In the past I was thinking we could use some kind of feature in VVVVVV
to track outdated strings across language files. But as it turns out, a
manual solution is actually *perfect* (in combination with automatic
syncing): duplicating strings and marking the old one as outdated. We
started doing it in recent PRs, so let's make it official by adding it
to the readme.
There used to be two ways of fading in/out text in VVVVVV:
- Local code that modifies the R, G and B values of the text
- Keeping the RGB values the same and using the alpha channel
The latter approach is only used once, for [Press ENTER to return to
editor]. The former approach causes problems with colored (button)
glyphs: there's no way for the print function to tell from the RGB
values whether a color is "full Viridian-cyan" or "Viridian-cyan faded
out 50%", so I added the flag PR_COLORGLYPH_BRI(value) to tell the
print function that the color brightness is reduced to match the
brightness of colored glyphs to the brightness of the rest of the text.
However, there were already plans to make the single use of alpha
consistent with the rest of the game and the style, so PR_ALPHA(value)
could be removed, as well as the bit signifying whether the brightness
or alpha value is used. For the editor text, I simply copied the "Press
{button} to teleport" behavior of hiding the text completely if it
becomes darker than 100/255.
Another simplification is to make the print function handle not just
the brightness of the color glyphs while local code handled the
brightness of the normal text color, but to make the print function
handle both. That way, the callsite can simply pass in the full colors
and the brightness flag, and the flag name can be made a lot simpler as
well: PR_BRIGHTNESS(value).
With a single README.txt for both translators and maintainers, both
have to read through info that's not relevant for them, because
translators don't need to worry about the specifics of adding new
English strings and recompiling the game, and programmers don't need to
worry about the specifics of how to translate things. Now it's split
into README-translators.txt and README-programmers.txt.
