Suggestion: Languages on game page

Sinitrena · Tue 01/05/2018 18:27:54

This thread got me thinking that there is absoluetly no way to tell what languages/translations are available for games, unless it's mentioned in the descriptions. It would be really great if this could be added at some point - on the games' pages as icons maybe and as a search function.

cat · Tue 01/05/2018 20:29:55

+1 (I also wanted to suggest this when I saw the thread)

Monsieur OUXX · Wed 02/05/2018 14:58:13

+1

selmiak · Sat 05/05/2018 08:13:45

+1

AGA · Sat 05/05/2018 10:14:31

Sure, why not. In the Next Versionâ,,¢.

selmiak · Sat 05/05/2018 11:33:42

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/flags/
these are free to use, no attribution needed, used by many, already there, no need to make them in a forum contest or so.

I'd display these flags on the game page, on the game author side, I don't know if it is needed to display and load the icons, or just have some 2-3 letters for every language and display the full language name on mouseover or so.

For the usability we should make a poll or just scan through the database and check for the most used languages for translations, then offer these languages clickable with a checkbox on the "add new game" page, like list the 5-10 most used languages, which are probably german, french, italian, spanish, russian and some, then have all the rest hidden and revealed by some extra click just to not clutter up the add game form.

cat · Sat 05/05/2018 11:54:51

I'd prefer text over flags, since languages and countries not necessarily match.
I think the most important think is searching for languages. This could be easily done by adding one multiline field to the game page (just like authors) and providing an additional search for it.

selmiak · Sun 06/05/2018 10:07:59

Searching for games with a version in one specific language is a must have

but I don't get what you mean with text over flags, what should that text say instead of a flag representing a country and the common language spoken there that everyone knows about?
What I fear'is that it will be hard to decide of we use the uk or the us flag for english language...

AGA · Sun 06/05/2018 10:59:56

I think cat's point is, what about countries with multiple common or official languages? Switzerland, for instance, has four. South Africa has eleven. Even tiny Wales has two... How are we to decide which languages most represent a country?

I'm planning on adding some sort of tag cloud thing to pages going forward, to allow people to add way more relevant custom info to their pages. Maybe one generic one, or several different ones with one being languages.

selmiak · Mon 07/05/2018 00:02:48

Quote from: AGA on Sun 06/05/2018 10:59:56
I think cat's point is, what about countries with multiple common or official languages? Switzerland, for instance, has four. South Africa has eleven. Even tiny Wales has two... How are we to decide which languages most represent a country?

I still don't get the point. If you are from switzerland and want to play a game in french you search for a french translation (reperesented by a french flag), if you want to play a game in german you search for a german translation (represented by a german flag), that's what I mean with "common language spoken there that everyone knows about?" There just won't be a swiss flag because of the 4 languages. This only adds confusion.
about wales, well, it might be possible someone does a game in welsh, or maybe there even is one I don't know about, well then please use the most common language from wales, or we should have a "dirrrty dialect" sign for something noone else beside 5 people understand.

Quote
I'm planning on adding some sort of tag cloud thing to pages going forward, to allow people to add way more relevant custom info to their pages. Maybe one generic one, or several different ones with one being languages.

sounds interesting. please use some codemagic to add the tags to the html head description and keywords of that specific gamepage.

Snarky · Mon 07/05/2018 06:53:12

Quote from: selmiak on Mon 07/05/2018 00:02:48
I still don't get the point.

What flag would you use for an Arabic translation?
What flag would you use for a Hindi translation (Hindi is spoken by 422 million people in India)? What flag would you use for Bengali (spoken by 83 million people in India)?
What flag would you use for a Spanish translation? What if it was typically Mexican Spanish? How Mexican would it have to be?

selmiak · Mon 07/05/2018 09:26:19

Quote from: Snarky on Mon 07/05/2018 06:53:12
Quote from: selmiak on Mon 07/05/2018 00:02:48
I still don't get the point.

What flag would you use for an Arabic translation?

good question! what about the flag of isil?

this makes me wonder if we also should note the charset used in the translation.

