Support Freetype+Harfbuzz

[Ghabry]

Will be needed to handle complex scripts that use combining diacritic marks.

@pureexe do RPG Maker 2000/2003 Thai-scripted games exist? (Apart of your translation).
Because RPG Maker 2000 resolution is small, and Thai script for 6×12px width (half width) looks too small to display all diacritics, maybe is worth to break the half fixed width limitation of RPG_RT and use a variable width (or even 12×12px full width) in EasyRPG Player. However, if there exist games translated already, maybe they won't fit if they use too long lines (RPG Maker allows 50 half-width glyphs per line).

[pureexe]

For now, We don't have any Thai scripted game created with RPG Maker 2000/2003 yet.

but 12x12 is enough for display thai character.

this is yanderella with nearly correct thai language display.

We use moded RM2000 font you can download it here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n6w75c3m0sv5c7n/rm2000.fon?dl=0

and run with this game file (this is test not full game so file just 4MB) http://www.mediafire.com/download/yz4yjzzeiqo9fdz/yanderella-thai-test.rar

[Ghabry]

Could you write this text normally here on github?
So we can see how the correct rendering should look like.

[pureexe]

กาลครั้งหนึ่งนานมาแล้ว
มีหญิงสาวสวยนามว่า ซินเดอเรลล่า

[Ghabry]

Okay by measuring I would say that we need at least 22 pixel of height to fit everything with something above (รั้) and below (ญิ) beautifully. Needs some testing if freetype can somehow squash this in less.

I think the long term solution for this is to modify the whole rendering code of the Player to render with more pixels...

@pureexe how readable would you consider this?

It is just a font rendering test using a fixed width font (Arundina Sans Mono) using freetype+harfbuzz at 11 px height (with auto width), seems to fit exactly 6 px width as RPG_RT does, which is good.

[pureexe]

@fdelapena wow! pretty good.
it's 100% display correctly.

[whateverzone]

@fdelapena That's great! It seemed to display perfectly. Only that the fonts looked a bit blurry but that's not a big problem anyways.

Thank you for showing that to us!

We will looking forward to see RM2000/2003 to be able to support Thai perfectly.

[Ghabry]

@whateverzone
I'm currently investigating ways to improve the rendering by using higher resolutions. This will result in great font rendering because doubling the resolution already gives 4 times the pixel.
But the blurry font is a good start. When a better rendering is implemented it will "just work" without any ingame changes :)

@fdelapena
I would be interested in a screenshot without AA :D

[whateverzone]

@Ghabry Wow! Thank you for telling me that!
I hope your investigation goes well. We really want to see RM2000/2003's games with Thai version and also translation works such as Ib, Wadanohara etc.

Thank you very much for helping us ^^.

[Ghabry]

Here some real rendering tests in the engine. Without harfbuzz, so the diacritics are wrong:

Normal resolution (1x / 320x240)

HiRes (2x / 640x480):