Since I haven’t found any thread or card on this topic, I’d like to suggest the implementation of a localization system in the game, so multiple languages are supported.
There’s a great tutorial on how to implement one very easily, and I’ve actually tried it in my own project and it works:
This is a good way to show that this is a “worldwide” project and, therefore, it supports other languages and not only English.
Since I am from Portugal, I can provide localization in Portuguese.
Translators from other languages are welcome to provide their own localization.
Yes, that’s the idea. We would like to avoid Preview packages for now, but the localisation package is close to being released, so we’ll see. Let me ask!
Dapper Dino actually has a tutorial on how to implement the official Localization System, but apparently it is only available in Unity 2020.2 or later.
Well, I did put this in the public domain, it’s simple and quite flexible. It allows to localize text (including TextMesh Pro) and images: GitHub - DFTGames/UnityLocalization
I like the idea, but ImHo we should stick to written dialogue. You being a sound designer means you probabily know how to get good audio quality and stuff, and that’s good, but I’m afraid it isn’t enough. Unless you and your friends are all good actors (which could be, I’m not assuming anything) the performance will likely be pretty bad, and bad acting is far worse than no acting at all. And it’s no just a matter of performing, but also of chosing the right voices for the characters (also not as easy as it sounds).
And assuming that we can do all this, that’s just ONE language. Repeat for how many languages we want to translate the game into.
Again, feel free to disagree with me on this, but I don’t think we should take this path. Written text is a medium just as valid as voiced dialogue, at least for the scope of this game (if we wante to portray powerful emotions like regret or love a good acting choice might make the difference, but I don’t think that this is the case). I think that just some “Hey” 's and “Hi” 's when approaching or leaving the characters like in BoTW will do
I’d also love to see the game support multiple languages, and I’ll most likely offer help later (unless the amount of text becomes unreasonable). I’d be careful about voice acting, too; unless it’s planned better than ‘I could gather some friends’ and it’s made sure the voices really fit the characters, just like NicknEmart said. If that can’t be done, no voice acting is absolutely fine, too.
About this; it’s quite common to voice only the “main” one or two languages, and have subtitles available for the rest, so this specifically wouldn’t be a big issue.
I’ve wrote earlier a localization system where we were able to write all the strings in a google spread sheet and exported it as csv. Then put the csv as a resource in Unity and the system was parsing it. By attaching a component to each Text Control and assigning the specific key, the text was then replaced by value of the selected language.
This is maybe something i can offer to contribute
