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Text and languages

One text editor serves everywhere, and an adventure exists in several languages without ever being written twice.

The text editor, conditional passages, and how an adventure exists in several languages without being duplicated.

This chapter is a reference: come back to it when an adventure needs it. If Fatum is new to you, start with the first step of the path: What the engine can do

The text editor

The same text editor serves a scene's text, an ending's text, a choice's label and the descriptions of definitions. Its toolbar changes with the place: full in a scene, cut down to text marks (bold, italic, code) and "Reference" for a choice label, which fits on one line.

There is no source mode, no Markdown, no HTML view. A paste from elsewhere is re-read and reduced to what the editor can represent; what it cannot represent is dropped rather than smuggled through.

Text saves as you write. The "⤢ Plein écran" button, on a scene's text, hides the graph and the other settings: only the title, the text and the choices remain.

Three blocks that are not text

Three tools in the bar insert something other than words. Each is a whole block: you select and delete it in one go, you do not edit it letter by letter.

  • The conditional passage is a paragraph the reader only reads if a condition is met. Its header spells out the condition, and opening it gives access to the same builder as for choices. An "+ Otherwise…" adds the version that other readers read.
  • The reference drops a piece of state into the sentence: the character's name, the number of coins in pocket. It appears as a pill and fills in at reading time.
  • The image is picked from the adventure's image library. There is no caption, no cropping and no alternative text: carry what the picture shows in the prose, for a reader who does not see it.

The working language

An adventure is written one language at a time. The selector in the top bar says which, and its "+" button adds a new one. The whole workshop then switches: the titles, the texts and the labels you see are that language's.

The working-language menu: the managed languages, each with the number of fields left to translate, and the button to add one.
Removing a language deletes its translations, and the question tells you how many fields that is.

This selector has nothing to do with the site's language. You can read the workshop in French and write an adventure in English there; the two settings are independent.

Translating

In a language other than the original one, a not-yet-translated text shows greyed out and read only, with the source inside it and a "Traduire" button. That opens an empty field, never a copy: the source stays visible beside it, so that you translate rather than tweak.

The manuscript panel then adds navigation between the missing texts: "Go to the next untranslated item", and the list of what remains to be translated. Each row opens the scene or the definition where the field is.

An incomplete language never blocks a publication. It is simply left out, and the confirmation tells you which and why. Only the original language can block.

What is shared across languages

This is the distinction that saves the most time: translating only requires redoing the text. The affected areas show a small marker "🌐 Shared by all languages" to remind you.

  • The structure. Scenes, their roles, choices and their destinations, the manuscript order, the cards' positions on the graph. Adding a scene adds it in every language.
  • Rules and numbers. Conditions, costs, effects, tests, formulas, starting values, prices. A rule fixed is fixed everywhere.
  • Images. One library for the whole adventure, with no language dimension. That is why what the picture shows must also be in the text.