Languages

Français · Type: reference · Audience: player · Context: player's browser · Status: ready · Applies from: 4.4.0

Which language a quest'n'click game shows, how to change it, and what happens to voices and missing translations. True from 4.4.0, when a translation's own voice clips started shipping with the game; the rest is older.

Which language the game starts in

A game is written in one language (its base) and may ship translations. When a page opens, the game picks, in order:

1. the ?lang= of the address (https://…/?lang=fr), when the link carries one;
2. the language you chose earlier in the settings, remembered in this browser (local storage key <game>.lang);
3. your browser's language, when the game ships a translation for it (a browser in fr-CA gets fr);
4. otherwise the game's base language.

The sample game, The Pantry Key, is written in English and ships French.

Changing it

Pause menu › Settings › Language: each tap moves to the next language the game ships and reloads the page in it, on the title screen: Continue resumes your game from the autosave. The row exists only in a game with the settings menu and more than one language. Without it, a link with ?lang= still works.

Voices

A game may have recorded voices, and per language:

• in a language with its own recordings, the lines play those clips; a line that has no clip in that language is shown without a voice;
• in a language without recordings of its own, the lines play the base language's clips, so you may read French and hear English;
• a game with a hero chosen at New Game (since 4.3.0) may have a clip per hero for the lines that change with the hero.

The voice volume is a setting of its own. Before 4.4.0, a translation's clips were not shipped with the built game, so a translated page played no voice; 4.4.0 fixed it.

A missing translation

A text the translation does not cover is shown in the game's base language. The engine's own interface texts (menu rows, the update banner) that a game does not translate are shown in English. Authors find both before release: npm run i18n -- status lists them, and the French end-to-end run fails on any visible English default (see Translations).

Limit · no-in-game-translation-of-voices The engine never translates or synthesises speech: a voice exists only where someone recorded it. It sets no right-to-left text direction, and no right-to-left language has been tried.

Related

• Settings, Player troubleshooting.
• For authors: Translations, Voices.
• The code: src/engine/boot.ts (pickLanguage, the voices of the chosen language), src/engine/core/voice-key.ts.

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