Multiple language support for diablo2.io (especially items)

Hi there,

I play the game in German and have to search partly for the English names of the items I want to trade. It would be great if other languages can be optionally stored and the search then matched to both names.

Regards
Heckenklatscher

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

I'm afraid that localisation of the site will not be happening, sorry. I know there are a lot of German players and Russian players, but localising the entire site is a huge undertaking.

Data base entries (items, monsters and so on) translation is (relatively) easy - just extract strings from the game.
Site engine, phpBB, has translation packages available.
Regarding customizations (such as trading), have you considered crowdsourcing, for example Crowdin? I'm pretty sure D2 community can handle it.

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

Data base entries (items, monsters and so on) translation is (relatively) easy - just extract strings from the game.

You guys think it was as simple as that for even English? It really wasn't. There's a lot more to building a database than just extracting game data. For example none of the variant names are stored next to monster base names in the game files - they had to be manually paired with codes in different tables to get the output names. These weren't capitalised and had spelling mistakes (yes there are spelling mistakes in D2's core files, which are fixed later in the program by something else).

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

Site engine, phpBB, has translation packages available.

This is not a standard phpBB installation - it's modified far from the original intended package. Language packages can't be bolted onto diablo2.io like a standard phpBB installation unfortunately.

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

Regarding customizations (such as trading), have you considered crowdsourcing, for example Crowdin? I'm pretty sure D2 community can handle it.

It's not a question of the D2 community being able to handle it. The database itself is testament to the hard work of all the contributors and people crowdsouring info about the game. The issue is the development side of things - why should I spend a month preparing the site for crowdsourced localisations when I can spend that time working on more important things that are relevant to all users.