Issue with special characters in ("foreign") player names

I'm having that age-old problem of certain "special" characters being displayed as a square (solely in FM). In particular, I'm having this issue with Romanian and (I think) Moldovan players/staff/teams, which suggests an issue with the Romanian character set. I have no issues with Icelandic or German or whatever names though.

For example, ACF Gloria 1922 Bistriţa is displayed as ACF Gloria 1992 Bistri[]a and Răzvan Raţ is displayed as Răzvan Ra[]. Maybe it's just the 'ţ' that's a problem, I haven't investigated that much.

Is this an issue with Football Manager itself (i.e. I can see the team's name fine in Firefox, which suggests the character is on my PC)? Is anyone else having the same problem? Is there a solution?

I tried searching, but nada (and I'm not quite sure what to search for either, but I've tried various combinations of "strange", "symbol", "character", "square", "foreign" "names" etc.)

Are you using an unofficial skin?

Are you using an unofficial skin?

yup, any idea how to fix it, as the default skins are unusable for me?

While we're on the topic, do you have any idea how to edit the default skins? I can't find the files anywhere. All I really wanted to do was change the colours, but couldn't find any files and ended up downloading a skin that met my needs (i.e. doesn't hurt to look at).

I did look in the appropriate forum back then, but was a bit confused as to why I needed to download all the files...

(Edit: fixed typo)

If you're using the skin it's probably because the person who created it used a font that doesn't have the characters for it. Nothing exciting.

If you're using the skin it's probably because the person who created it used a font that doesn't have the characters for it.

So any idea how to fix it?

I'd be happy to use the font from the default skins, but as said above, it seems to have been made unnecessarily difficult to find the settings in the default skins.

I would recommend you head over to the Skinning Hideout and ask in there, maybe even find the thread related to the skin you're using if it exits.

If I could remember how to change the texts used by a skin I'd tell you, but I'm affraid you'll have to go over to ask all the 'creative' people in the skinning hideout how they go about it.

Cheers, at least I know what's causing the issue now

Deleting the contents of the fonts folder for the skin you are using will cause the game to use the default fonts. (Though you might want to check that the font files are only called fm main, fm scoreboard, vera or verabd - if there are any other font files in the folder you'll need to overwrite the problem font files with fonts that include the Romanian characters.)

Deleting the contents of the fonts folder for the skin you are using will cause the game to use the default fonts. (Though you might want to check that the font files are only called fm main, fm scoreboard, vera or verabd - if there are any other font files in the folder you'll need to overwrite the problem font files with fonts that include the Romanian characters.)

I haven't tried the above, but I'd assume it will also work, because it is an issue with the vera font.

I posted the following in the Flex 2011 thread, but I'm going to post it here as well, in case anyone else is looking for a solution.

I've managed to solve this issue. Seems that the font (vera) specified in the settings file is the same as the default font (at least in the base skin download). However the font file itself isn't the same. If you copy vera.otf and verabd.otf from the Base 2011 skin's fonts directory to the Flex skin's fonts directory, the issue is fixed. So it's not the skin per se that's to blame, but the font files.