Building games that use non-Latin writing systems

It is possible to build games in GameMaker that do not use Latin writing systems. A resource fork editor like ResEdit or Rezilla is all that is needed. You will also have to tolerate garbage letters during the creation proces, however. The following instructions assume Japanese, but it is possible to use other writing systems, such as Cyrillic (Russian), Arabic, etc. as well.

Set the keyboard language (The American Flag icon on US systems, which can be enabled in the Language & Text control panel on 10.6) to the language system of your choice, and type in the text areas of your game. You might also consider typing the same text in a text editor as a backup. Save your game document and reopen it. All of your hard work is replaced by garbage! WTF?! Don’t worry; it looks ugly, but it still exists in a useable form. Compile your game, and open it in ResEdit or Rezilla. Open the resource ID vers 1. Change the country code (ResEdit) or Language Integer (Rezilla) to the appropriate country for your language, such as 14 for Japan. ResEdit users will have an easier time with this part, since Rezilla doesn’t list the country associated with each code. Run your game and double-check everything to make sure there aren’t any errors. If it all works, you are ready to distribute!

For Rezilla users, here’s the country code table as it appears in ResEdit:
Integer Country
0 USA
1 France
2 Britain
3 Germany
4 Italy
5 Netherlands
6 Belgium Lux.
7 Sweden
8 Spain
9 Denmark
10 Portugal
11 Fr. Canada
12 Norway
13 Israel
14 Japan
15 Australia
16 Arabia
17 Finland
18 Fr. Swiss
19 Gr. Swiss
20 Greece
21 Iceland
22 Malta
23 Cyprus
24 Turkey
25 Yugoslavia
33 India
34 Pakistan
36 It. Swiss
40 Anc. Greek
41 Lithuania
42 Poland
43 Hungary
44 Estonia
45 Latvia
46 Lapland
47 Faeroe Isl.
48 Iran
49 Russia
50 Ireland
51 Korea
52 China
53 Taiwan
54 Thailand