TGE internationalization

#1 This is easy. Use global strings where filenames are meant to be, and text.

#2 Stefan,
Thanks for your answer. I should explain that I don't own TGE, yet. I'm trying to understand if it has enough internationalization support to build the game I want to before I purchase. Is the i18n support similar to that of Java where I can request a global string and specify the locale I want to use?

Thanks so much,
Brian

#3 No problemo Brian.

I'm not sure what i18n support is. But see it like this (and you CAN do this in script, so you don't have to purchase it before you try it out).. you can specify a string, or a pointer-like global - which points to a string somewhere.

You can keep these strings in different files, and exec them depending on what language the user has specified, much like standard php forums/solutions do it.

Like:

Quote:english.cs
german.cs

text = $welcome;

$welcome would be "welcome" in the english.cs file, and "willkommen" respectivly, in the german.cs file.

If the user has specified german as their language, run the second script and not the first. If he hasn't specified a custom language, use english. This is very easy to implement, and should work well.

This thread should be in the public forum too.. Good luck to you

#4 Stefan, thanks for your help. This looks like what I was looking for, and I'll try it out as you suggest.

#5 Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I wanted to point out that TGE 1.4 RC2 does have tools and architecture set up for the type of localization Stefan mentioned, although the other aspects (voice/sound and images) aren't really supported as yet.

#6 Stephen, but does it support something like Stefan originally proposed? Specifying a string in different files for the language specific audio or image file, then at runtime getting the correct string and use it as the filename for the audio or image file you want to use.

#7 I *thought* specifying a global operator and defining it somewhere as a filename, would work.

#8 Sound/images could have been done before. Simply create your images/sound files with something like: soundfile_english.ogg or imagefile_english.png. Then, when loading them for your locale, append the "_english" to the file name. Therefore, setting it to Chinese would point to _mandarin or _cantonese or whatnot. The problem will be in creating a large number of image/sound file variations.

#9 The localization system could be used for images and sounds too. Some degree of hackage may be required since it wasnt designed for that, but its certainly possible. What David says still applies, though ... creating all those images and sounds would be pretty labour intensive. Then again, nobody said localization was quick to do :)

T.

#10 Thanks for all the feedback. The localization functionality is core to the game so I'm accounting for the load.