Localization plan/Community Translation/Workshop support?

[SoM]

From what I've seen the infrastructure's already there, and there aren't many image-based text in the game, so it should be rather straightforward to implement.
Obviously with weekly updates the devs might not want to include official localizations any time soon, but workshop support would be ideal.
I'd make a Chinese one myself, but since I'm not familiar with the engine, I don't know how to make the game use extra fonts, which means it can't display non-Ascii characters for me....
Any plans?

[Dinosaurs]

Hey SoM,
We're going the official localization route eventually. Currently, all of our focus is on fixing major issues and finishing up the core content for the full release. I think if we opened up Steam Workshop, many players would assume it's to allow content creation- this is cool and might happen. We would need to diverge a lot of time to support it as we're unfamiliar with Steam Workshop.

Our dev team is really small (2 people) so I don't think we can support such a system before our critical features and content are complete.

Slay the Spire is going to be in a state of constant balance and rework for a good while- translations will become outdated, leading to cards having the wrong descriptions.

For the above reasons, we can't in good conscience start a process like this for a while.

[SoM]

Originally posted by Dinosaurs:

Hey SoM,
We're going the official localization route eventually. Currently, all of our focus is on fixing major issues and finishing up the core content for the full release. I think if we opened up Steam Workshop, many players would assume it's to allow content creation- this is cool and might happen. We would need to diverge a lot of time to support it as we're unfamiliar with Steam Workshop.

Our dev team is really small (2 people) so I don't think we can support such a system before our critical features and content are complete.

Slay the Spire is going to be in a state of constant balance and rework for a good while- translations will become outdated, leading to cards having the wrong descriptions.

For the above reasons, we can't in good conscience start a process like this for a while.

Thanks for the reply. Totally understand your position, just wondering if there can be ways to manually do some localization work ourselves, because the demand is there(I streamed the game now and then and people were asking if there is Chinese translation etc.).

Like if it's possible to make the localization and font folder separate from the .jar achive and put on a version check/warning and it'd be good to go... all the other things we could try to work on ourselves.

Like I said I'd totally do one myself if not for the font thing. I don't want to see the game gets popular here and people turn to pirate the game because that's the only way they can get a translated (and often badly-done) version, which happens quite often.

[ZexxCrine]

if you really really want to do SOMETHING you could always just create a translation guide on steam?

[SoM]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

if you really really want to do SOMETHING you could always just create a translation guide on steam?

I'm not well-versed in Java programming so I cannot make the game engine use Chinese fonts, which is necessary to display non-Ascii characters in the game.
European/Latin-based localizations would have a much easier time to do on the user's end since the fonts should be compatible.
Plus all the text files and fonts are packed together, so right now a user-made translation pack would need to replace a 200Mb file, which is pretty much the whole game resource (the rest of the game files is basically the java runtime).

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by SoM:

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

if you really really want to do SOMETHING you could always just create a translation guide on steam?

I'm not well-versed in Java programming so I cannot make the game engine use Chinese fonts, which is necessary to display non-Ascii characters in the game.
European/Latin-based localizations would have a much easier time to do on the user's end since the fonts should be compatible.
Plus all the text files and fonts are packed together, so right now a user-made translation pack would need to replace a 200Mb file, which is pretty much the whole game resource (the rest of the game files is basically the java runtime).

k

so like I said. you could always just make a translation guide on steam. requires zero coding to do.

[SoM]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

k

so like I said. you could always just make a translation guide on steam. requires zero coding to do.

As I said, the game engine doesn't display Chinese characters. At all.
I'm not going to write a translation guide that makes everything blank[wx1.sinaimg.cn]. (You might notice that the font of the remaining untranslated English text is different - I manually replaced the in-game font with Chinese font, but the engine still cannot display them. The numbers were the only things visible in the translated text.)
Without dev support this simply cannot happen.

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by SoM:

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

k

so like I said. you could always just make a translation guide on steam. requires zero coding to do.

