"by {author}" is a string that will cause a lot of localization-related
problems, which then become much worse when different languages and
levels can also need different fonts:
- If the author name is set to something in English instead of a name,
then it'll come out a bit weird if your VVVVVV is set to a different
language: "de various people", "por various people", etc. It's the
same problem with Discord bots completing "playing" or "watching" in
their statuses.
- Translators can't always fit "by" in two letters, and level creators
have understandably always assumed, and will continue to assume, that
"by" is two letters. So if you have your VVVVVV set to a language that
translates "by" as something long, then:
| by Various People and Others |
...may suddenly show up as something like:
|thorer Various People and Othe|
- "by" and author may need mutually incompatible fonts. For example, a
Japanese level in a Korean VVVVVV needs to be displayed with "by" in
Korean characters and the author name with Japanese characters, which
would need some very special code since languages may want to add
text both before and after the name.
- It's very possible that some languages can't translate "by" without
knowing the gender of the name, and I know some languages even
inflect names in really interesting ways (adding and even replacing
letters in first names, surnames, and anything in between, depending
on gender and what else is in the sentence).
So to solve all of this, the "by" is now replaced by a 10x10 face from
sprites.png, like a :viridian: emote. See it as a kind of avatar next
to a username, to clarify and assert that this line is for the author's
name. It should be a fairly obvious/recognizable icon, it fixes all the
above problems, and it's a bonus that we now have more happy faces in
VVVVVV.
By default, when you open the level editor to start a new level, the
level font will now match your VVVVVV language; so if you're, say,
Japanese, then you can make Japanese levels from the get-go. If you
want to make levels for a different target audience, you can change the
font via a new menu (map settings > change description > change font).
The game will remember this choice and it will become the new initial
level font.
meta.xml can now have a <font> tag, which gives the name of the font
that the language needs. This will directly control the interface font
when the language is active, and will soon also control the font used
for each option on the language screen.
This allows translators to test all text boxes in the scripts. It
doesn't run the scripts themselves - it only shows the basic appearance
of each text box individually, so context may be lost but it's good to
have a way to see any text boxes that might otherwise not be easily
seen because they require specific circumstances to appear.
The strings "Vitellary"/"Vermilion"/"Verdigris"/"Victoria" now have two
cases to support changing them for the intermission replay menu options
(like "with Vitellary").
Also, the string "< and > keys change tool" is now "{button1} and
{button2} keys change tool", so it can be changed dynamically without
having to retranslate the string.
I wanted to not complicate the system with different string cases (like
cgettext) if possible, and I have been able to keep the main strings a
simple English=Translation mapping thus far, but apparently strings
like "Rescued!" (which are one string in English), have to be
translated for the correct gender in some languages. So this was a good
time to add support for string cases anyway.
It's a number that can be given to a string to specify the specific
case it's used, to disambiguate identical English keys. In the case of
"Rescued!" and "Missing...", male versions of the string are case 1,
female versions are case 2, and Viridian being missing is case 3. Of
course, if a language doesn't need to use different variants, it can
simply fill in the same string for the different cases.
If any other string needs to switch to different cases: distinguish
them in the English strings.xml with the case="N" attribute (N=1 and
higher), sync language files from the translator menu (existing
translations for the uncased string will simply be copied to all cases)
and change loc::gettext("...") to loc::gettext_case("...", 1),
loc::gettext_case("...", 2), etc.
I would, of course, recommend translators to translate the roomnames
while playing the full game (optionally in invincibility) so they can
immediately get all the context and maybe the most inspiration. And if
you want to go back into a specific level, then there's always the time
trials and intermission replays which will give you full coverage of
all the room names.
However, the time trials weren't really made for room name translation.
They have some annoying features like the instant restart when you
press ENTER at the wrong time, they remove context clues like
teleporters and companions, but the worst problem is that the last room
in a level is often completely untranslatable inside the time trials
because you immediately get sent to the results screen...
So, I added a new menu in the translator options, "explore game", which
gives you access to all the time trials and the two intermissions, from
the same menu. All these time trials (which they're still based off of,
under the hood) are stripped of the annoying features that come with
time trials. These are the changes I made to time trial behavior in
translator exploring mode:
- No 3-2-1-Go! countdown
- No on-screen time/death/shiny/par
- ENTER doesn't restart, and the map menu works. The entire map is also
revealed.
- Prize for the Reckless is in its normal form
- The teleporters in Entanglement Generator, Wheeler's Wormhole and
Level Complete are restored as context for room names (actually, we
should probably restore them in time trials anyway? Their "press to
teleport" prompt is already blocked out in time trials and they do
nothing other than being a checkpoint. I guess the reason they were
removed was to stop people from opening the teleporter menu when that
was not specifically blocked out in time trials yet.)
- The companions are there at the end of levels, and behave like in no
death mode (become happy and follow you to the teleporter). Also for
context.
- At the end of each level, you're not suddenly sent to the menu, but
you can use the teleporter at your leisure just like in the
intermission replays. In the Final Level, you do get sent to the menu
automatically, but after a longer delay.
I made another mark on VVVVVV: don't be startled, I added gamestates.
I wanted all teleporters at the end of levels to behave like the ones
at the end of the intermission replays, and all handling for
teleporting with specific companions is already done in gamestates, so
rather than adding conditional blocks across 5 or so different
gamestates, it made more sense to make a single gamestate for
"teleporting in translator exploring mode" (3090). I also added an
alternative to having to use gamestate 3500 or 82 for the end of the
final level: 3091-3092.
One other thing I want to add to the "explore game" menu: a per-level
count of how many room names are left to translate. That shouldn't be
too difficult, and I'm planning that for the next commit.
