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Conversion of ALL fan missions to i18n system (important)


ECHELON

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For what's worth (and if I understood you correctly), when I was a pre-teen I used to be fascinated by language and that's something that attracted me to rpg oldschool games and fighting fantasy books, and comics like Conan, because of the way they would challenge me with words and meanings I had never experienced, something beyond the infantile fantasy fiction I was used to at the time (mostly cartoons and marvel comics). So I would say, way to go, games for children should be educational in some way, even if its not their theme, at least in language, or something like the message...

So was I. 's all about self-education... Which is why I said "poorly educated". Some don't give a rat's tail. And would even have you believe they know their language.

 

... Well, not only yung'uns, come to think of it...

"Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; Steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man"

- Arab proverb

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I think it wouldnt be immediately clear that you can get more listed missions if you swap from your language to english menus.

 

You don't get any more missions, you would just see the translated versions.

 

If there is an "Alberic's Curse [Translated]" and an "Alberic's Curse" in the list of missions, is there any point in seeing both of them?

My suggestion would mean that if your language is set to English, you'd see only "Alberic's Curse". If your language is set to anything else, you'd see only "Alberic's Curse [translated]". If there's only one version (and therefore it has a I18N.pk4) it would show up for both settings.

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two new works:

 

Here's "the phrase book" external file: http://www.mediafire...j6fdjlszh9l7tgs

 

pandora's box external file with italian translation: http://www.mediafire...bphki9nhehe0x8f

 

 

language supported: italian, german, french, czech, polish, portuguese, russian adn spanish.

 

Coming soon: a score to settle.

 

REMEMBER THAT README AND NOTE FILES ARE NOT STILL SUPPORTED FROM MULTILANGUAGE SYSTEM. THEY WILL REMAIN IN ENGLISH: http://bugs.angua.at...=3012&history=1

Edited by ECHELON
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True as it may be that many fools think they can handle the job, even though they do NOT - and that is certainly not defined by any kind of diploma

 

 

I am SO with you on this one. Over the years, I have witnessed way too many times that folks (professional translators just as well as the average person who had English at school) had a way too high opinion of their own abilities. It's especially annoying if you try your best to give positive feedback to the person and (s)he either rejects it completely or manages to find little changes clearly marked as Preferential and tries to discuss them to great length... Just had this again less than a week ago. I'm still pissed. And to think I'll still have to actually pay her... :-/

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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For what's worth (and if I understood you correctly), when I was a pre-teen I used to be fascinated by language and that's something that attracted me to rpg oldschool games and fighting fantasy books, and comics like Conan, because of the way they would challenge me with words and meanings I had never experienced, something beyond the infantile fantasy fiction I was used to at the time (mostly cartoons and marvel comics). So I would say, way to go, games for children should be educational in some way, even if its not their theme, at least in language, or something like the message...

That was the case for me as well. Although the Fighting Fantasy books were translated, and there were pirated translations of RPGs out there, one of the reasons I learned English was to understand the AD&D rulebooks. That was a huge motivation, and there was nothing better to expand one's vocabulary. Where else would someone learn about things like the libram of gainful conjuration or splint mail?

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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An important message for the translators: write below all your dm translations works and in wich language you have done them.

Nothing to see here - my translations go back to 1.0, and there was no proper support back then, I have to go back and modify them to make use of the new possibilities :)

"Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; Steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man"

- Arab proverb

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Nothing to see here - my translations go back to 1.0, and there was no proper support back then, I have to go back and modify them to make use of the new possibilities :)

 

 

Same for me: I sent Tels my three translations, which he did incorporate into the FMs he adapted himself to the new system. That was "Living Expenses", "Too Late" and "Crown of Penitence".

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Where else would someone learn about things like the libram of gainful conjuration or splint mail?

 

Definitely! :D

 

An important message for the translators:

 

write below all your dm translations works and in wich language you have done them.

