Sunday 8 May 2011

Roguelike MUD progress #6 - Chinese character sets

Previous post: Roguelike MUD progress #5

Feeling like doing a bit of programming, I decided to run my roguelike MUD code and see if there was anything that I might feel drawn to working on.


This must be the first time I have tested it since I bought a Chinese laptop. I have debug menus in-game which show me all four character sets, and they now show the following.


Windows Telnet looks better than Putty, but if Putty is what I have to use now, then that's the easiest path forward.


It looks like Putty is also not working reliably now. Going back to Windows Telnet, maybe there is some way to get DOS to display CP 437 without having access to the ability to switch operating system languages. And it turns out there is, typing chcp 437 in a DOS console does the trick. But unfortunately, it uses a different font and it also seems to break handling of escape codes.

Unfortunately, this is going to require a lot more research and work. I can't say I am enthused about it, as I would rather be just working on game code. But maybe I can detect Chinese Windows and use unicode characters, as they seem to be available.