Multilanguage script petition for RMXP

[kyonides]

In most cases you wouldn't need to do it except for terms like steps and others that aren't included in the database options. In order to effectively solve this issue, you would just need to make a single TXT file where you could place every term and their translations in a single line separated by a comma or a dot... Mmm, the comma would be your best option. Then someone could make a module where this single file would be read and get every single term and assign it to a specific object like an array or a hash or a class, I don't know, and then the default and even some custom scripts could get the info from it by checking a game variable's value, I'd recommend a numeric value (an integer) equal or greater than 1000 to make sure that there would be no way that it could get confused or be reused for a different purpose without causing an obvious error that could alert you about any unintentional (value) changes. If there are no mistakes found while beta testing your game, you could check that game variable value by pressing F9 button and searching for that specific variable. Whenever you find a 1000 it means that the language chosen should be, eh, English, 2000 would mean the player wants to read everything in Spanish and so on.

Mmm, now that I was thinking a little bit more about the dialogs language settings, you could still do the same as you'd do with the database, copy the map and map info data, paste it somewhere else, translate it and then let a script search for the specific language data file the same way it'd do it with the other files I mentioned yesterday.

I'm really convinced that the need to create too many TXT files and convert their contents would be reduced to the very minimum because a single found would be needed for all those things that could not be either changed directly in the events or in the database.

I know, that might make your game package get some additional 1 or 2 MB of data but no one would be capable of editing any TXT file and other resources (like images and audio files) would still required more available space on the player's hard disk than the whole data files size multiplied by 10 or 20 or even 30.

I guess I ingested too much caffeine, again...

EDIT

Wait, it's even easier that I have foreseen as of yesterday. Just make a copy of your Data folder, paste it right there. The system will tell you there's another folder with the same name or it'll just rename it automatically, ie. Copy of Data. Rename it manually so it says something like DataESP, do NOT rename any of the files stored inside that folder. A script should care about the rest by selecting a folder depending on the user preferences and for any scripter the rest of the job would be some sort of piece of cake.

The only thing is that the translations should be the very last step of your game development. You may ask why should it be like that. Well, unless you don't mind having to copy the Data folder and its contents in their original version and having to translate just everything once again from the very beginning, that would be the best thing to do to avoid wasting time whenever you make an update to the main language version of your game.