GameMaker Studio 2 has a Preference that permits you to switch between IDE translations, both the built-in official ones from YoYo and also custom translations you may download from the community. This guide will show you how to toggle your IDE language.
Changing Your IDE Language
GMS2 is by default in English (UK). However, it also ships with support for Spanish, German, and French, so you can use these other languages if you prefer.
GMS2 will ask you to confirm the installer language each time you install a new version, and if this is your first install, then your IDE language will be set to this also. Note that on macOS the installer will default to your system language if that is one we support, and will be English (UK) otherwise.
You can always customise your IDE language later on. You can find this setting by going to Preferences > General Settings and see the IDE Language value, as shown below:
Select the new language in the dropdown, then click Apply/OK to confirm the change. GMS2 will then immediately apply the change - no restart required.
Installing Community Translations
You can also add in community-made translations to this menu, and several are available on the GMC forum if you want to explore this further. However, YoYo do not recommend any specific third-party skins or translations.
This is done by simply adding the *.csv file for the chosen language into GMS2's user languages folder (note that this will the install the language for all GMS2 users on that machine):
- Windows: C:\ProgramData\GameMakerStudio2\Languages
- macOS: /users/Shared/GameMakerStudio2/Languages
If GMS2 was open at the time you dropped the .csv file into place, you will need to restart GMS2 to see the new language appear in the Preferences dropdown.
Obviously, if you believe the contents of a third-party translation are incorrect, or if you start getting bugs like text being too long for the IDE windows, anything like that, please contact the author of the skin/translation instead of filing this as a bug ticket. YoYo will not be able to help with these issues.
Creating Your Own Translations
For those of you that wish to attempt doing your own translation, you should first ensure you are on the latest version of GMS2 (which may be a Beta) and then make a copy of its english.csv file and use that copy as a base for the creation of your translation.
Note that the first few lines in this base *.csv file are very important. The first line is a format description for the different columns and should be left alone.
Each of the different column headers are explained below:
- The Name is the label used by the IDE as the look up, so never change this.
- The English column is for the English version of the text as a reference. Again, never change this.
- The Translation column. This is the one you should change to be in the new language.
- The Restrictions column. If there are any limits for the text these will be listed here. i.e. only 6 characters, no numbers, or whatever.
- The Comment column. This is a general description of what the text is used for and is here to simply help you as you are translating.
Beneath the main column headers we have the special _LABEL lines.
- _Language should always be an English version of the language i.e. English, Japanese, Russian etc...
- _LanguageNative allows you to put in the actual Language in it's native tongue. So Spanish would have Español here.
Both _Language and _LanguageNative are displayed in the IDE to make it easier to swap to and from other languages, especially if you accidentally pick one you don't understand.
Once you have completed your translation and/or wish to test the file, simply save it to the user languages folder using the name (in English) of the language being used - e.g., Russian would simply be russian.csv, Japanese would be japanese.csv, and so on...