How to add asian fonts in ITG/OpenITG

As usual, I cannot be responsible of any damage you can do to your operating system/programs so if you are not sure of what you are doing please STOP THIS NOW ^:^

How many times it happened you have a song (maybe Sakura ---> 桜 for example) that on the song wheel is visualized as a smile ---> ☺ and you cannot read it?
That is because Stepmania (and thus ITG or OpenITG) have two ways of visualization, defined in the file "stepmania.ini", at the voice
ShowNativeLanguage= ( 0 or 1 )
In any version of Stepmania this is selectable from game options but ITG was not build originally to support asian fonts so you have to change the voice to 1
ShowNativeLanguage=1
In this mode the game will read from the .sm file not the TITLETRANSLIT but the TITLE, you can read it from the first lines of any .sm file, here below an example:
#TITLE:桜;
#SUBTITLE:;
#ARTIST:RevenG;
#TITLETRANSLIT: SAKURA;
When the TITLETRANSLIT is missing, the game will read the TITLE line and if is visualized in asian, chinese or korean characters, due to missing asian charset in ITG the visualization will be only smiles --->☺☺☺☺☺☺
Note that if you have or not installed asian fonts on your pc this is irrelevant for visualization in ITG (maybe you need those to read what is written in .sm files or karaoke outside the program), because any character is associated with a code (from _japanese 24px.ini or _korean 24px.ini) that is taken from the fonts images matrix (basically like DVD subtitles), so we have to supply those characters images.
Characters images are stored in "Fonts" folder of the "fallback" theme. This folder is missing in ITG/OpenITG
You can copy them from the "Fonts" folder of stepmania 3.9 but it has a very limited charset so I suggest to use the Stepmania 5 fonts, that has a charset much more complete.
The files you need are those:

_japanese 24px [kanji 1-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 10-stroke] 2x1.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 10] 2x1.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 1] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 2-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 2] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 3-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 3] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 4-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 4] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 5-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 5] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 6-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 6] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 7-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 7] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 8-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 8] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 9-stroke] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji 9] 8x8.png
_japanese 24px [kanji-jis1-stroke] 32x32.png
_japanese 24px [kanji-jis1] 32x32.png
_japanese 24px [kanji-jis2-stroke] 32x106.png
_japanese 24px [kanji-jis2] 32x106.png
_japanese 24px [kanji-regular-stroke] 32x61.png
_japanese 24px [kanji-regular] 32x61.png
_japanese 24px [main-stroke] 16x16.png
_japanese 24px [main] 16x16.png
_japanese 24px [symbol-stroke] 26x3.png
_japanese 24px [symbol] 26x3.png
_japanese 24px.ini
_korean 24px [jamo 1-stroke] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 1] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 2-stroke] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 2] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 3-stroke] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 3] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 4-stroke] 8x8.png
_korean 24px [jamo 4] 8x8.png
_korean 24px.ini

You can take them directly from the "Fonts" folder of Stepmania 5 _fallback theme but the images are too big, you have to resize them exactly to half size
In fact if you notice Stepmania 5 has all those files named with (doubleres) append, you have to remove this from the filename

for example: _japanese 24px [kanji 1] 8x8 (doubleres).png has a size of 416x480 pixels, you have to resize to 208x240 pixels and rename to _japanese 24px [kanji 1] 8x8.png
another example: _japanese 24px [kanji-regular-stroke] 32x61 (doubleres).png has a size of 1792x3904, you have to resize to 896x1952 and rename to _japanese 24px [kanji-regular-stroke] 32x61.png
leave untouched the files _japanese 24px.ini and _korean 24px.ini

When you have done you need to add the _japanese 24px and _korean 24px lines to default theme (or your custom theme) for redirect charset:
For example in your default theme into the "Fonts" folder there are those two files
16px fonts.ini
20px fonts.ini

in "_16px fonts.ini" make sure the import line has this content

import=_misc 16px,_game chars 16px,_ui chars 16px,_japanese 24px,_korean 24px

and in "_20px fonts.ini" this content
import=_game chars 16px,_ui chars 16px,_japanese 24px,_korean 24px

If you did all correctly you will see asian characters, japanese kana and korean hangeul

Yoshi

Great documentation!

---

Just uploaded an "all in one" pack with fonts ready to be installed
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ov8c0cbwqvwjylq/Japanese+Korean+Asian+fonts.zip
enjoy ;)