Localization: A Return

I am back from Dragon Con and ready to finally work on the game some more. I decided that it would be easier to start working on the actual internals for localization. This is going to take some effort! Luckily, I already laid some groundwork while I was away. 

I started by just working my way through the game interface stuff I'd already laid out. I've replaced all the static UI elements' text with the appropriate translation keys, referencing the spreadsheets I'd created. There's still so much more to do though. What I'm wanting to do is approach this in a structured manner to make sure that I don't miss anything. 

My approach is simple; I take any existing text in the game and add it to the appropriate spreadsheet and replace the text in the game with the corresponding key. Eventually, I should end up with a game that makes no sense because all the text is gone. Then I'll know it's time to actually set the localization settings in the project.

But getting there is going to be tough because there is so much text already in the game, and the amount will just keep growing. So, now is the perfect time to do all of this. So far, I think I have been able to get through all of the main stuff in the UI and such. I've still got so much more to do. I have to change the way I'm dealing with cutscenes and convert them to using a custom resources loaded in my data manager. Once that's one I need to use the localization stuff in there. And I've still got all the other data in my JSON files to localize.

So far it's a good start after a long time away. Still a lot to do on this one little piece and so many other pieces to work on! Wish me luck.