ITranslatable and Scriptable Objects

Phantasie

Hi

Should strings inside scriptable objects be gathered properly for translations?

Test case:

• The SO implements ITranslatable and has a single string variable to test.
• The string in the SO is set to some text (not empty)
• The player prefab has a reference to the SO
• To be safe, I've placed an instance of the prefab in the scene and saved
• Filters set to include everything (Type = Custom/All, Scene: Any, Text: All)
• This exact copy paste code works fine in a mono behaviour (string is listed under custom).

When gathering text the string isnt listed after Gathering text (reset didnt help) with Custom filter (or any filter for that matter).

            [SerializeField]
            private string parameterText = "My Test String";
            private int parameterLineID = -1;

            public string GetTranslatableString(int index)
            {
                return parameterText;
            }

            public int GetTranslationID(int index)
            {
                return parameterLineID;
            }

    #if UNITY_EDITOR

            public void UpdateTranslatableString(int index, string updatedText)
            {
                parameterText = updatedText;
            }

            public int GetNumTranslatables()
            {
                return 1;
            }

            public bool CanTranslate(int index)
            {
                return !string.IsNullOrEmpty(parameterText);
            }

            public bool HasExistingTranslation(int index)
            {
                return (parameterLineID >= 0);
            }

            public void SetTranslationID(int index, int lineID)
            {
                parameterLineID = lineID;
            }

            public string GetOwner(int index)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            public bool OwnerIsPlayer(int index)
            {
                return false;
            }

            public AC_TextType GetTranslationType(int index)
            {
                return AC_TextType.Custom;
            }
    #endif

ChrisIceBox

How are the Player and the SO linked?

Custom ITranslatable implementations currently need to be a MonoBehaviour inside a scene, or an Action, for them to be automatically detected.

What you could do is have a separate ITranslatable script in the scene that passes its implmemtation values to the SO's, i.e:

public void SetTranslationID(int index, int lineID)
{
    mySO.parameterLineID = lineID;
}

I will, however, see if an ITranslatableReferencer or some such is possible, to allow for ITranslatables to be detected elsewhere.

Phantasie

The player has a direct private reference to the SO.
It's marked with the Serialize field attribute.

I can easily look to see how the speech manager gathers references, I just didn't go down that rabbit hole.

Tbh - while I love AC as a whole - I do find code/script localization to be cumbersome at first glance (granted I haven't looked tonight into it). Implementing an interface with multiple methods to essentially do a lookup for one string is alot.

I'm nearly all games I've worked on strings come from a CSV that has KVPs of string Id and value. There is a csv per language.vslues can contain escape sequences for substitution. Ie

$HumanRaceID, Human

Lookups are done at runtime to convert string Id to localized value, ie

cout << Localization.Translate("$HumanRaceID);// Human if English language

I understand you need to make AC non programmer friendly, though.

I think I might just have a second CSV lookup for script strings that aren't directly used by AC and hoo into its language changed evens as needed.

ChrisIceBox

Noted, thank you.

I will introduce ITranslatableReferencer in the next update. It'll be a simple one-function interface that you can implement in your Player script to inform AC of the link to the ITranslatable field:

public ITranslatable[] GetTranslatables()
{
    return new ITranslatable[] { myTranslatable };
}

Phantasie

Nice!