Arabic Characters Showing as '???' — Need Help Registering Custom Font in DST

[Azzam]

I’m working on a localization mod for Don't Starve Together in Arabic, but I'm facing a key issue:
The game doesn't include a font that supports Arabic characters, and any Arabic text appears as question marks (???).

I’ve already generated a custom font using BMFont with full Arabic glyph support (the .fnt and .tex files are ready), and I confirmed that the characters are in the file.

I want help from someone who understands how to properly integrate a custom font into the game so that Arabic text renders correctly in menus and dialogs.

If anyone has experience with custom font injection for unsupported languages (like the Russian translation mods), or modifying the UI to use non-default fonts, I'd really appreciate some guidance.
I'm not asking for full translation help — I'm specifically focused on getting the font to render Arabic characters properly inside the game's UI.

[Butterzi]

Try saving your Lua file with UTF-8 with BOM encoding. It seems that DST only recognizes Unicode correctly with this encoding format.

 

 

[Butterzi]

26 minutes ago, Butterzi said:

Try saving your Lua file with UTF-8 with BOM encoding. It seems that DST only recognizes Unicode correctly with this encoding format.

 

 

My bad, you need to save the file as UTF-8 without BOM. I was mistaken earlier—sorry about that.
Also, make sure to disable this option in-game for it to display correctly.

[Azzam]

20 hours ago, Butterzi said:

My bad, you need to save the file as UTF-8 without BOM. I was mistaken earlier—sorry about that.
Also, make sure to disable this option in-game for it to display correctly.

I did everything you said also.
Its the game font that doesn't support Arabic characters so i tried to add my own font but
I’m encountering a crash every time the game tries to load my custom font. The log shows this critical error:

Failed to load font: ../mods/ArabicLanguage/fonts/Rubik.fnt (Rubik)
It seems the game can’t read the .fnt/.tex files. Could you help me troubleshoot why it’s failing?

[Rickzzs]

Have you followed any guide when creating the font?

[Azzam]

Where can i find that guide?

10 hours ago, Rickzzs said:

Have you followed any guide when creating the font?

 

[Capybara007]

i think this thing in the dst FAQ has something to do with it 

https://support.klei.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412324300052-DST-All-of-my-game-s-text-has-changed-to-question-marks-and-I-cannot-fix-it

[Rickzzs]

3 hours ago, Azzam said:

Where can i find that guide?

 

Then send your font here and I may see if it works. I know a guide but it is written in Chinese. And I wrote a guide also in Chinese. Here is mine.

https://www.bilibili.com/opus/761688484261920819

 

[Azzam]

1 hour ago, Rickzzs said:

Then send your font here and I may see if it works. I know a guide but it is written in Chinese. And I wrote a guide also in Chinese. Here is mine.

https://www.bilibili.com/opus/761688484261920819

 

Thanks for the link, if i could contact you on Discord or Telegram for more information that would be better.

[Rickzzs]

1 hour ago, Azzam said:

Thanks for the link, if i could contact you on Discord or Telegram for more information that would be better.

My discord is rickzzzzzzzs

[Azzam]

35 minutes ago, Rickzzs said:

My discord is rickzzzzzzzs

i've sent you a friend request