This update has completely revamped the game's text system to allow for Unicode text. This will make it possible to introduce new languages, something I had always intended for the game to have.
Testing Branch and Disclaimer
It's important to note that this is only in the optional "public_testing" branch as of this time. It contains a very preliminary German language version of the game. Please be aware, the translation is not complete, it is basically a google translated text for now. Once I iron out all the bugs, I plan to get a proper translation made.
Also, as I mentioned, there are still some bugs in the system. Game updates that appear on the bottom of the screen appear incorrectly at this time. The dialogue has not all been 100% tested just yet either. However, the basic building blocks of making a proper translation of the game are now in place.
Trouble
The trouble with doing this was not about just getting the text translated. It was actually about how the game reads and displays text files. When released the game could only read 8 bit text files, but those files cannot be used (by the game engine) to correctly display the wide variety of characters in languages other than English.
I had to re-write every function that read strings from text files in order to get it to display correctly. Also, all the text files in the game needed to be updated to UTF-16 LE format, which was a time consuming process in itself.
Translation
So while this is not yet a fully translated version of the game, it is the first major step in making that a possibility. I know a lot of people have been asking for this, so I wanted to let you all know I have not forgotten!