notification auto replacement

Game development with Board Game Arena Studio
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Ralchimist
Posts: 14
Joined: 09 May 2020, 10:46

notification auto replacement

Post by Ralchimist »

Hi!

I'm trying to log that one player doubles his score.
So I'm using:

Code: Select all

self::notifyAllPlayers( "blank", clienttranslate('${player_name} doubles his score'), array("player_name" => $player['name']) ); 

In the log, ${player_name} is correctly replace.
BUT:
"his" becomes "their" ...

How can I avoid it?

Thanks for your help!
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Een
Posts: 3861
Joined: 16 June 2010, 19:52

Re: notification auto replacement

Post by Een »

If you define your gender in your player profile, the correct pronoun will be used (if no gender is set, singular "they" is used as the default).
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shadowphiar
Posts: 124
Joined: 01 January 2017, 16:07

Re: notification auto replacement

Post by shadowphiar »

Is there any way to get explicit control of pronoun substitution? Some of the messages in my game mention more than one of the players (overriding format_string_recursive to add colour formatting for "$other_player_name"). If I were to include a pronoun that happened to mean $other_player_id, it would not be great to change it based on what is in $player_id's profile...
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Een
Posts: 3861
Joined: 16 June 2010, 19:52

Re: notification auto replacement

Post by Een »

No, this is baked in into the framework. Managing player gender in translations can get really complex really fast. We actually manage only the simplest cases, so indeed if there are multiple subjects in a sentence, better to use the singular "their" directly in the original string (safe choice, this is never substituted) or to avoid pronouns altogether (even safer).
piratelarry
Posts: 2
Joined: 29 March 2020, 22:18

Re: notification auto replacement

Post by piratelarry »

I agree completely! So why do so many games still default to male pronouns (he/his/him) in English? I would love to see the standard become gender-neutral or no pronouns. I know that means re-codng many games, but I think this change would be wildly appreciated by many (and largely unnoticed by the rest)!
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