Translation enablement for ShadowEmpire

A military-oriented and sci-fi wargame, set on procedural planets with customizable factions and endless choices.

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Yurecz
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2023 7:45 am

Translation enablement for ShadowEmpire

Post by Yurecz »

Hi Vic! I built a localization framework for Shadow Empire that makes the game translatable into any left-to-right language purely through external CSV files + font swaps — no code edits, no rebuild, and it's hot-reloadable. As a proof of concept I'm doing a full Russian translation (work in progress, dozens of screens done — screenshots below).

A few things I want to be upfront about, because I'd rather ask before releasing anything:

It works via a small patcher that IL-patches the local ShadowEmpire.exe on the user's machine. It's fully reversible (keeps a ShadowEmpire_original.exe backup) and never ships a pre-patched exe.
No game strings are hardcoded — all translations live in editable CSV, so anyone could translate into their own language without touching code.
Non-Latin scripts need Cyrillic-capable fonts, so it swaps the game's fonts for free/open ones (SIL OFL / DejaVu). Original game fonts are never redistributed, only replaced.
I would not distribute any decompiled game code.
Before I invest the rest of the translation work: would you be OK with me releasing this publicly (framework + language packs), and if so where/how would you prefer? Also — is a community localization something you'd have any interest in supporting or even adding official hooks for? Happy to share full technical details.

Best regards,
Yuri
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