JSON Translations.

[nkrapivin]

It's similar to a thing I've wrote for ASTRA-256.

Also I've enabled Fast Collision System in Android config because it's using R-Trees and not just looping through all instances which helps performance on mobile.

Oh and OUYA is dead so I disabled OUYA packaging.

[AlexKhayrullin]

This is something I was planning on working on after the 1.0 version is done, it has been a bit low-priority. Thanks for the effort :) .

Three comments:

• Something I did in the Java library and wanted to use it the game itself (but feel free to disagree with this approach) is to use strings themselves as translation keys with optional prefixes. For instance, if I have two keys "Key A" and "::android::Key A", they can be translated differently, but if no translation exists for these keys, the prefix surrounded with "::" is stripped, and therefore they both appear as "Key A", which is still presentable. Normally, this is not something that should be executed every step (only on object creation and such) , so I thought I could afford doing this kind of stuff. Again, feel free to disagree with this approach, this is something inspired by a project I do as a job.
• All of the translation keys are not implemented as such yet, see #65 (but judging from the thumbs-up, I assume you already have :) )
• Something that I really want to try out, but don't know how to do yet, is maybe allowing translators to swap-in new fonts or somehow add new characters to existing fonts. For instance, if I want to translate the game into the three other languages I speak, which are French, Russian and Ukrainian, I'd like to be able to import font "add-ons" with accented and/or Cyrillic letters. The alternative would be to do what I do with my other projects, just cover the characters from the CP-1251 and CP-1252 codepages in standard fonts and be done with it, but that would be uncool for a wannabe Japanese translator. That's a subject I want to tackle after 1.0.

[nkrapivin]

Look at the TODO in objResources, I am planning on implementing that.

Also GameMaker: Studio supports unicode and as such Russian/Ukrainian/Whatever just fine, Надо просто указать в настройках шрифта алфавит: АаБбВвГгДдЕеЁеЖжЗзИиЙйКкЛлМмНнОоПпРрСсТтУуФфХхЦцЧчШшЩщЪъЫыЬьЭэЮюЯя For Russian. :)

[AlexKhayrullin]

That, I know ;) . I've done it before (https://twitter.com/AlexKhayrullin/status/762023868840239104 , oh the memories :) ).

I just thought I'd somehow allow to create translations without the need to download the source and use GameMaker Studio (because while the project is open source, GM:S is not, on top of being discontinued and no longer available for purchase) , kinda allow to create redistributable language packs which would include a JSON and PNG files with missing characters and another file that would explain what characters they match with.

[nkrapivin]

how 2 external fonts: Sprarr[1337] = sprite_add("somefont.png", amount_of_glyphs, false, false, 0, 0); Fontarr[1337] = font_add_sprite_ext(Sprarr[1337], "АаБбВвГг........", false, sep_width);

Done.

[nkrapivin]

You just gotta make the font a wide png file with all frames in one row.

[AlexKhayrullin]

Except that requires including the original font as well, that's what I was having a problem with. But hey, if there's no choice, there's no choice :) .

[nkrapivin]

You can include russian letters only, just don't use any English characters in the translation.

[nkrapivin]

Actually you can try sprite_add_from_surface, it can append subimages to sprites...

[nkrapivin]

Let me implement that.

[AlexKhayrullin]

I wouldn't like not being able to use English letters, if only because of some screens like the disclaimer that points to the Github repository, or the key/gamepad mapping screen, need latin letters.

The alternative would be to replace them systematically and display stuff like "гитхаб.ком/овербаунд/СоникТаймТвистед", and that just screams "90s pirate translation" :)

[nkrapivin]

соник тайм твистед перевод от фаргуса скачать бесплатно

Fair, but the project file is available to everyone anyway, so bundling the original font is not an issue.

I'll try sprite_add_from_surface

[AlexKhayrullin]

Yes, you're right. So if you don't manage to do this with sprite_add_from_surface, then no big deal, fonts will just need to include the original letters as well, and that will be it.

[nkrapivin]

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for A-key Key
for object obj_test:

sprite_add_from_surface() requires the destination sprite to have been duplicated
 at gml_Object_obj_test_KeyPressed_A_1 (line 15) -     sprite_add_from_surface(sprite_index, _surf, i * _lettersw, 0, _lettersw, sprite_get_height(_spr), false, false);
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Object_obj_test_KeyPressed_A_1 (line 15)

ah, GameMaker requires the sprite to be duplicated, that would've been okay if not one weird issue. when you call sprite_add or any function that loads an image as a sprite or duplicates it into memory, instead of putting all frames on a single texture page, it will make a new texture page for each frame.

even if you call sprite_replace and you replace some sprite to a copy of it (width/height/amount of frames are equal), it will still make new texture pages for each frame..........................................

this is very very very inefficient especially on mobile.

[nkrapivin]

the code is something like this:

var _f = "spr_appendtemp_strip4.png";

sprite_index = sprite_duplicate(sprite_index); // <-- this line.

// load image strip as a one big wide sprite.
var _spr = sprite_add(_f, 1, false, false, 0, 0);

// make a surface of the exact same size.
var _surf = surface_create(sprite_get_width(_spr), sprite_get_height(_spr));

// draw the sprite on that surface.
surface_set_target(_surf);
draw_clear_alpha(c_black, 0);
draw_sprite(_spr, 0, 0, 0);
surface_reset_target();

var _letters = 4; // actual amount of letters. this is the thing you need to configure.
var _lettersw = sprite_get_width(_spr) / _letters; // width of one letter.
var _h = sprite_get_height(_spr);

sprite_delete(_spr); // we don't need the sprite anymore.

for (var i = 0; i < _letters; i++) {
    sprite_add_from_surface(sprite_index, _surf, i * _lettersw, 0, _lettersw, _h, false, false);
}

surface_free(_surf);

// we're done here.

but if you look at the debugger and then open Surfaces/Textures you can see that for each new appended frame GameMaker made a new page.

[AlexKhayrullin]

OK, if it's inefficient, then no big deal, we'll make the translators duplicate the fonts in their entirety.

Thanks a lot!

[nkrapivin]

It would've been better if STT fonts were in TTF. GameMaker pre-renders all TTF glyphs onto a single page.

[nkrapivin]

still waiting for a russian font...

[AlexKhayrullin]

Honestly, I'd rather leave them as sprites. Editing sprites is much more accessible than editing TTF fonts.

Just a warning if you're starting work on a Cyrillic font: the basic font as it is right now is incomplete (I want to at least cover the entirety of the ASCII set) , and there is another font very similar to it, but with letters slightly reduced named sprFontHudMin, which I then want to edit to include the same characters, it is used in menus on out-of-focus items.

[nkrapivin]

Yeah I'd leave them as sprites too...

[AlexKhayrullin]

I didn't exactly pay attention to it before merging (my bad, had just woken up ^^, and it's easy to miss) , but any reasons why you bumped up Android SDK versions?