If you've never set a language before (<lang_set> is not 1), then the
language screen will show up before the title screen. Selecting the
language will then make the title screen show up.
If no language files are present, the old logic for handling this was
to simply show the language screen at startup anyway, and let it
display the error message that language files are missing, as a warning
that the game is not packaged correctly. However, this logic has two
flaws:
- If the user has ever had language files and set a language before
(in a VVVVVV on that computer), the warning element is gone because
the language screen is not shown in that case - the game is simply in
English
- If the user has never set a language before, and then goes to the
language screen later via the menu, they will be sent to the title
screen, even if they were in-game. The main menu will also be broken.
The new way is to not show the language screen at startup if language
files are missing, and to change the logic so that you will only be
sent to the title screen if you actually haven't seen the title screen
yet.
I will also add a proper warning that fonts or language files are
missing by adding a message in the bottom left corner (in place of the
MMMMMM installed message).
The language screen has a "Press Space, Z, or V to select" hint, which
I forgot to update for supporting button glyphs in #943, so this commit
does.
<action_hint>Press Space, Z, or V to select</action_hint>
<gamepad_hint>Press {button} to select</gamepad_hint>
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.
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.
