adding automatic translations with Steam workshop

[jack_norton]

I had an idea today that I wanted to submit for consideration (to pytom obviously!).
You might know about Steam workshop: in practice are tools that lets the players mod the games, by altering files of the game.
I thought it was the perfect system to enable community-supported translation of ANY Ren'Py game.
I am not sure what would be the steps needed coding-wise (I never used it and I am not a good coder), but I know that you can load any mod you want with Steam interface.
In practice, people would get access to the translation files (those generated by Ren'Py) but the main difference is that then the developer wouldn't need to reupload the translations every time they are updated (something that takes away lot of time and one of the main reasons I'm not doing them). They would be updated "in remote" by the fans doing it through the Steam workshop, and then loaded in the game, still from Steam servers so without the need to any intervention by the developer
This would help both creators who can't afford to translate the game(s), and also players who could contribute and maybe play their favorite game in their own language.

I hope it made sense. I think it could be a unique feature that could put Ren'Py above the other VN engines/system

[PyTom]

I don't think this is viable. Ren'Py translations are just Ren'Py script files, and hence can contain code, just like any other Ren'Py script files. I don't think it makes sense to automatically run code downloaded without review by the developer - the security implications are just way to bad for me to be comfortable doing this.

[jack_norton]

Ah I thought were only the text files, without any code?
If they can also execute code, then OK I agree with you.

[firecat]

Ah I thought were only the text files, without any code?
If they can also execute code, then OK I agree with you.

you should have taken account the work people do for the translation, not many of them will do it free. offering the text is fine but since they cant edit the GUI, voice (they could add voice), cutscenes, etc, a game with little translation done.

[netravelr]

It could potentially work if you make all of the text in the game a text object. I just did localization for a title to Korean without modifying a single image just reading values from a file so I know it's possible. However, I am disappointed that you aren't able to have users execute scripts. Could make for interesting mod possibilities for a game I was considering.