Localisation: How To

This guide will show you how to get started with creating localisation for The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short Story. Given that Faceless is being created by a small team with a very limited budget, we've added support to allow the community to submit and use their own localisation files by providing them with access to tools to add new languages to our game(s).

Preface

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Localisation is a very important part of expanding any form of media to a wider group of people, everybody should be able to enjoy something that they're interested in regardless of any existing barriers in place!

The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short story has included with it a Localisation tool, as well as a template to use in order to translate the game into other languages. Users can freely use the Localisation Tool to add further language support to The Sorrowvirus: A Faceless Short Story, as well as any of our future titles. We decided to approach this method as we are an exceptionally small team with very, very limited funds. We want to ensure that our games are accessible to as many languages as possible, and this was the best way for us to at least try to achieve just that.

We will endeavour to add further languages to the game if/when popular community-made ones are available!

Using The Localisation Tool

Using the Localisation Tool is exceptionally straightforward, this guide will walk it through with you every step of the way.

The Localisation Tool is located within the game's installation folder, inside \steamapps\common\The Sorrowvirus\Faceless\Localization\Localization Tool as Faceless Localization Tool.exe



The Localisation Tool will allow for you to create a file from scratch, or load an existing file. In this case, you'll want to load an existing file by clicking 'Load'. In the same folder as above, you'll see a file named English (TEMPLATE).json, this will include all the game's dialogue and UI text, readily available for translating.

At the moment, our Localisation Tool does not have a search function, however, if you have a software that can open .json files, you can use the search function to find something specific whenever required.

Localisation Etiquette

When localising The Sorrowvirus, there are certain things that must not be translated as it could break the game if you do so. This is because the game's code may look for certain text or symbols within lines that tell it how it should behave. Below are a list of examples of what must not be translated or adjusted. Symbols should be left in and not removed or adjusted at all.

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• \n - This is responsible for creating a new line, and must remain in its place to work effectively. If you find that your translation is longer than the English version and the line break would be suitable elsewhere, you are welcome to move, but not remove this symbol.
  
  There is an exception to this rule, there are some lines that are just \n, which need to be modified for other languages. See "\n Lines."
  
  
• <Red> </> - This is responsible for making certain parts of a line red in colour, and therefore, 'Red' must not be translated, nor must the symbols be adjusted.
  
  
• <Item> - This is responsible for telling the player what item they have picked up, this must not be translated. The actual items themselves can be found elsewhere in the localisation file to be translated.
  
  
• \" \" - This, with text in-between each backward slash, allows for the text to contain quotation marks.
  
  
• RANDOMNUMBER - This is responsible for generating a random number from 0-9 and must be left untranslated. Translating this will result in the code for Cassandra Noble's room not generating.
  
  
• @ - This symbol is responsible for drawing a a number or text that is localised on another line.

\n Lines

There are some lines that are just /n - You may be wondering what these are. There is a crucial hint in the game in the form of decals, paintings on the walls. It indicates to the player what way and what order they need to be looking in in order to solve a padlock combination.

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These lines will be titled LOC_NESW_TEXT_0, LOC_NESW_TEXT_1, LOC_NESW_TEXT_2 and LOC_NESW_TEXT_3.

The following images below are indicative of what each of these lines are meant to be, you can replace the \n with standard localisation of the text below.

LOC_NESW_TEXT_0:

"Wendy flew to the North. Madeline was abandoned in the West. Joshua perished in the South. Years later, Caleb fled to the East."

LOC_NESW_TEXT_1:

"Imogen waited in the North. Elijah stayed in the West. Daniel flew from the South. Rosco remained in the East."

LOC_NESW_TEXT_2:

"Edward searched in the North. Emily looked to the West. Richard ventured to the South and Tristan hid in the East."

LOC_NESW_TEXT_3:

"Wyatt died in the North. Wyatt died in the West. Wyatt died in the South. Wyatt died in the East."

The reason why these lines are listed as \n in the English file is because, on it's own, nothing will show up, and there's no reason for this to be subtitled in the English language.

Sharing Your Localisation

We welcome every opportunity to ensure as many people can understand our games as possible, which is why we released this tool. When it comes to a localisation file, we invite users to work together when it comes to WIPs/betas to ensure a great final file.

In terms of sharing your localised file, we would like to set up the Steam Workshop for it, but we're currently unsure of exactly how to set this up. In the meantime, we would be more than happy for these files to be shared and discussed within our Community Hub.

For all of those who are taking their time to localise our game, we thank you! It is genuinely an act of kindness to want to help us and others to play and understand our game in their native language(s). It's no easy feat, localising, it's time-consuming and strenuous when testing to ensure everything works as intended.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Ángel Cruz Rodríguez and David Bergoeing for providing our game with a Spanish and French localisation respectively.