Quote
What flag would you use for a Hindi translation (Hindi is spoken by 422 million people in India)? What flag would you use for Bengali (spoken by 83 million people in India)?

I love being international, but how many hindi and how many bengali AGS games are there?
To be bland but useful I'd just use the indian flag for both options and wait until more complaints about this appear in this thread or somewhere else in the forums and then really start thinking about it

or ask the people complaining about it for their proposed solution, they'd know best!

Quote
What flag would you use for a Spanish translation? What if it was typically Mexican Spanish? How Mexican would it have to be?

with written out translations displayed, would you give authors the possibility to fill in whatever they want, so they can totally define that one mexican spanish dialect with some maya accents only spoken in that small indigenous village behind 7 lonley hills in the jungle of mexico, while the language is sacred and only used and spoken in celebration of the 7th bloodmoon this year every 18.980 days?

Quote from: selmiak on Sat 05/05/2018 11:33:42
For the usability we should make a poll or just scan through the database and check for the most used languages for translations, then offer these languages clickable with a checkbox on the "add new game" page, like list the 5-10 most used languages, which are probably german, french, italian, spanish, russian and some, then have all the rest hidden and revealed by some extra click just to not clutter up the add game form.

the definition of "and some" varies...

Sinitrena · Mon 07/05/2018 19:10:29

There are some problems with flags, but text might clutter the game pages.

In the end, it's just important to make this information available and searchable.

cat · Mon 07/05/2018 20:24:20

Then language codes are probably best.

Danvzare · Tue 08/05/2018 12:48:38

Most games are just going to be translated into an European language, so I think flags would work. I don't think we need to plan for a whole bunch of exceptions until AGS becomes incredibly popular all across the world.
And everyone who dislikes the idea sounds like they're considering to include the UK flag, the American flag, the New Zealand flag, the Australian flag, and the Canadian flag for their games, just because they can.

eri0o · Tue 08/05/2018 15:16:57

Language codes like en, en-US, pt-BR, ... Look better, and possibly allow passing things like en in query and get en*.

Radiant · Tue 08/05/2018 18:38:53

Great plan!

Danvzare · Wed 09/05/2018 11:54:01

Quote from: eri0o on Tue 08/05/2018 15:16:57
Language codes like en, en-US, pt-BR, ... Look better, and possibly allow passing things like en in query and get en*.

Sounds brilliant to me.

Stupot · Wed 09/05/2018 22:17:29

Most games don't get any translations, some get two or three at most, so I can't see a problem with having just simple bit of text underneath the game description. Flags are unnecessary and there's no need to differentiate between US and UK English for example.

Another idea could be to have a simple â€œlanguagesâ€ icon somewhere on the games' page which brings up a box showing all the languages when you hover over it.

AGA · Thu 10/05/2018 10:23:00

Yeah, I think you're way overthinking it. A plain text tag would work perfectly well in this limited context.

selmiak · Sat 02/06/2018 18:47:03

imho flags are easier to understand and more international (I'm watching the french open atm and had to look up some of the english language 3-letter short forms of some countries they display). Also they look better. The language code can still be displayed in a hover text with the html title="ENG / DE" tag within the image tag.

AGA · Sat 18/01/2020 18:11:30

Done. I ignored all the discussion in this thread, since we never really seemed to reach a conclusion. All games now have their languages set to English only by default; authors will have to update their games before accurate search results can be returned.

Cassiebsg · Sat 18/01/2020 18:27:22

Thanks

Just one thing, I realize that listing every single language is a monumental/impossible task. But would it be possible to add a text box to enter other, non listed languages? (one at the time)

I have a game with turkish translation, but can't add it to the available languages.

AGA · Sat 18/01/2020 18:49:05

For the time being, no. But I have added Turkish as an option in the meantime.

cat · Mon 20/01/2020 12:11:01

I activated German for one of my games, but I can't find it using category search.

(btw, "Only Include Games with at Least 2 Cup Panel Ratings" should probably not checked by default, since there are no more new panel ratings since a few years.)

