Dirk dashing for non-english speaking childs

[Stormi]

Hi Troy,

As you already know I loved Dirk Dashing (and I'm eager to test/buy the sequel as soon as it is available).

However, despite this I haven't offered the game to my youngest sister or my godson, because they can't read english. I know there's not much text in the the game, but I would like them to be autonomous when they play the game.

Do you plan to add an internationalization layer to dirk dashing 2 ? Seen from the outside, it doesn't look like a enormous amount of work, but I may underestimate it . All the same, if you need some help for French translation
(for dirk dashing 1 I know it's now late, but if you add someday this layer to your existing games I could probably help to translate it too).

Best regards

Samuel Verschelde (Stormi)

[TroyHepfner]

Hi Samuel,

Internationalization is something I would eventually like to do. Right now, my homegrown game engine only supports English/ASCII. Updating the engine to use Unicode won't be difficult (I've worked with Unicode for 10 years at my other part-time job), just time-consuming. Plus, once the engine supports it, then I have to go and update each individual game.

I probably won't be doing this before Dirk Dashing 2 is done. I need to finish DD2 so I can eat this year.

However, the good news with Dirk and with Dirk 2 is that most of the text is pre-rendered. It would be very easy to update the graphics to erase the English text and replace it with another language. The only part of the game that would not be internationalized would be the high score table and save game slot names - the player would still have to type in English/ASCII.

If you would like to try translating Dirk Dashing 1, I can get you started. Because you bought the game, you already have the graphic files - I can give you a list of all the files that need to be translated. E-mail me at info@mygamecompany.com and we can work out the details.

[miesiu]

@TroyHepfner:

I also have bought game and I see the gfx files with text. Maybe will be possible to keep texts in txt file and add font to game?

It will be easier to people like me - I am not Gimp specialist and it is very hard for me to make new picture. Or maybe be acceptable by you to send the only translated texts eg inside emails?

[TroyHepfner]

Hi miesiu,

That is my plan - to properly internationalize my game engine, which would include extracting the text out into a separate file so it can be translated. I would like to do that eventually, but there are several higher-priority items on my to-do list that I must finish first (like finishing Dirk Dashing 2).

I don't really have time to generate the translated graphics myself, so if you sent me the translations, I wouldn't be able to do anything with them. However, if someone would like to volunteer to do the graphics part of it, I would be happy to point you both to the list of all the files that need translating. You could collaborate together, and then send me the results, and I could bundle them into the game.

[miesiu]

... if someone would like to volunteer to do the graphics part of it ...

.
Many time - maybe even 99% the translated text need less or more place. What about if picture will be bigger? Will this not problem?

[TroyHepfner]

That's true. However, you can always adjust the font size to make it a bit smaller so the text will fit in most cases. Again, this isn't the best solution, but it's doable with the current state of the game engine.

[miesiu]

Maybe did you do any action for possibilities to replace english text to other only using plain text file?

[TroyHepfner]

Not yet. The upcoming Dirk Dashing: Secret Agent! Special Edition will be using the engine from Dirk 2, which doesn't support internationalization yet.

However, the good news is that this does take a small step closer to that. Once Dirk 1 is updated, all of my games will be using the same up-to-date version of the underlying engine. Right now, Dirk 1 is using an older copy of the engine. All of my other games point to a common directory where the up-to-date engine resides. When I'm done, Dirk 1 will also be pointing toward that directory, instead of having its own copy of the code. That's one of my internal goals of this porting project - to get better organized. I want to do that before I make any drastic changes to the engine.