This update (v12.1.3) sees the addition of a Japanese translation of the game! There are also some map fixes and balance changes sprinkled in as well.
At long last, we can finally say that Japan(ese) is confirmed!
The translation was a major effort by community member mineship2, who did the majority of the translations, with legacy translations sourced from a partial RO1 translation by [RMF]RIKUSYO. ありがとうございます！
To use this translation in DH, make sure to set your Steam Interface Language to 日本語 (Japanese). Follow this guide on how to change the game's language.
This brings the amount of supported languages up to 8! We are currently looking for Portuguese, Italian, Chinese and Korean translators. If you would like to help translate the game to your native tongue, please drop us a line on Discord!
This is the culmination of a lot of effort to streamline the localization and font generation pipeline in order to support large CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) character sets.
Unlike modern engines which can render vector fonts (such as TTF, OTF) scalably with ease, our engine (UT2K4) still relies on rendering raster fonts that must be generated ahead of time at every size and font combination that we make available.
This creates a combinatorial mess that's feasible to ignore in languages with a relatively small set of latin-derived characters. However, it becomes much more of a headache when dealing with CJK characters, where there are thousands of unique glyphs that must be loaded into memory, read to be displayed at any given moment.
We've mostly solved the issues by generating a smaller set of CJK characters (reducing the combinations of sizes, fonts etc.), and only generating characters which are actually used in the text of the game. This should keep the font sizes manageable size without destabilizing the game.
Note also that due to prioritizing minimizing RAM usage for the majority of players, you will not be able to see Japanese characters in the game's chat unless you are using the Japanese translation. Some kanji will also be unavailable since it's not feasible to generate tens of thousands of characters just for use in-game chat.
Fixed column headers being displayed incorrectly on scoreboard totals.
Fixed incorrect AT guns being available to Soviets.
Fixed missing "no arty" volumes for both team's spawns.
Removed ability for the Axis team to recapture objectives.
Adjusted Danger Zone and objective spawns to coincide with above change.
Removed ability to construct Pak 36 AT gun.
Fixed issue with Axis team losing despite still holding objectives when the time limit runs out.
Removed mortars from Soviet team.
Slightly increased capacity of German main supply cache (from 1000 to 1500).
Updated some old interiors around the Platz.
Fixed an issue where players could not call artillery on valid locations.
Added a slight skew in team balance towards Allies.
Fixed insufficient spawn hints in both team's main spawns.
Fixed spawn protection mine volumes lacking sufficient depth to kill players before they could pass through them in a truck or other fast vehicle.
Restored missing fence and corpse models.
As a little treat for those who actually read these change logs, here are some WIP shots of a few assets from the upcoming mounted machine gun update. We'll just keep this a secret between you and me, okay?
On timelines, mounted machine guns should realistically be a mid-to-late 2026 addition. This is because we want to provide each faction with an appropriate mounted MG, and each piece is very art intensive, requiring detailed models, complex animations and unique player interactions (e.g. picking up and deploying the guns, different mounting heights etc.). We truly want these to be the best mounted machine-guns in any FPS game.
We are very excited for this as we think these will make a significant difference for defenders to create and maintain defensive hard-points built around these guns. We will go more into the specifics of the new mechanics as we continue to show off the progress in the coming months.
We know times are tough these days, but if you can afford to and want to help us fund the continued server hosting and development infrastructure costs, please consider supporting us on Patreon!
戦場で会おう、
ダークライトゲームスタジオ