 

Translated to Portuguese:

 

TDM GUI (menus)

 

Tutorial Mission

 

FM - Thief's Den (I)

 

But all translations were done before I knew anything about FMs' format, and directly over the text (or graphics) files inside them, without renaming anything (they were saved as separate files). I would have to copy and paste all the strings to the external i18n thing again.

 

PS: There was some confusion at the time with different translation versions that were interchanged and the 1.07 GUI menus ended up having a couple of imprecisions that I need to go over as well.

Edited by RPGista
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My FM has already been translated into at least French & Russian versions, so I'd consent to others. I quite enjoyed playing the French version ... because a lot of my readables were a bit on the dark & morbid end, so reading them in French was sort of a kick. I can't remember how easy/difficult it was to switch language settings; since even as a largely English player, I'd hope to occasionally play in a foreign language (French or German) since I studied those languages and it's like a quick refresher.

 

While the topic is up, I did translate some of the Japanese T2 FMs into English, and I might think about translating a few of our FMs into Japanese if it were possible, but I'm not sure the capability is there yet, since Japanese of course has a radically different character set than anything else.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Nothing to see here - my translations go back to 1.0, and there was no proper support back then, I have to go back and modify them to make use of the new possibilities :)

 

Same for me: I sent Tels my three translations, which he did incorporate into the FMs he adapted himself to the new system. That was "Living Expenses", "Too Late" and "Crown of Penitence".

 

Definitely! :D

 

 

 

Translated to Portuguese:

 

 

FM - Thief's Den (I)

 

But all translations were done before I knew anything about FMs' format, and directly over the text (or graphics) files inside them, without renaming anything (they were saved as separate files). I would have to copy and paste all the strings to the external i18n thing again.

 

PS: There was some confusion at the time with different translation versions that were interchanged and the 1.07 GUI menus ended up having a couple of imprecisions that I need to go over as well.

 

If i send you french.lang, portuguese.lang etc of your translated missions, can you copy/past the strings in this files and resend me? :D

 

 

--------

rpgista, for the tutorial missions, wait a while. it's a hard work. :/

Edited by ECHELON
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No updates coming from me and I got same requests as Melan. This is a matter of trust since we have absolutely no means of controlling the quality of the translations. It would be unbearable if the mission broke due to translation work. Are the translated missions betatested to make sure everything is alright? The english version should be exactly the same that was originally launched.

 

I wonder if we can get some statistics... Just how many additional persons play the mission once it has been translated. Is it really worth the fuss and the risks of breakage?

 

<rant>

You know, it really hurts that people always insult my work - I spent literally months implementing translation support into the core of TDM and for FMs, and for once, you could trust me that it JUST WORKS. Translated missions are not breaking in any way, shape or form, because everything that is "translated" is just another text, or a another mateial shader.

 

Even if a second-language version has some sort of "not-quite-fitting" text, or some mistranslation, what are you (the author) losing? The mission can still be played 100% as before in English, and even then you get some more players that couldn't play the English version before.

 

It seems people have forgotten altofast the release of the polish-only FM, where the "I speak english only" players simply could not even complete the mission because they didn't know what the objectives where. That is the situation that most people are in. Since here on the forum we only ge the few that read & post on this forum because they read/write English, it seems the form members get the impression everything is alright. (I know this by the term "echo chamber" - everyone in the chamber ignores the outside world and focuses only on the echos of the internal group).

 

So in summary, I also find it kind of insulting to all the non-english speakers that there is talk about a "multi-language FM" being "broken", while a "english-only" mission is considered "good" - while in reality an English-only mission is broken for any non-native speaker already.

 

It is also kinda sad to see that the already-build-into-D3 translation system (which I only extended, not invented from scratch - remember, D3 was multilingual from the start!) was not used in TDM - and now that we finally have the ability to actually use it, mappers somehow resent it, as it is a pest.

 

The funny thing is that all missions since v1.07 automatically use the translation, because a lot of core entities are using automatically translated inventory names - the only difference to a fully translatable mission is that the FM dictionary is empty. To the code, an empty dictionary and one with 1 or X entries don't look really different, tho.

