Translating the TDM GUI

[Tels]

I wouldn't bother with the blurred text. It looks perfectly fine with the simple dropshadow you first posted.

 

Hm, yeah, but the glow-font had already be produced - it was about 10mins work with Gimp - if everything was so easy in i18n work (I'll need to turn that the tutorial into a wiki-article). And it looks a bit better. Of course, the old drop-shadow would be available, too.

 

@Springheel:

 

Here are three versions of the reworked main menu. They "work" the same (e.g. the text fades in at the start, you can hightlight and click the buttons), they just look ever so slightly different, and are translatable.

 

What is your opinion, can we change to this, or does it need more work?

 

 

For comparisation, here is the original with bitmaps:

 

[Springheel]

I think the difference is fairly minimal. Though the "Q" in Quit looks quite cut off at the bottom. Assuming that's just an issue with the size of the windowdef, I don't have a problem with changing them to text.

[Tels]

I think the difference is fairly minimal. Though the "Q" in Quit looks quite cut off at the bottom. Assuming that's just an issue with the size of the windowdef, I don't have a problem with changing them to text.

 

Thanx, and well spotted, the window defs were just a few pixels to short Already corrected them. I'll post when I've completed the conversion.

[STiFU]

Incredible work Tels! Very nice!!

 

I am not sure about the German translation of "credits" though. Something like "Mitwirkende" would be me preference...

[7upMan]

Tels' preliminary translation is good enough. I'm going through his translation and the missing strings as we speak, and I have no plans to change this particular string.

Edited July 11, 2011 by 7upMan

[ECHELON]

Very cool work.

 

2 questions:

 

-the gifs "available missions", "start this mission", "uninstall", "refresh list", "objectives" etc, have been converted into strings?

 

-

 

2-In any FM and also in training, if I select the Italian language, the keyboard is also set in Italian, but this way I can't in any way use keys with a chest. If I put in English, the keys work.

 

Have you found a solution?

[STiFU]

Tels' preliminary translation is good enough. I'm going through his translation and the missing strings as we speak, and I have no plans to change this particular string.

Well, I'm just sayin'. I have never seen a translation like that in any game if I remember correctly and "Abspann" is more of a "end credits" kind of thing to me, so it's supposed to be played after the game has been completed and so far I have never seen the credits roll after finishing an FM.

[Tels]

Well, I'm just sayin'. I have never seen a translation like that in any game if I remember correctly and "Abspann" is more of a "end credits" kind of thing to me, so it's supposed to be played after the game has been completed and so far I have never seen the credits roll after finishing an FM.

 

I agree, "Mitwirkende" is the proper translation and I like it - my focus was on providing the code, not the translation, and I simply could not think of a different word for Credits.

[Tels]

Very cool work.

 

2 questions:

 

-the gifs "available missions", "start this mission", "uninstall", "refresh list", "objectives" etc, have been converted into strings?

 

No, not yet (and I haven't updated the package on bloodgate.com yet). Will transform the complete GUI first, but it is a lot of work!

 

Have you found a solution?

 

Have not had time to look into this. Tracked it so it's not forgotten: http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2804

[New Horizon]

Looking really good.

[Springheel]

Thanx, and well spotted, the window defs were just a few pixels to short Already corrected them. I'll post when I've completed the conversion.

 

It's still a little bit cut off at the bottom. Also, the menu says "Resume Game" on startup, rather than Load/Save.

 

Also, what happened to the fading? I thought you said you'd found a way to fade in text, but right now they just pop in.

[Tels]

It's still a little bit cut off at the bottom. Also, the menu says "Resume Game" on startup, rather than Load/Save.

 

Also, what happened to the fading? I thought you said you'd found a way to fade in text, but right now they just pop in.

 

Please forgive me the sloppy check-in, I had to save my work to SVN - last night I almost destroyed my work by copying the wrong file over

 

The "Resume Game" is probably because I wanted to make shared definitions for the main menu and the main menu in game and mixed something up. Easily fixed.

 

The cut-off I am not sure, but will test, it is a simple one line change in mainmenu_defs.gui.

 

The fading is a bit buggy, I am on it. (Text can/does fade properly, but I might have made mistaked transcribing all the little definitions for it).

 

I'll work more on it tonight.

[Mortem Desino]

So far, so good! The scale of this project is quite daunting.

[Tels]

It's still a little bit cut off at the bottom. Also, the menu says "Resume Game" on startup, rather than Load/Save.

