Hello guys !
Maybe it's time to try to summerize where we are for localisation of Daggerfall Unity.
In July 2020, through the new topic
Daggerfall Unity Localization Preview, Interkarma gave the first steps to generate the future localisation mods. Because, yes, the localisation shall be a mod and not only a set of external text files. Last week I decided to follow these steps in order to do what is described into Interkarma's topic and see if I will be able to produce the French localisation mod when everything will be ready. Let's say that it was not as straight as described into the topic, the process is not as easy at it seems.
First you must obtain on your computer a working Unity editor with the recommended version of Unity (2019.4.10). You'll have to take the time to struggle with the Unity Hub in order to acheave this. When you think it's done, by launching the editor you discover that you must have a valid licence of Unity in order for it to work. So, second step, you have to obtain a valid licence, to install it and to make it available for Unity Hub. Here again, not THAT evident to do: you have create an Unity account and all what come with this process, choose which licence, obtain the related file and install it. But okay, you will finally succeed with this step. Third, you must download the Daggerfall Unity code and put it somewhere into your computer. This is the easiest step, just take the link toward the right GitHub into Interkarma's topic and download the archive by clicking on the big green button Code, then decompress it somewhere. I decided to put all my trials the same place, a folder
D:\Unity in which I have a folder with the sources
D:\Unity\daggerfall-unity-0.11.0-beta and besides there will be the folder to store the build of the game
D:\Unity\Daggerfall-Build.
Because, yes, even before thinking to prepare the localisation, the next step consists to be able to generate a working build of the game. So you launch the editor, Unity Hub opens, you click on the project
daggerfall-unity-0.11.0-beta, the editor is ready. How to build ? No Build button... Select the entry
File in the menu bar, select
Build settings..., the windows
Build Settings appear, check the parameters, clic on
Build and Run, choose the folder where the build will be generated (D:\Unity\Daggerfall-Build), look at the build been constructed and finally Dggerfall Unity opens, YOUR very own DFU generated by yourself! Once there, you feel you have accomplished something.
Then comes the time to follow the specific instructions given by Interkarma into his file
Localization Tutorial 1 - Creating a Translation Mod. The explanations given into this document are very clear, to follow them is easy... but when you comes to the end, you realize that the process is not complete:
In the next tutorial, we’ll look at importing default text to our empty tables, and using legacy translated TEXT.RSC files with character remappings.
OK, the structures are ready but they are void and so, useless. Moreover, when you regenerate a build following what you've just done, the game now displays an unfinite list of "LocaleText-NotFound" and the game is not anymore playable. Huh, not what expected...
So, let's summerize. If you never installed Unity 2019.4.10 and its editor before, it will take you one or two hours of careful efforts to obtain the possibility to generate by yourself a working build of DFU, but you should achieve this goal. Then you have to stop because, for the moment, the localisation process does not permit to generate a single table structure with texts in another language and moreover, if you follow Interkarma's document, you won't be able anymore to build a working DFU without localisation errors. I suppose that we have to change some options in the editor to forbid the generation of the void tables but we don't know how, and moreover I did not see in the game a way to indicate what language we would like to use, so it is impossible to select English to go back to a game in English without localisation errors.
This is where we are today. I perfectly understand that Interkarma has more important things to do and that the localisation will have to wait another set of months. It's just that we don't know when all this could be done and, besides from this, it would be nice if people used with the Unity Editor could tell to those like me who followed Tutorial 1 how it would be possible to come back to a working build without the
LocaleText-NotFound errors.
Talking about the build process, there is into the Build Settings window of the Unity Editor an option called "Create Visual Studio Solution". If you select this option and build into another folder, let's say
D:\Unity\Daggerfall-Build-VS, you will find into this folder a file "Daggerfall Unity.sln" that will permit you to open the project with Visual Studio 2019. This is what I did too and then you can launch the game with the usual VS way. This may be more convenient for those used to Visual Studio but here also the result is plaeged with all the LocaleText-NotFound errors and no apparent way to come back to a pure English game. Side question is: is there a special interest to open the VS project compared to stay into the Unity Editor world?
My goal with this long post was to share the experience I had to try to begin to localise DFU, but also to ask: do you need help? Is there something we can do to accelerate or do only the usual development team that is perfectly used with the game structure and tables is capable to end the process? Is it possible at least to have soon the end of the tutorial with TEXT.RSC so that we can generate a mod partially in a foreign language? How to switch into the Unity Editor between a localised and a non-localised build?
Thanks for reading.