</rant>

 

More constructive feedback in the next post :)

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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The automated conversion process does change the original .map file, however. And it can introduce errors into the English version...I found a few readables that had "/" characters in them after the translation script was run on St. Lucia.

 

As grayman said, that was a bug and is already fixed.

 

As for "not changing the map file", this is impossible, because unfortunately we did not use the translationsystem from D3 from the start, so any old map will contain hard-coded english texts. Some of them can be corrected automatically (f.i. if an item is in the inventory group "Tools", it will be automatically be put into the right group, so the German version reads "Werkzeuge") but quite some can't (objective texts, names etc) and that is why the map file needs to be changed. There is no other way.

 

(And in somce sense this is a bug in TDM, we really should have had this system in place since v1.0 - but as we all know, that was simply not possible back then due to missing manpower).

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I find it strange that you seem think it is an insult towards your work if a mapper is worried about what happens to the mission they painstakingly created (quality of translation and possible breakage.)

I find the mappers' reaction most natural, as normally artistic creation is a matter of feeling: not many artists would allow others to tamper with their work... Especially as they have no ways to control the quality.

 

I also find it would be interesting to see some statistic how many people are we actually serving here, with these translations. Or is gathering such info also insulting?

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Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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My FM has already been translated into at least French & Russian versions, so I'd consent to others. I quite enjoyed playing the French version ... because a lot of my readables were a bit on the dark & morbid end, so reading them in French was sort of a kick. I can't remember how easy/difficult it was to switch language settings; since even as a largely English player, I'd hope to occasionally play in a foreign language (French or German) since I studied those languages and it's like a quick refresher.

 

While the topic is up, I did translate some of the Japanese T2 FMs into English, and I might think about translating a few of our FMs into Japanese if it were possible, but I'm not sure the capability is there yet, since Japanese of course has a radically different character set than anything else.

 

D3 had support for Korean, Chinese and I believe Japanese. But for TDM this would require certainly quite some work, esp. since the current font system only supports up to 256 characters per font (actually, it might even be less). Hebrew with its right-to-left writing style is impossible right now I believe.

 

Of course, we have the source, so we can add these things, but we'd need to find someone who can do the work first.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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@ECHOLON:

 

This is, btw, wonderful news.

 

The first step would be to host all these missions on bloodgate.com - I will send you a PM with a username/password so you can directly upload them there. This is only a temp. solution, tho.

 

The second step is that we replace the links to the missions on the central TDM server with the translation-ready versions (and replace them on all mirrors). Hopefully all authors can see that having their mission I18N ready is something to be desired, and not something to be afraid of.

 

The bug that the mission names and READMEs are in English in the menu will be hopefully fixed for v1.09.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I find it strange that you seem think it is an insult towards your work if a mapper is worried about what happens to the mission they painstakingly created (quality of translation and possible breakage.)

I find the mappers' reaction most natural, as normally artistic creation is a matter of feeling: not many artists would allow others to tamper with their work... Especially as they have no ways to control the quality.

 

While the mappers reaction might be natural (fear of the unknown, loss of control), I had hoped that we got past that stage.

 

We already discussed that, the programmer (me) ensured you that the code is ready and tested, that any bug will be fixed and it "just works". And the translators ensured you that they will do the outmost to make quality translations and fix any problems they find.

 

As for the "control over your work" - I answered already that you seem to think that "no translation is better than a not-quite-as-good translation" and that this is very selfish and hurts all the non-english speakers. Apart from that, we are currently discussing converting the mission so that it can be converted. Which means you seem not only speaking against "bad translations", but against having the possibility of a translation at all.

 

Edit: The above paragraph sounds a bit harsh and "personal", but I mean it in general for authors, not just you. Springheel f.i. seems to have the same "mindset". 7upman summarized it much better in a post than I did above. Sorry if that sounded as it was personal directed at you.

 

I also find it would be interesting to see some statistic how many people are we actually serving here, with these translations. Or is gathering such info also insulting?

