A-code internationalisation

As of version 20.01, A-code is UTF8 compliant and thus can be used to write games with messages, vocabulary and entitu names in languages other than English, including ones which use non-ASCII characters. All you need is a UTF8-compliant text editor. This document explains how to do so.

While internationalisation is only possible since A-code version 20.01, it is available in games using A-code styles from 10 upwards. See the STYLE major directive in the A-code language documentation.

Turning UTF8 mode on

To turn UTF8 mode on, use the STYLE major directive:

STYLE 12 UTF8

or just

STYLE UTF8

letting the system to use the highset numbered style available. Remember that all A-code code is case insensitive, so the above examples would work just as well in lower case or even mixed case.

That's it! You can now have texts, command words and object/place names in any character set that can be represented in UTF8 encoding of Unicode. any script defined by the Unicode standard.

There is, of course, a residual difficulty. From version 10 onwards, A-code permits hardwired English words being used to structure complex command: AND being used instead of a comma, and THEN being used instead of a semicolon. Furthermore, if the verb AGAIN is defined by the game, it is intercepted by the kernel and taken to men a request to repeat the previous command (see the section on automatic entities and flags in the A-code language documentation).

The next section describes the way of replacing these hard-wired English terms.

Re-defining hard-wired English terms

Version 20 of A-code introduces a new major directive: PARSER .....