This has been asked several times now and the answer is a bit too lengthy for the FAQ page (though I can link from it). So let’s unroll that question!
Firstly, “finished” is a vague term when it comes to our development process. It can take several years of Alphas and Betas, progressively improving and polishing the game, steadily bringing it to the playable state before it meets our internal standard for being “finished”. Also, unlike big studios, we don’t have a pool of game developers that can be distributed among the projects, speeding up or slowing them down, to meet the deadlines – hence we don’t have them by design. And unlike any size studios we don’t have a solid 40h/week development timetable for anyone, so the development can be really slow at times. Since Knights Province development is a hobby project, that means that any kind of real-life issues can delay it (and sadly they do).
So we’ve established, that “finished” is rather vague term. Now let’s see about the rest of the question! Game localization itself is complex process, consisting of many interconnected parts:
- finding and maintaining contact with translators,
- communication about translation process quirks and features,
- freezing the games’ state for the translation phase,
- updating the game in case translated strings do not fit into designed space,
- testing the translations
- polishing and wrapping everything up for the release
From my previous experience, preparing a localized version usually takes around 2-3 weeks of full concentration if everything goes smooth (which it rarely does), and more than a few months in unlucky cases (if for example translator goes missing). Some locales are still incomplete as far as I remember. On the other hand, Knights Province is still in pre-Alpha stage, which means everything changes a lot, many text strings are being added and removed during a week. Translating those will be a waste of resources and significant slowdown the games development (if we to spend weeks/months just to keep the translations up to date with changes).
So for now many texts are simply hardcoded into the game in English, which is easiest and simplest for the development. Localization sub-engine is in place and supports Unicode and left-to-right writing, which means that majority of worlds languages can be implemented rather easily. When they will be implemented? – probably we will add them gradually after the game goes through several Alpha versions and takes a more solid shape.
TL;DR: Can’t say for sure.
nice!
Can’t wait to play this! Will be very fun 😀
Is it possible to make a trailer? So that we can know how the game will be?
There a lot of screenshots..I think they’ll describe you almost everything, that you’ll see at the pre-alpha stage.
Making a trailer is not a piece of cake 😉
I can do Dutch translations when you start localization
>supports Unicode and left-to-right writing
Did you mean right-to-left? It’s hard not to support left-to-right so I wondered 🙂
I meant that only LtR is supported. RtL is not. 🙂
Hello, I am Slovak and I can offer you little assistance with translating to my language. I have tried translating Mount & Blade to my language a few years ago, though there was Czech partly translated and never finished, I also quit working on it as it was huge struggle for one person and nobody seemed to care to have it after all when I asked on forums.
If your project does not include more text to be translated than Mount & Blade, I might be able to help you with it and effectively complete translation in reasonable time.