Localizing a Windows Phone Game

  • Article

The title of the game appears in the Application List or Game Hub of the Windows Phone device. It will also appear when the game is pinned to the Start screen.

A localized game title must provide translations for the following languages (for cultures):

  • English (United States)
  • English (United Kingdom)
  • French (France)
  • Italian (Italy)
  • German (Germany)
  • Spanish (Spain)

Localized data are provided within resource-only DLLs, which contain the resource strings for each supported language.

Note

The procedure for localizing a game title on Windows Phone is very similar to the procedure for localizing a Windows Phone application title, but with some important differences.

To localize a game title, perform the following steps:

  • Prerequisites
  • Create a Language Resource Project and Strings
  • Create the First Localized Language Resource Strings
  • Create the Remaining Language Resource Strings
  • Make the Windows Phone Game Project Dependent on Resource DLL Projects
  • Update the Windows Phone Game to Load Localized Title Strings
  • Build the Windows Phone Game

Prerequisites

These procedures must be performed on a new or existing Windows Phone project. To create a new project, see Creating a Windows Phone Game or Library Project.

Important

These procedures can only be performed when using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium or Ultimate. Solutions that contain both C++ and C# projects, as this feature requires, are not supported in Microsoft Visual Studio Express.

Create a Language Resource Project and Strings

In this procedure, you create a resource-only DLL named AppResLib.dll that contains a resource string table with the language-neutral title of your game.

Important

The DLL you create in this procedure must be named AppResLib.dll.

To create a language resource DLL project

  1. From the File menu, choose New and then click Project.

    The New Project dialog appears.

  2. In the left pane, click Installed Templates, expand Visual C++ and then click Win32.

  3. In the list of project types, click Win32 Project and name it AppResLib.

  4. In the Win32 Application Wizard, select DLL and check the Empty Project check box, then click Finish.

  5. In Solution Explorer, select the new DLL project.

  6. From the Project menu, click Properties.

    The Property Pages dialog appears.

  7. Change the Configuration drop-down to All Configurations (from Active (Debug)).

  8. In the left pane, expand Configuration Properties, expand Linker, and then click Advanced.

  9. Select the No EntryPoint property, set the value to Yes (/NOENTRY), and click OK.

To create the language-neutral resource strings

  1. In Solution Explorer, select the new DLL project.

  2. From the Project menu, click Add Resource.

    The Add Resource dialog appears.

  3. In the Resource type list, select String Table and click New.

    The resource string table opens.

  4. Create two resource strings with the following properties:

    ID Value Caption
    AppTitle 100 The language-neutral name of your game to be displayed in the Application List or the Games Hub.
    AppTileString 200 The language-neutral name of your game to be displayed when the tile is pinned to the Windows Phone Start screen.

  5. Save and build the AppResLib project.

Create the First Localized Language Resource Strings

In this procedure, you create a resource string table that contains game title strings specific to a language. The procedure also specifies a post-build event to rename the built DLL correctly as a localized resource and move it to the needed location.

Important

The DLLs containing the localized resource strings must be named in a manner conforming to: where [culture code] is the four-digit culture code of the localized strings.

To create the first specific language resource strings

  1. Follow the steps in the prior procedure to create a new language resource DLL project named AppRes0409 and set its properties.

  2. In the Property Pages dialog, expand Configuration Options, expand Resources, and click General.

  3. Set the Culture value to English (United States) (0x409) (/I 0x0409).

  4. Expand Configuration Options, expand Build Events, and click Post-Build Event.

  5. Set the Command Line value to the following:

    copy "$(OutputPath)$(ProjectName).dll" "$(OutputPath)\AppResLib.dll.0409.mui"

  6. In Solution Explorer, select the new DLL project.

  7. From the Project menu, click Add Resource.

    The Add Resource dialog appears.

  8. In the Resource type list, select String Table and click New.

    The resource string table opens.

  9. Create two resource strings with the following properties:

    ID Value Caption
    AppTitle 100 The English (United States) name of your game to be displayed in the Application List or the Games Hub.
    AppTileString 200 The English (United States) name of your game to be displayed when the tile is pinned to the Windows Phone Start screen.

  10. Save and build the AppRes0409 project.

Create the Remaining Language Resource Strings

This procedure creates the localized resource DLLs for the remaining required languages.

To create the remaining language resource strings

Repeat the previous procedure, creating the following projects and DLLs to support the remaining languages:

Culture Project Name DLL File Name
English (United Kingdom) (0x809) (/I 0x0809) AppRes0809 AppResLib.dll.0809.mui
French (France) (0x40c) (/I 0x040c) AppRes040c AppResLib.dll.040c.mui
German (Germany) (0x407) (/I 0x0407) AppRes0407 AppResLib.dll.0407.mui
Italian (Italy) (0x410) (/I 0x0410) AppRes0410 AppResLib.dll.0410.mui
Spanish (Spain) (0xc0a) (/I 0x0c0a) AppRes0c0a AppResLib.dll.0c0a.mui

Make the Windows Phone Game Project Dependent on Resource DLL Projects

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click the solution that contains your Windows Phone game project and your resource DLL projects and choose Project Dependencies...
  2. In the Projects drop-down list, select your Windows Phone game project.
  3. Check all of the check-boxes next to your resource DLL projects and click OK.

Update the Windows Phone Game to Load Localized Title Strings

To update the application title

  1. In your Windows Phone game project, in the Properties folder, open the file AssemblyInfo.cs

  2. Delete the AssembyTitle entry.

  3. Add an AssemblyTitleAttribute entry:

    [assembly: AssemblyTitleAttribute("@AppResLib.dll,-100")]

To update the tile title

  1. In Solution Explorer, select the Windows Phone game project.

  2. From the Project menu, click Properties.

    The Project Designer appears.

  3. Select the XNA Game Studio Properties Page tab.

  4. Change the Tile title value to the following:

    @AppResLib.dll,-200

Build the Windows Phone Game

Before building, make sure that the Windows Phone game project (and not one of the resource DLL projects) is set as the startup project.

Save and build the Windows Phone game solution (for example, using F6).

See Also

Getting Started with XNA Game Studio Development