Could we have an option in the game menu to switch languages?
I dont even remember how I managed to get Frogatto 1.3 to switch to Scottish Gaelic, since the .bat file I used for 1.1 didn’t work. I guess it is working now because I managed to set my system locale to [tt]gd[/tt]. This is too complicated for the average user though. Moreover, many families will have shared computers where not everybody speaks Gaelic, so depending on the locale isn’t really a good choice for them.
We really need to get around to doing this :-
I’m actually messing around with it myself right now, but I don’t really know my C++ stuff; I’ll probably at least be bugging someone about any issues I encounter, unless someone else takes on the job.
Well…
More so than I had feared, this is just way beyond my current ability. 
So… can someone else work on this?
If we’re low on manpower to do this, I believe that making a build with the “gd” locale hardcoded in src/i18n.cpp:77 wouldn’t be too unreasonable.
I spent some hours fiddling with it and what I have so far is:
Todo:
layout improvement
get the button to go through the languages when clicking on it
fetching the button font for non-latin languages when displaying language names
writing the selected locale to [tt]preferences.cfg[/tt]
getting the selected locale from [tt]preferences.cfg[/tt]. If empty, write the locale that’s gotten by the currently implemented system
Compiled and tested on Ubuntu virtual machine.
frogatto - changed files.zip (5.7 KB)
Hmm, I think krista had started to work on this; you’ll want to wait for her input.
Having a languages.cfg file holding the translations you can currently select is a good idea; much better than trying to get smart and read the available translation folders, as that’d put very incomplete translations in the list as well.
Here’s the relevant discussion on IRC (#frogatto at irc.freenode.net if you want to join in; if you don’t have an IRC client, use webchat.freenode.net)
[code]<Krista^> [03:44:56] marcavis: can you make me a list of languages we want in the dialog, please.
[03:45:13] Awesome! uh…
<Krista^> [03:46:17] And ideally what code they use.
[03:47:23] Krista^, Fran?ais fr, G?idhlig gd, Deutsch de, Italiano it, Espa?ol es, Portugu?s Brasileiro pt_BR
<Krista^> [03:47:53] Hmmm.
<Krista^> [03:48:32] Ideally we want those all to be translatable strings
<Krista^> [03:48:52] I.think
[03:49:25] Actually we don’t - they’re for the benefit of the foreign players, so they want to be able to recognize their language name at all times;
<Krista^> [03:49:51] Anyway I’m going to stick them all in a .cfg file we load in.
[03:50:12] say, I shouldn’t get into a state where I’ve clicked Russian (not yet 100%, so don’t add it yet) and we can’t find our language anymore at a glance
<Krista^> [03:50:45] Okay. Point taken.
<Krista^> [03:51:27] Anyway it’ll be easier to manage in a .cfg file we load.
[03:51:44] Oh yeah, that sounds good
<Krista^> [03:54:22] We could just enumerate directories, but we may want to be more selective for incomplete translations
[03:56:41] Oh yes, we really will be. I had seen a german let’s play once… It was version 1.1.1 I think. The text was like half-german, that was pretty disheartening.
<Krista^> [03:59:34] The most technical challenge is working out how to render multiple graphical fonts.
[04:01:08] Hmm, that does sound tricky… None of these languages happen to use a different font, but yeah, soon that issue will pop up
[04:02:17] Jetrel: Cute grumpy mushroom.
[04:02:49] DDR: gotta make his cap-throw animation and projectile later, and he’s ready to go.
[04:03:05] … a fungal Oddjob.
[04:03:44] Jetrel, bonus points if it has a head with balding spots under the cap…? xD Hmm, dunno.
[04:04:28] Probably weird and uncanny.
[04:04:40] hehehe
[04:18:48] Chinese and Japanese are the only languages that use different graphical fonts right?
[04:19:22] hm, there’s cyrillic
[04:19:36] it’s in the same font, though.
Thanks!
I’ll stop fiddling until I hear back. I don’t have a lot of time, so if somebody else is taking this on, brilliant! In any case, I have learned a bit of C++ 
If you wish to use part of my code, I have commented all the lines I have touched with “language selection.”
My take on the flag idea:
Yes, the Scottish Flag is blue with a white St. Andrew’s cross. There is one problem with the flag idea though: Most countries are multilingual! E.g. How would you separate Canadian French from Canadian English or Scottish Gaelic from Scots? Also, do all First Nations have their own flag? I think this would be really messy in African countries as well, should we one day attract African localizers.
So, I think using the operating system’s locale until a language is manually selected should do the trick 
Recently hagabaka has added a Language… dialog, we should be good to go in time for 1.3.
Thank you for the code you posted GunChleoc. It gave me an idea of where to start, and I used your languages.cfg file.
I’ve seen from the new strings in Transifex that you’re working on this, thank you! 
Do you plan to have this available for 1.3 when it’s done? This would relly make my day 
Did you also implement a language menu for the mobile versions, e.g. for iPhone? I can’t test this myself, because my phone doesn’t have enough memory. I’m asking because we might have a locale problem again. On the iPhone they probably don’t even allow people to set their locale to a minority language.