]

Бро, ты можешь объяснить для дураков вроде меня, как поставить твой русич на лаунчер с европейским ISO

[dallmeyer]

It's a work in progress still