Preface

The last time I really updated this blog was when I was between jobs, having just been made redundant due to the closure of Blitz, and still having a few weeks before I started my new job at Pitbull as a contractor working on the Unreal Engine. The job at Pitbull eventually became a job at Epic, when Epic bought Pitbull and recreated the company as Epic Games UK.

My two main areas of responsibility at Epic are localisation and text rendering, so I thought it would be a good idea to write a series of posts detailing how these systems work, not just at a system level (as we have documentation for that), but in a way that tells you why you might want to use a system, when it’s appropriate to use a system, and how these systems fit together to form a greater whole.

Contents

This is the high-level overview of what I want to cover. I’ll update this list with links as I work through the topics (you can think of this post as the table of contents).

• Localisation and Internationalisation:
  • What is text?
  • What is ICU?
• Localising your game:
  • What are cultures?
  • What is the localisation pipeline?
  • What is the localisation dashboard?
• Asset and Audio Localisation:
  • What are localised assets?
  • How is dialogue localised?
• Fonts and Text Rendering:
  • What is a composite font?
  • How does complex text rendering work?

Let me know if you think I’ve missed a topic, or if there’s a topic you’d like me to specifically cover.