Will all strings be editable?

[Gramphos]

I hate to play games with badly made translations, and as I suppose that Civ 3 will be translated to Swedish, as most computergames nowadays are, I have to ask if I'll be able to change any bad translation, if something is badly made.

So far I've only played one game with perfect translation, The Sims. To that can be added two or three almost perfect translated games but some less annoying things, as missing spaces after periods and incorrect terms. Thereto comes some games with acceptable translation, but some more annoying things as swapped characters, incorrect grammar or, the most annoying thing: Strings that are to long to fit in the space allocated for them in the game, as in Settlers IV where 'Wodcutters Hut' is translated with 'Timmerhuggarens Barrack', and the only thing you se when you have that building selected is 'mmerhuggarens Barrac'. After that we have the worst category of translated games, the one with many small errors, inconsequent translations and missing things that make some things impossible to understand. As an example to that category I can give RollerCoaster Tycoon. The same things were translated different in the different add-ons, and inconsequence is unable to miss.

There are also some good translated games with Swedish voices, which notice when something is wrong in the translation.

Now to my question:
Will I be able to edit the strings in Civ 3 if I'm disappointed by something?

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Re: Will all strings be editable?

Originally posted by Gramphos
Now to my question:
Will I be able to edit the strings in Civ 3 if I'm disappointed by something?

Yes. All text strings are stored in text files. (This makes it easier for the translators to access the text and easier for the programmers who don't have to rebuild the whole game when text is changed).

[heardie]

Re: Re: Will all strings be editable?

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS


Yes. All text strings are stored in text files. (This makes it easier for the translators to access the text and easier for the programmers who don't have to rebuild the whole game when text is changed).

[Gramphos]

This is great, I got an answer from a Firaxian in 10 minutes!
Everything is as I hoped so far.
In Civ 2 you couldn't edit the order of strings, and Civilopedia. Will these parts be editable in Civ 3?

[imgod2u]

Does it matter? Most people speak English anyway, either as a second language or have studied it. And the majority of those who don't usually can't afford the game anyway.
Translations have been some of the things that have held back games a lot. Many games don't have generated language instead of pre-written messages because of the developers are worried about translation into other languages.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by imgod2u
Does it matter? Most people speak English anyway, either as a second language or have studied it. And the majority of those who don't usually can't afford the game anyway.
Translations have been some of the things that have held back games a lot. Many games don't have generated language instead of pre-written messages because of the developers are worried about translation into other languages.

I've nothing against playing a game in English, but I'm against playing badly translated games. And more games comes only with one language nowadays.

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Gramphos
In Civ 2 you couldn't edit the order of strings, and Civilopedia. Will these parts be editable in Civ 3?

You will be able to edit the civilopedia (and will probably have/want to if you start modifying things that have entries). I'm not sure why you would need to edit the order of strings but you can do so to some degree. Some of the text is in a fixed order and must remain that way. The text strings for various improvements, techs, units, etc. are not in a fixed order but lists of strings (such as button captions) are usually in a fixed order. However, you may need to use the editing tools to modify strings associated with the improvements, techs, units, etc. as they will probably not be stored in text files.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm really happy to hear that the Civilopedia wil be editable.

[Henrik]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS

However, you may need to use the editing tools to modify strings associated with the improvements, techs, units, etc. as they will probably not be stored in text files.

This is interesting.
I only hope that those editors will be ported to the mac, I can make civ 2 scenarios whit my mac and PC people are able to play them.
But in some games the editors are two "windowsish" and the editors are never ported
Could you atleast try to make them so that they will be portable for other systems than windows (since I am no programer I am not really sure what this means)?

[Henrik]

I will be able to play scenarios made by people using PCs and I will be able to make scenarios for them too (and the macers ofcourse )
Sounds good

As long as both are using the same kind of files this will work fine (in civ 2 the scenario and text files are the same but single player save games where different and couldn't be loaded on the other platform).


Edit:
How did my reply end up before your post?

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS
I'm not sure why you would need to edit the order of strings but you can do so to some degree.

If the game is translated in an almost good way, I won’t need to do that. But some things have different orders in Swedish then in English.
I.E. 'AD 2001' would in Swedish be '2001 e.Kr.' where the order of string and variable is changed. This couldn't be changed in Civ 2.
There are other things like that, and in most of the time it is where any variables is added that is interesting.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Henrik
How did my reply end up before your post?

The same happened to me, it has something to do with the server downtime and incorrect time.

(The posts are sorted after post-time, and when the clock changes so are the entry of the posts.)

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Henrik
I only hope that those editors will be ported to the mac, I can make civ 2 scenarios whit my mac and PC people are able to play them.
But in some games the editors are two "windowsish" and the editors are never ported
Could you atleast try to make them so that they will be portable for other systems than windows (since I am no programer I am not really sure what this means)?

Since we will not be doing the Mac port ourselves, I can't say what they will or won't be porting. However, the documentation for the tool I am using to make the editor states:
"Code written using MFC is highly portable to the Macintosh. Code written to MFC should recompile and execute correctly on the Macintosh with very few, if any, changes. C++ code generated by Microsoft Visual C++ should present no problems. "
Protability and ease-of-use were the two biggest concerns we had when deciding on how to create the editor and I'm confident that we have addressed both more than adequately.

[Gramphos]

Mike. Don't worry. I've no use of reorder a menu, only the order of variables and strings.

(I post this in case that you miss the post over your post.)

[Henrik]

Then I will repost this too:

I will be able to play scenarios made by people using PCs and I will be able to make scenarios for them too (and the macers ofcourse )
Sounds good

As long as both are using the same kind of files this will work fine (in civ 2 the scenario and text files are the same but single player save games where different and couldn't be loaded on the other platform).