Skip to main content
View

Translate your game with CSV files

This section will be archived when Pokémon Studio v3.0 is released

Pokémon Studio v3.0 will move away from RPG Maker. When that release ships, this RPG Maker XP section will be archived: the pages will remain available as reference but will no longer be updated.

PSDK keeps every line of event dialogue in CSV files where each column is a language. This guide explains how to extract your game's text into those files with the eventtext2csv tool, translate it in Pokémon Studio, and let players switch language in game.

The principle​

A multilingual game cannot duplicate every event once per language: the maps would be unmaintainable, and fixing a single typo would mean fixing it in every language by hand. PSDK solves this by keeping dialogue text out of the events. Every line lives in a CSV file under Data/Text/Dialogs/, where each row is one line of text and each column is one language. An event no longer holds the sentence itself, only a reference to a row. At runtime, the engine reads the column that matches the player's language and shows it.

So the workflow has four steps: write your game once in a single language, extract all of its text into CSV files, translate it in Pokémon Studio, and declare which languages the player can pick.

Step 1: Write your game in one language​

Build your game in RMXP as usual, writing every dialogue in plain text in your source language, the one you author in. A Show Text command simply contains the readable sentence, exactly as the player will see it. Do not think about translation yet: the extraction comes later, once the content exists. This keeps the writing phase fast and lets you focus on the game itself.

Step 2: Extract the text with eventtext2csv​

PSDK ships a tool, eventtext2csv, that reads every map, collects the text of each message and each choice, writes it into CSV files, and rewrites each event so it points at the matching row. You get one CSV file per map, named after the map: the engine uses the id 1000 + map_id, so map 5 produces Data/Text/Dialogs/1005.csv.

Run it from the project folder, with the project uncompiled so the source is available (see Set up the development environment):

psdk --util=eventtext2csv

The tool asks which languages to prepare, as a comma-separated list of codes (for example en,fr,it,de,es). Press Enter to use every language the project declares as available. It then creates one column per language in each file.

A few things worth knowing:

  • It only touches events that contain text. A map with no dialogue produces no file.
  • It is idempotent: a line that already points at a CSV row is left untouched. You can write new events later and run the tool again to extract only the new text.
  • After extraction, the event still shows the original sentence in RMXP (the tool keeps it after the reference, as a reminder), but at runtime only the reference is read.
  • The base id 1000 can be shifted with the TEXT_EVENT_OFFSET environment variable, but the default suits most projects.
note

The tool is interactive (it reads your answer from the console) and only exists in an uncompiled project. It is not available in a released build.

Step 3: Translate the text in Pokémon Studio​

Once the text is extracted, you translate it in Pokémon Studio, which edits PSDK's text files through a dedicated interface, so you never have to open a CSV yourself. Open your project and click Text Management in the left navigation rail. It has two tabs:

  • The Texts tab lists every text file by its number. Pick the one for your map, for example 1005, to see its entries in the source language. From there you can edit a line, add a new entry, or search the file.
  • The Translation tab is where you translate: it shows one entry at a time, with the source language on one side and a field for every other language. You fill in each translation, pick the target language, and move on to the next entry.

Studio saves straight back to the game's text files. In development, relaunching the game is enough to see the new text: PSDK recompiles the changed files automatically, with no manual build step.

Step 4: Let the player choose the language​

You declare the languages your game offers in Pokémon Studio, on the Language page. Reach it with the Manage languages button on the Text Management page, then pick the Default language, the languages available in game, and any other translation languages.

Studio stores this in Data/configs/language_config.json:

{
  "defaultLanguage": "en",
  "choosableLanguageCode": ["en", "fr"],
  "choosableLanguageTexts": ["English", "Français"]
}
  • defaultLanguage is the code used before the player has made a choice.
  • choosableLanguageCode lists the codes the player can switch between.
  • choosableLanguageTexts is the label shown for each, in the same order.

The player then switches language from the in-game Options menu; the engine reloads every text in the chosen language, and the choice is stored in the player's options.

note

This guide covers translating text authored in RMXP events. To read these texts from your own Ruby scripts, see Add i18n text.

Conclusion​

  • Event dialogue is not stored in the events but in PSDK's text files, with one entry per row and one language per column.
  • Write your game in one language, then run psdk --util=eventtext2csv to extract every message and choice into per-map files (1000 + map_id) and rewrite the events as references.
  • Translate the extracted text in Pokémon Studio's Text Management editor; dev mode recompiles the changed files automatically.
  • Declare the offered languages on Studio's Language page; the player switches from the Options menu and the choice is saved.