4,721 strings later, Astra Genesis speaks English
v0.89.0 closes the translation work: the whole game is now in English, from the screens to the server's messages. You pick your language on the sign-in screen or in Settings, and it follows your account. Before shipping, we went through the entire game in English, and two places were still in French. They are fixed, and a check keeps them from coming back.
Wersja oryginalna po angielsku.
Until now, Astra Genesis could only be played in French. A good share of the screens already had an English version, tucked away and never offered. The rest was more stubborn: the names and descriptions of the game's content were written straight into its data tables, and the server answered in French.
In short: v0.89.0 closes that work, and the whole game is now in English. You pick your language on the sign-in screen or in Settings, and it follows your account. Before shipping, we went through the entire game in English, on the live server: two places were still in French. They are fixed, and a check keeps them from coming back.
What is translated
Everything on screen: the screens and their tooltips, the tutorial's explanations, the names and descriptions of buildings, resources, technologies, quests, ships and defenses. That is 4,721 strings in all, and not one is missing in English. At the start, our counter found 854 sentences written straight into the code, where no translation could reach them. It is at zero.
The trickiest part was the server's 281 messages: a building you cannot build yet, a sale that is refused, an action that went through. The server translates nothing: it attaches a code to its answer, and your game turns it into a sentence, in your language.
Picking your language
The first time, the game uses your browser's language if it offers it, and French otherwise. You can change it on the sign-in screen, where it applies right away, or in game from Settings: the game asks you to confirm, then reloads in the new language.
With an account, the language is saved with it and follows you from one device to another. In guest mode, it stays on the device.
What is already written keeps its language: a notification or a history line stays in the language it was written in.
What stays in French, on purpose
Proper names are not translated: star systems, planets and ship nicknames. In the screenshot, Chimère, Aigle and Écho-3 keep their names in English. Their class, type and description, on the other hand, are translated.
The oldest entries of the in-game version history stay in French as well.
What the review turned up
Before closing the work, we did what we did for the tutorial: play, rather than trust our tests. On a test account, with the game in English, we opened every screen, every tab and every window (11 screens, 45 tabs, 7 windows), noting any text that looked French.
Two leftovers. In the Hangar's Defense tab, the Posture line showed "Posture équilibrée" instead of "Balanced posture". Same thing on the posture buttons of the combat simulator. The Control Centre already showed them in English: those two places fetched the French name straight from the source instead of asking for its translation.
Both are fixed in v0.89.0. And since this kind of slip creeps back easily, our tests now fail if a screen shows a game name without going through its translation. That check found exactly those two places, and nothing else.
What about other languages?
This site comes in eleven languages, the game in two. The game is now built to take others: adding one is translation work, no longer a coding job. No other language is translated today.
Two notes. The game's English is surely not perfect: if a sentence sounds off, or a French word is still lying around somewhere, let us know. And the screenshots in this post come from a guest game, with the interface in English.
Feedback, or something wrong? Drop by the Discord.