AGA · Mon 20/01/2020 17:05:11

Bear in mind that the language and OS searches are AND, rather than OR. So if you checked only German, but there's also an English translation, you won't find it. I'm not sure if that's the best way, but there will be technical challenges to making it work the other way...

Cassiebsg · Mon 20/01/2020 17:32:56

Uhm... This defeats the purpose of adding extra languages. $:-\$
Meaning that my game now only shows up if you select both English and Turkish. I think ideally it should just look for having at least one of the checked languages.
I can see people using that to find games that are in French, Portuguese, Turkish... etc Don't think they will be caring about other languages, so I would just select Portuguese if I wanted games that are in Portuguese (or have translation in Portuguese). I'm pretty sure I would careless if it had translations in other languages.

Oh, and BTW, Portuguese is misspelled.

cat · Mon 20/01/2020 19:34:57

I agree with Cassiebsg. The current situation means it is almost impossible to find a game with multiple languages from the category search, unless you know exactly which languages are included.

AGA · Mon 20/01/2020 20:58:51

I'm working on another option, but it's rather more complicated. Bear with me!

Cassiebsg · Mon 20/01/2020 22:04:41

Sure, cat takes the front and I'll take the back of the stretcher, and we'll bear you anywhere you like.

AGA · Tue 21/01/2020 23:07:43

Okay, stage one is done: you can now search from a supposedly full list of all languages. Search is still broken, but I'll fix that tomorrow.

AGA · Wed 22/01/2020 22:17:18

Search now also works.

Snarky · Thu 23/01/2020 06:05:17

Nice work, AGA!

Quote from: AGA on Mon 20/01/2020 17:05:11
Bear in mind that the language and OS searches are AND, rather than OR. So if you checked only German, but there's also an English translation, you won't find it. I'm not sure if that's the best way, but there will be technical challenges to making it work the other way...

I assume you've also changed it for OS? Same reason: if I'm looking for games with a Mac build, I don't want to exclude results just because they also have a Linux build, for example.

AGA · Thu 23/01/2020 07:15:35

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 23/01/2020 06:05:17
Nice work, AGA!

Quote from: AGA on Mon 20/01/2020 17:05:11
Bear in mind that the language and OS searches are AND, rather than OR. So if you checked only German, but there's also an English translation, you won't find it. I'm not sure if that's the best way, but there will be technical challenges to making it work the other way...

I assume you've also changed it for OS? Same reason: if I'm looking for games with a Mac build, I don't want to exclude results just because they also have a Linux build, for example.

That's the next step!

cat · Thu 23/01/2020 08:45:43

Very nice! I'll update my games soon.

When the OS search is also fixed, I will create a thread in Adventure related board to encourage people to update their games.

One more thing: Could you by default include MAGS games in the filter? I think they make up at least half of the newly created games (although they are often also categorized as short or non-adventure game. Ideally, the MAGS category should be replaced by an additional flag - MAGS is not a length after all).

AGA · Thu 23/01/2020 16:52:46

I've set searching for MAGS to on by default.

MAGS may not be a length, but how many MAGS games are anything except short? So aren't they all short games, just of a special type? Demo also isn't a length, after all...

cat · Thu 23/01/2020 18:32:27

There are quite a few MAGS games that are non-adventure games.

AGA · Thu 23/01/2020 22:54:39

OS and language searches should both now do an OR search, rather than AND. I have tagged every game with English and Windows to start off with; even though that may not be strictly true in all cases, it's a good starting point.

AGA · Sun 26/01/2020 00:37:53

I've now separated the MAGS status in the games pages . By default searches will include MAGS games, but if you check 'show only MAGS entries' you'll get exactly that: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/search/game_lengths:1,6,0,15;genres:1,2,3,4,5,0;game_types:1,2,3,4,5,0;story_types:1,2,3,4,5,0;commercial:1;mags:1;languages:36;operating_systems:1/1/name/asc/. I've also reset all the MAGS games' length to 'not defined'.