Localization with description references

[kerboom]

I am working on my first mod, and part of what it does is create alternate versions of existing entities. For the entity-name and entity-description localization of the new entities, I would like to append a string to the localized name and description of the original entities.

I can do this in locale.cfg for the name by writing

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locomotive-mu=MU __ENTITY__locomotive__

And get the result

MU Locomotive

But there does not seem to be a keyword to reference localized entity-descriptions the same way. Do I need to put it in the prototype with a script in data.lua? Is it worth asking for a new keyword, for example __ENTITY-DESCRIPTION__, to concatenate localization strings the easy way?

[kerboom]

I solved my problem using data.lua scripting. While you cannot access data.raw["category"]["original-item"].localised_description correctly, you can use locale tags from any item in the game to assign localised_description to your new item. You can use Lua string concatenation to retrieve them dynamically:

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newItem.localised_description = { 'description.new-item-template', 
          {'item-description.' .. originalItem.name} }

The old item name goes inside its own curly braces so it is also pulled from the locale files.

In locale.cfg, you add your template like this (the "description" category is arbitrary):

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[description]
new-item-template=__1__ This comes after the original description.