 

Spring, I have fixed both of these issues. What you still might see is that the "glow" text" is cutoff in some places. That is because whoever (or whatever tool) made the font for D3, included only the strictly nec. pixels to render the letter (and then some, for whatever reason). I am not sure why it was important to save to render a few font pixels, but its this way. So when I made the glow font, there is not enough pixels rendered for some letters.

 

This can be changed, of course, but it is a lot of work. And since we need a new font with Umlauts anyway, I am postponing this to fix such a minor cosmetic issue at this moment.

 

Also, what happened to the fading? I thought you said you'd found a way to fade in text, but right now they just pop in.

 

I looked and the fade is there, it uses the same values as before. But it is very fast, 400 ms (0.4 seconds) to fade on line of text in, and each line of text starts to fade 50ms after the previous one. So after roughly 0.5 s everything is over.

 

I guess that was what New Horizon talked about when he said it was made faster?

 

We can surely make it longer, I just need some authorative answer on what time (and spacing) to use.

[Springheel]

I'll check it over, thanks.

 

I looked and the fade is there, it uses the same values as before. But it is very fast, 400 ms (0.4 seconds) to fade on line of text in, and each line of text starts to fade 50ms after the previous one. So after roughly 0.5 s everything is over.

 

Hmm, it didn't look like it was fading to me, but maybe that was because of the timing change and I didn't really look at it closely before. I'll do a quick comparison to make sure.

[Tels]

I have looked into replacing the other buttons in the menu, but it seems there is a never-ending stream of "problems" . The buttons like "Main Menu", "Restart game" etc all use a more bold version of the Carleton font. Thus placing a normal text next to them looks not quite right.

 

So I created a bold version of carleton and committed it, and then replaced the buttons with this:

 

 

Top row: Normal carleton. The Glow version (left) looks ok, the non-glow (right) is a bit thin (compare to the original button "Restart game" on the lower-left corner).

 

Middle row: Left: Original Restart button, glow. Right: New glow button with bold white and red glow (looks too bold/blurry to me)

Bottom row: Left: Original Restart button, non-glow. Right: New non-glow button with bold black. Looks fine to me.

 

 

The problem here is that we can only have either the top row, or the two lower right/middle right versions, unless I make a "triple windowDef" defintion (e.g. a non-glow variant consisting of WindowDef1 (glow invisible) and WindowDef2 normal (bold normal visible), and WindowDef3 (white non-bold glow invisible).

 

-------------------------------------

Edit:

(Unless D3 accepts changing the font of a WindowDef dynamically...need to test).

 

No, it can't be changed at runtime, rats!

 

http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Font_%28GUI_item_property%29

 

So I opted for the "triple WindowDef" workaround. It works, and thanks to nested #define's, it is only 6 or so lines more text...

End of edit.

-------------------------------------

 

Anyway, even if not perfect, but comes close. And we can always replace the font later. (We need to add the accented characters, anyway)

 

Now I finally can look into rewriting all these GUI files...

[Tels]

Progress report:

 

* committed the "glow" and "bold" versions of carleton

* converted the main menu to text

* converted the "in game" main menu to text

* converted the settings menu "Main Menu" and "Restart Game" button to text, plus moved the settings a bit to make more room for text

 

Now to convert all the other menus Please watch this space

[ECHELON]

 

 

 

Have not had time to look into this. Tracked it so it's not forgotten: http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2804

 

I wanted to add one thing, for when you fix this problem.

It seems that the problem is not the name of the object, such as "chest key." If I translate the name into the "chiave dello scrigno," and leave the GUI in English, it makes me open the chest. But if I activate the gui in Italian, then the problem reoccurs.

I think the problem depends on the keyboard, which changes depending on the language of the GUI.

p.s. this problem, in my opinion, is one of the most serious, whereas there is virtually no mission can end up with the GUI translated.

---------------------

However, great job for the gifs conversion.

Edited July 15, 2011 by ECHELON

[Tels]

I wanted to add one thing, for when you fix this problem.

It seems that the problem is not the name of the object, such as "chest key." If I translate the name into the "chiave dello scrigno," and leave the GUI in English, it makes me open the chest. But if I activate the gui in Italian, then the problem reoccurs.

I think the problem depends on the keyboard, which changes depending on the language of the GUI.

p.s. this problem, in my opinion, is one of the most serious, whereas there is virtually no mission can end up with the GUI translated.