As I said, the game engine doesn't display Chinese characters. At all.
I'm not going to write a translation guide that makes everything blank[wx1.sinaimg.cn]. (You might notice that the font of the remaining untranslated English text is different - I manually replaced the in-game font with Chinese font, but the engine still cannot display them. The numbers were the only things visible in the translated text.)
Without dev support this simply cannot happen.

a steam guide wouldnt be inside the game. it would be here. http://steamcommunity.com/app/646570/guides/

so ill repeat myself again, if you want to make a translation that badly and the devs cannot provide you with the means to do it, why don;t you make a steam guide?

[SoM]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

a steam guide wouldnt be inside the game. it would be here. http://steamcommunity.com/app/646570/guides/

so ill repeat myself again, if you want to make a translation that badly and the devs cannot provide you with the means to do it, why don;t you make a steam guide?

Because no one is asking for a translation guide.

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by SoM:

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

a steam guide wouldnt be inside the game. it would be here. http://steamcommunity.com/app/646570/guides/

so ill repeat myself again, if you want to make a translation that badly and the devs cannot provide you with the means to do it, why don;t you make a steam guide?

Because no one is asking for a translation guide.

however, if you want to make something to translate it into another language it is your only option currently.

[ZirzoR]

Or you know people can go to school and learn english just like everyone else on the planet that plays video games.

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Or you know people can go to school and learn english just like everyone else on the planet that plays video games.

oof. that's taking it a bit far.

[ZirzoR]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Or you know people can go to school and learn english just like everyone else on the planet that plays video games.

oof. that's taking it a bit far.

I would say the same on any forum where people demand translation because they dont know how to speak proper english, every single school that teaches languages are capable of teaching english, and even then you can probably take a quick google language class or whatever to teach you, there are plenty of sites online to teach you languages.

Not knowing english is not an excuse, its just lazy to ask for translations or dubs.

English is a world wide language, the sooner people understand how important that is the better, I'm not a native english speaker and I could speak fluent english at the age of 12, I didnt even need to finish school for that.

so if you're 20+ that's not an excuse.

[SoM]

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Or you know people can go to school and learn english just like everyone else on the planet that plays video games.

Yes, and movies should never have local releases, because that's going to cost a lot and never have return in profits.

Games have localizations because they increase profits, sometimes by huge margins.

And I'm not demanding translation, because I plan to translate it.

You don't seem to be interested in the idea, but if you've got the time, there are plenty of cases of devs discovering that localization (in many cases specifically Chinese) brings revenue. A few examples on Gamasutra:
China is kind of a big deal for Indie Games[www.gamasutra.com]
Steam games in China: Making the most of a lucrative opportunity[www.gamasutra.com]

You can obviously say you don't care for that, but that's a decision the devs instead of the players get to make. And the devs have already stated that they are going for official localization eventually.

[Qrave]

Originally posted by ZirzoR:

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

oof. that's taking it a bit far.

I would say the same on any forum where people demand translation because they dont know how to speak proper english, every single school that teaches languages are capable of teaching english, and even then you can probably take a quick google language class or whatever to teach you, there are plenty of sites online to teach you languages.

Not knowing english is not an excuse, its just lazy to ask for translations or dubs.

English is a world wide language, the sooner people understand how important that is the better, I'm not a native english speaker and I could speak fluent english at the age of 12, I didnt even need to finish school for that.

so if you're 20+ that's not an excuse.

It is ALWAYS easier to read and speak first language than second language. That's the case, it doesn't matter how hard you learn. English is worldwide, but not everyone can use fluent English just because it is worldwide. Think about the numbers. You can't be serious to blame each of them.
Besides, if you play a game, constantly referring to a dictionary is really bad for your gameplay. You are frequently interrupted by words you don't understand.
To play a game, the most effective way is to play and solve problems that follow, not to learn everything that is required for a perfect gameplay. It doesn't make sense asking a person to go back to school and learn English for a year or two just because he wishes to play a game.
Translation is actually improving the efficeincy of good games spreading and people communicating.
Don't get me wrong, though. English is important. My point is it doesn't support the argument that people have to learn English to play a game.

[二十八号]

Beat call for som6