Translations

A game can ship more than one language. Put each translation in a copy of data/ named data-<code>, next to the original:

My Game/
├─ data/          the game as it is (any language)
├─ data-vi/       Vietnamese
├─ data-en/       English
└─ data_zh-tw/    Traditional Chinese

The toolkit publishes them all, and players pick one with ⚙ → Language (how that looks). Nothing else to set up.

Naming a translation

Folder	Counts as a translation?
data-vi, data_en, data-zh-tw, data_zh_TW	Yes: a two-letter language code (vi, en, ja, ko…), then an optional region
data-backup, data-old, data-new	No: published like any data-* folder, but not offered as a language
data	The game as it is. It is the fallback for every file a translation lacks

Case does not matter (data-VI is vi), and - and _ mean the same. The code is only used to name the language in the menu, in the language itself (vi → Tiếng Việt, ja → 日本語). The folders Vietnamese and Chinese translators often use for the same languages, vn, jp, cn, tw, kr, are named correctly too.

A translation only needs the files it changes. Translated System.json and Map012.json, nothing else? Every other file comes from data/. analyze tells you how many files each translation lacks:

Translations players can pick: vi (data-vi, 12 file(s) fall back to data/), en (data-en)

Only .json files directly in the folder count (data-vi/Map001.json). Pictures, audio, fonts and plugins are shared by all languages: a translation that draws text on pictures (a title screen, say) still shows the original ones.

How it works in the browser

RWK_Language sits between the game and its data. The engine and most plugins ask for data/Map001.json; when the player's language has a Map001.json, the request goes to data-vi/Map001.json instead. The data is read once at start-up, so changing language restarts the game (the menu says so: progress since the last save is lost).

The choice is kept in the browser, per game. It is not part of the cloud save, so a phone and a PC can play in different languages from the same save.

The languages setting

Without it, players start in the original and can pick any translation found. Set it with config → Advanced: edit the JSON:

To	Set
Start players in Vietnamese (they can still pick another)	"languages": { "default": "vi" }
Everyone plays in Vietnamese, no menu entry	"languages": { "default": "vi", "lock": true }
Name the original in the menu (Japanese, say)	"languages": { "original": "ja" }
Ignore the translations: no menu entry, original only	"languages": false
Leave one translation out	"exclude": ["data-tw/**"]

default is the folder's code, as typed in the folder name (vn for data-vn). A code with no folder is reported at the next deploy, and players start in the original. Changing languages or the folders changes the web build, so publish again to apply it.

Over the free plan's file limit? Each translation adds one file per data/ file it translates; exclude the ones you do not need.

For translators

If you ship a translation of someone else's game, check the creator's policy first: it says whether the game may be published at all, and by whom. The folder convention above is the same whether you publish with the toolkit or give friends a patch: copy data/ to data-<code>, translate the copy, and leave data/ untouched, so the original can always be restored. A patch is only the data-<code> folder.

No translation yet: machine translation

A game nobody translated can still be read through ⚙ → Translate the game, a machine translation through Cloudflare's Workers AI. It is off unless you turn it on:

rwk config "D:\Games\My Game" --set translate=true
rwk deploy "D:\Games\My Game"

The first time, a deploy is needed: it gives the Worker its Workers AI binding (config says so). Then translate changes like any other setting, and { "to": ["vi", "en"], "from": "ja" } narrows the languages offered and names the game's own. It needs R2, where each translated line is kept, and stays within the free plan with a daily character cap shared by all your games. Written translations in data-<code>/ read better; machine translation is for games that have none.