Simonschreibt.

Source: Starcraft 2

Welcome to Simons first German lesson! “Halt!” means “Stop!”. Thanks for joining Simons first German lesson!

The “header” of this article was taken from Starcraft 2. If you played the game, it’s most likely that you got a localization in your own language. Including voice and text but also the words you can see on the 3D models. Example time!

Source: Starcraft 2

Normally developers avoid stuff in game assets which has to be translated later. Text (e.g. Quest Text, Subtitles) can be in a database and handed over (e.g. Excel table) to a translator and imported later. Also voice samples can be outsourced very well.

But localizing models/textures takes time from your inhouse artists (which most times are busy). I  was curious if they used some kind of painted font to avoid painting textures for every language.

Short answer: No:

Source: Starcraft 2

I checked the MPQ files and found e.g. the Mengsk texture (512×512, Alpha, blended over the sign) and the Halt! texture (1024×1024, no Alpha) which is put to a metal sign without blending.

I think it’s impressive how much effort Blizzard spends into the localization because most games only translate text & voice but let the ingame assets how they are (most times in English) or avoid putting any characters/words into models/textures.

Ende

Simons second German lesson: “Ende” means “End”!

Update 1

Phil Gonzales was so nice to contribute another example for the great SC2-Localization. But even better: below his example picture are more interesting information about Blizzards Loca-workflow!