 

No, but to gather such statistics you'd first need to consent that you mission gets converted, than that it gets replaced on the central server (and mirrors), and then you'd need to find someone who can code in support for gathering statistics. :)

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Basically running the translation script creates a new .map file (where all your text is now replaced by "str #20005" type numbers) and a new strings folder with an english.lang file that has all the text. These then have to be bundled into a pk4.

 

Changing briefing guis has to be done by hand, I believe, but it's the same idea.

 

Here's a question I don't know the answer to. If someone runs the translation on, say, Alberic's Curse, and then saves the newly created .pk4 file as "Alberic's_Curse_Translation.pk4", does the downloader install it as a separate mission, or does it automatically overwrite an older installation of Alberic's Curse? I was assuming it was the former.

 

Currently it installs it as a second mission (with the same title, so you can't tell them apart in the menu). This is a bug, which we should fix. Not sure how, tho.

 

As for the "replacement", we would of course on the server/mirrors just replace the "v1.0" with the "v1.01 with I18N support" mission file. So then people just get an "this mission has an update" in the menu, and can redownload it and then just start the FM normally.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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As for the "control over your work" - I answered already that you seem to think that "no translation is better than a not-quite-as-good translation" and that this is very selfish and hurts all the non-english speakers. Apart from that, we are currently discussing converting the mission so that it can be converted. Which means you seem not only speaking against "bad translations", but against having the possibility of a translation at all.

 

Oh, boy! Here it comes again. I've given the permission to translate my works. I've done a lot of generous work for this mod. So don't you go and judge me as selfish.

Tels, if I wasn't the nice person I am, I would kindly instruct you to go fuck yourself. Instead of that, I'll just say: end of discussion on my part.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Well good. Then a translated mission could be saved as a different name "[mission]_translated.pk4" or something, so that there is no change to the original pk4. People who need a translation can get one but there's no chance of disturbing the original. Also keeps people who don't need the translation from having to download the mission again. That's what I'd prefer for my missions.

 

*sigh*

 

This is a backwards, work-around way to introduce a lot of unnec. complexity into the system - and all that just because you fear the unknow or don't know how the I18N system works.

 

Let me repeat it again for you: after the mission has been prepared for translation, the English version will be 100% the same (if not, that's a bug, so tell me that I can fix it). To make it more complex for everyone else is insanity.

 

The idea is that everyone has the same mission. Delegating non-native speakers to second class players is an insult. Not only would these people be unable to use the main mirror, but even if we add their missions there, the english-only players would suddenly see twice as many missions. And even if that somehow works out, how do you get feedback for your mission? Would you ignore bug reports for the italian version, just because it is a different PK4?

 

This is madness.

 

(Also, to answer the question from Sotha: How many international players will we have? Certainly more than English players now - most of the international players we can't even reach, because the forum, the wiki and the website are in English only - and making FMs translatable would be the very first step. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers for reference)

 

Even if there is only one person who could play your mission because it is in INSERTLANGUAGE, wouldn't that be a win for you? (I guess not from your previious answers)

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Tels, maybe you don't see it, but i wrote that the packages i'm creating are completely standalone, this means that they work perfectly with the original version of the mission, which is not touched at all.

In this way, i don't have to worry about "my mission have to remain intact" problem.

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Tels, maybe you don't see it, but i wrote that the packages i'm creating are completely standalone, this means that they work perfectly with the original version of the mission, which is not touched at all.

In this way, i don't have to worry about "my mission have to remain intact" problem.

 

This will not really work as you need to modify the .map file for it to really work.

 

The real way is to sep. the "modified map file plus all the base files plus the english strings" into the "FMNAME.pk4" file and all the string (for other languages) and material shaders and other language images into a "FMNAME_l10n.pk4" file. Just like the script automatically does.

 

That way:

 

* you can still play the base .pk4 file alone (it contains everything nec. for the english language)

* update the "FMNAME_l10n.pk4" file without again touching the base PK4 file (which also means the players only need to update that small file)

 

I really don't understand why the irrational fears of some authors (who don't even know how the system works) should influence the technical decision on how to make it work, or why we should come up with crazy workarounds just to satisfy their silly conditions.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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