Multi lingual

[Dayo]

So I’ve been asked about this a lot and my usual respond it to run away and pretend it doesn’t exist lol

in GL 2.6 I want to start to lay the groundwork’s for multi lingual support, there are two ways to do this a easy way and a pain in the ass way lol 

Easy way = single translation file, you can code the game using a single language but to change it from one to another would be pretty easy. This is easier as the database driven content would just be added to match the language of the game

pain in the ass way = true multi lingual support where you can make your game using multiple languages and the user can select a language or have it auto detected. There would have to me loads of edits especially to the database to support true multi lingual support.

 

what are peoples thoughts on this?

Also I forgot to add games are not like a shop where there is no p2p interaction so we need to think how that works too 

[Canjucks]

I guess the easy way.  Is it just as accurate as the pain in the ass way?

[Dayo]

The output on the page would be the same, just in one the output is always the same and in the other the user can select a language 

[SRB]

The "easy" option isn't therefore multi-lingual, is it?

If the output is always the same, unless I am mis-reading, doesn't that just mean it is a localised version to a region?

The switching of language is what makes it multi-lingual, surely?

[ags_cs4]

I will say it was hard to make the multi lang of gl as there was 2 ways i wanted to go one with file based or database way

File based (json files for fast access) is easy check each module if have lang file and load it and grab the value u want to translate

 

The database is little bad but im planing to go this route as i need easy way to add new translate value but it will be little bit heavy on the database but i have this idea to regularly cache the values in json file to by pass that with this

 

 

 

[Dayo]

1 hour ago, ags_cs4 said:

I will say it was hard to make the multi lang of gl as there was 2 ways i wanted to go one with file based or database way

File based (json files for fast access) is easy check each module if have lang file and load it and grab the value u want to translate

 

The database is little bad but im planing to go this route as i need easy way to add new translate value but it will be little bit heavy on the database but i have this idea to regularly cache the values in json file to by pass that with this

 

 

 

Maybe look into ACPu caching, in the next version of GL it was my plan to implement it. I just need to do some comparability checks but looks like it should be ok

[Sim]

Isn't there a Google API to use to translate?  Code it and have offenders register an API key for there game? Would be much easier for have owners imo

[ags_cs4]

5 hours ago, Sim said:

Isn't there a Google API to use to translate?  Code it and have offenders register an API key for there game? Would be much easier for have owners imo

But are any one ready to pay up the api fees? No that's why we use built-in translate system

Its actually easy thing to do just its boring to convert all your text to variables

On 12/18/2021 at 10:09 AM, Dayo said:

Maybe look into ACPu caching, in the next version of GL it was my plan to implement it. I just need to do some comparability checks but looks like it should be ok

Will be looking forward to that , im aways this week when im back home i will zhow you how i did it maybe we can use it on the next release

[Dayo]

5 hours ago, Sim said:

Isn't there a Google API to use to translate?  Code it and have offenders register an API key for there game? Would be much easier for have owners imo

As @ags_cs4 said about the API fees, for a large scale game it can get quite expensive, its not like a generic website where you get maybe 10-20 clicks before the user has what they want. In a game a user can do 20-30 page clicks a minute. Last year we has a game with 300+ active users and that had about 11,000,000 page impressions a day ... that would be hela costly.

Plus you have to account for the added delay in sending your content to google, have it translates and then sent back, again for games like this the overhead would be far too much.

On 12/18/2021 at 2:36 AM, SRB said:

The "easy" option isn't therefore multi-lingual, is it?

If the output is always the same, unless I am mis-reading, doesn't that just mean it is a localised version to a region?

The switching of language is what makes it multi-lingual, surely?

You are correct that the site wouldn't be multi lingual, but the core engine could be. You could decide to download the core along with the german translations and have a german game running in no time at all. It also adds the possibility of having a way to dynamically select the language file but then you have the issue with database/user driven content going forward.

[URBANZ]

While this might be true with Google APIs it can be costly but there are ways to reduce this cost or have free translation due to their free plans, for example.

my game currently translates all static strings in files for each module. then dynamic content that comes from db is all run through google cloud but those strings are also stored so they dont have to be fetched multiple times, if a post is edited like in forums i call a update language function that checks the string and restores just that string.

i find this way much easier on resources and that way dont matter if you have millions of requests per day it would use the strings already stored.

this is the way i would recommend tbh as either way you would need to use some kind of translation service for dynamic content.

 

[Sim]

You said it better then I could have @URBANZ that's why I didn't say anything about saving the translations.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Sim