 

Ah, have you tried "rebinding" key (on the keyboard) to use things? If you go to settings, select the key to "use things from inventory" and then press the one on the keyboard, does it work afterwards? I remember that I have a similiar problem with the german keyboard, the default bindings for cycling through the inventory never work after a D3 restart and I have to bind them anew every time.

 

However, great job for the gifs conversion.

 

It's still a long way, but at least we are making progress.

[ECHELON]

Ah, have you tried "rebinding" key (on the keyboard) to use things? If you go to settings, select the key to "use things from inventory" and then press the one on the keyboard, does it work afterwards? I remember that I have a similiar problem with the german keyboard, the default bindings for cycling through the inventory never work after a D3 restart and I have to bind them anew every time.

 

 

I just tried resetting the controls does not work either. I also tried the German version, and does the same issue of the Italian version. It seems that only the GUI in English make it work keys / picks, regardless of whether they are translated.

[Tels]

I just tried resetting the controls does not work either. I also tried the German version, and does the same issue of the Italian version. It seems that only the GUI in English make it work keys / picks, regardless of whether they are translated.

 

Hm, ok, I will take a look. But not before Sunday

 

Btw, there is a button (in the menu "New Game" down left) that reads in English "Restart Game" - but in Italian "Riavvia la missione". Doesn't that mean "Restart the mission" instead? Google says it should be "Riavviare il gioco", but I have no idea if that is correct

[ECHELON]

Hm, ok, I will take a look. But not before Sunday

 

 

ok.

 

Btw, there is a button (in the menu "New Game" down left) that reads in English "Restart Game" - but in Italian "Riavvia la missione". Doesn't that mean "Restart the mission" instead? Google says it should be "Riavviare il gioco", but I have no idea if that is correct

 

Yes, my error.

I thought "restart game" string was in game, like Thief 2, so i translated "Riavvia la Missione", but it's correct "Riavvia il Gioco".

 

However, Google translate is a shame.

[Tels]

ok.

 

 

 

Yes, my error.

I thought "restart game" string was in game, like Thief 2, so i translated "Riavvia la Missione", but it's correct "Riavvia il Gioco".

 

Ok, fixed it

 

However, Google translate is a shame.

 

LOL yeah, I wouldn't know the difference, tho - its all foreign gibberish to me

[Tels]

Progress report:

 

Converting the GUI with the bitmaps => strings is quite a lot of work, because:

 

* Often there are untranslated strings and need to add them, and sometimes even fix the code first

* the bitmaps only cover the nec. space, but the text buttons need to be as wide as possible for foreign languages

* converting everything to use defined maros as much as possible takes time

 

E.g.

 

visible         1
text            "OK"
forecolor       0,0,0,1
textscale       0.32
textalign       1
font            "fonts/carleton"

 

becomes:

 

MM_BUTTON_OK

 

where this uses common definitions defined as

 

#define NORMAL_COLOR            0,0,0,0.90

#define MM_BUTTON_FONTSCALE             0.32

#define MM_NORMAL_FONT          "fonts/carleton"

// a shortcut for the often-used buttons
#define MM_BUTTON               visible 1 forecolor NORMAL_COLOR textscale MM_BUTTON_FONTSCALE textalign 1 font MM_NORMAL_FONT

#define MM_BUTTON_OK            MM_BUTTON text "#str_07188"

 

This makes changing things later much much more easier.

 

So here is how it stands now:

 

* New game (one of the most very complex GUIs with a lot of msg boxes and buttons): 98% (2 buttons remaining)

* Load/Save game (90% (4 or so buttons remaining)

* Settings (80% (The "tab" buttons are left to do, and right-aligning all the settings texts)

* Credits (100%)

* Quit game (100%)

* Main menu objectives (98% - the headline and 2 buttons remaining)

* Shop (98% - some buttons remaining)

 

Additionally for the in game menu:

 

* Resume game (100%)

* Quit mission (100%)

* Objectvies (100% for the one with "O", 3 buttons remaining for the one reachable from the menu (is the same as the main menu)

 

 

So in a few days I will make a new package for the translators, with the list of the new/missing strings, and to test the changes out for real. Please stay tuned

 

Here are two teasers, with the two missing buttons marked in red:

 

[Mortem Desino]

Brilliant! Nice work, Tels. You've got a lot more patience for the GUI system than I do.