Subtitles and localisation

[brisck1]

So I to make sure that my next project is accessible in different languages and Im wondering how to approach this with Playmaker, especially in regards to audio with subtitles/captions and GUI text?

Has anyone here managed to do subtitles with Playmaker?

[brisck1]

So I found this after some digging through the Asset Store:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3951

Has anyone worked with this before? It comes with some Playmaker actions which is good, but it hasn't been updated in nearly a year so I'm'm a little cautious as to whether I should take the plunge

[Lane]

You could always contact the developer and ask them directly, most are generally very forthcoming with additional details and support.

I haven't done this myself, but I would assume you would have to drive everything with language databases, let the user choose the language and fill that db name as the db that the gui and subtitles would use when populating text.

But again you'd probably be best off contacting the author especially since he has custom Actions included in the kit he probably knows a great workflow to get localization in your product.

[brisck1]

Yeah, there are a number of localisation plugins available that look fairly straightforward, such as M2H's Localization Package (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/984) where you fill out spreadsheets with translated text and call them with an string ID, but I have no idea how I'd make Playmaker interact with the script in order to do that, same goes for the many subtitle plugins available.

It looks like I'm the first person to do any localisation and subtitles with Playmaker so far (judging by the lack of search results) so I will try to keep this thread updated with any progress I make.

Right now I'm going to try this: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3951

As it includes support for voice-over subtitles and has Playmaker support (Hopefully) - it's a shame it doesn't look as straightforward to use as the others though, but I will report back on that.

[brisck1]

Ugg so far the Localization plugin is horrible, the Playmaker plugins only cover basic GUI functions and dont even allow the positioning of text or buttons - no subtitle or voice over controls - terrible!

I'm going to contact the seller about this and see what can be done. It's really not intuitive to use either 

[Mayhem]

I don't know if this is the best method, to do, but it works for me quite well:

- Every label (a word, a sentence) has a seperate FSM for the Language-Settings
- these FSMs have different local string-variables for each label
- with a Global Event in these FSMs "GERMAN LANGUAGE" or "ENGLISH LANGUAGE" (which is fired when the "Change Language"-Button in the Options is pressed) the particular Global-Event-State is active and sets the string-variable (I'm using the Set Property-Action to access the NGUI-text property of labels)

Works quite well. The only thing one has to consider is the different length of some words in different languages, so sometimes some words/sentences don't fit exactly, so you have to test them out and configure some settings like Position/Rotation/Scale.

[brisck1]

Hi Mayhem,

Thanks for the suggestion! I actually considered something similar early on, but with the project I'm working on right now I have hundreds of lines of dialogue and many different languages which need to be supported, so the work involved would get out of hand fast with that approach. Ideally I need something that can read a spreadsheet or spreadsheets with all the translations on, similar to M2H's Localization Package for easy editing and translating.

[brisck1]

Does anyone know if it's possible for Playmaker to read xml or CSV files? Im wondering if it's possible/better to try and grab a string and some properties from an external file or something.

Feeling quite hopeless with this now, I was hoping to avoid having to contract in a coder but it's looking almost inevitable at the moment. It's hard to believe nobody else has run into this problem yet

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 Sorry for not jumping in earlier.

 Indeed, you are not alone pm me, and I can put you in contact with a project that I helped with doing just this.

now, as far as xml: indeed you can with my XmlMaker ( used on the above project)

https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W1133

csv: I worked on a csv to xml parser as well, but nothing I can distribute, so yes, that would need some work to become usable outside experimentation.

 but, I strongly recommand using xml, it's several order of magnitude more flexible and readable, and you it can evolved gracefully, by adding new attributes etc etc.

bye,

 Jean