New Horizons(ver 14.0920) Translation Project

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 21, 2014 11:27     Заголовок сообщения:


I was wondering if there might be copyright issues or something. The vanilla game is still sold on Steam and GOG, so "giving away" a full game that's even better is not exactly... fair.
I am not aware of who owns what rights, and I'm not even sure about the legal aspects of the NH mod's creation and distribution, but I would imagine it may be important down the line to NOT distribute the full game, but keep it a mod, still needing a copy of the original game to work. Correct me if I'm wrong. Could one of the original modders chip in on this issue?

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 21, 2014 11:46     Заголовок сообщения:


Would you believe that I asked the same question?
http://eador.com/B2/viewtopic.php?p=220909#220909
I agree that it's a grey area to post the full game.

But can you write a binary patcher for Eador.exe, and for the dat files?
Because the text files are the EASY part!
And including the full text files does not circumvent the copyright issue...

Regards.

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 21, 2014 22:42     Заголовок сообщения:


Take a look at these files
http://eador.online.fr/dat-en.7z

Interface/butt_del_active.bmp
Interface/butt_del_disabled.bmp
Interface/butt_del_passive.bmp
Interface/Menu.bmp
Stuff/logo_eador.bmp
Stuff/logo_eador_shadow.bmp
Stuff/logo_genesis.bmp
Stuff/logo_genesis_shadow.bmp

Regards.

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 21, 2014 23:28     Заголовок сообщения:


Thanks, Boon, but I had found all of these already and had replaced them with new English versions already. That part is now complete.

I've finished with dialog.var and have started debugging. So far so good. I am taking it slow, adding one English file at a time to be able to easily track what goes wrong and where.

To that effect, it would be helpful for me to have a saved game in which someone is in the middle of a campagn, with some other masters, so I can also test the diplomacy part.

Thanks...

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 22, 2014 7:03     Заголовок сообщения:


Most recent (and most advanced) campaign savegame I have: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iffzlesxxtscgi9/Campain%20most%20recent.7z?dl=0
Just use the "return to the astral" option - many other masters are already present. In case you want to test astral diplomacy with ALL masters I guess you will have to play a shard or two yourself

Probably your best source:
Preshard selection in the astral with other masters and on campaign shards in different game stages
SHARD 05-17 https://www.dropbox.com/s/qm0v26rk9eqittr/Campaign%20Shards.2.7z?dl=0
SHARD 18-22 https://www.dropbox.com/s/61odqkou55mqskj/Campaign%20Shards.7z?dl=0

Potentially helpful from the bug thread e.g.
SHARD 23 (?): https://www.dropbox.com/s/atyl77zz8o1c1tb/Centaur%20Mage.7z?dl=0
SHARD 25 (?): https://www.dropbox.com/s/cjzfifp2c5zhbc7/extra%20spells.7z?dl=0

Please let me know if you need more campaign savegames

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 22, 2014 11:07     Заголовок сообщения:


Vielen Dank, Bayrische Bube!

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 22, 2014 23:07     Заголовок сообщения:

Hi folks! This is my saturday night update, and I'm in a jolly good mood!

Yesterday I started debugging, and I'm still at it, and what a joy! I'm using bavarian kid's saved games to test the various files. It's great to see all those new spells and units in all their full glory. I can't wait to finally really start playing with it.

This is what I've been doing: just to make sure I would miss as little as possible, I started with the completely Russian version and then added one English file at a time, from tiny to huge...

I'm still very much in the middle of it, although I did get quite a bit done as well. I was surprised by how many bugs still managed to sneak into the proceedings.

Well, to my defense, because of how the TM works in suggesting sentences, it's quite easy to miss a # here and there in those thousands of lines, either in the original or the translation. This means that it has been almost inevitable that at times either a hash was missing where there should be one, or there was one where there shouldn't be. And then I still discovered some sneaky alignment issues, where a hash ended up in the answer of a dialog, rather than at the end of the question. All in all, I've managed to sort most files out. If I can find the time tomorrow, and that depends on the weather and my girlfriend I'll complete debugging the last 3 remaining huge files, both unit.var and unit.txt and the humongous dialog.var. Or now that I think about it, maybe I will just do all the still outstanding translations in those files first, at least the ones I am able to do, and then debug them.

I also still have a strange problem with the spells and abilities. The hashes seem to work okay, at least after some fixes, because all descriptions seem to be working, but it seems that they are somehow not properly "aligned", meaning that the lower numbers work, but with the newer entries, I guess from a certain faulty entry onwards, the description doesn't match the name (and picture) anymore. So it seems the var files are allocating properly, because the names fit the pictures, but somehow something goes wrong with the spell and ability text files matching up to the appropriate entry.

I'll give it another try, hopefully tomorrow, and if I can't find it I will take you up on your offer, Boon, and ask you for some assistance. I'll let you know if and when it's needed.

This is so exciting! All that hard work the last weeks is finally about to pay off! YAY!!!!

Добавлено: Пн Ноя 24, 2014 1:09     Заголовок сообщения:

Sunday night update: I didn't have that much time today, but still managed to complete all the what I would call "first stage" debugging. This means that everything now seems to work fine, when I just load up some of the saved games bavarian kid kindly donated. I managed to solve the issue with the spell and ability files. It was nothing mysterious actually. It was just a matter of misplaced hashes really. If the number of errors is uneven, anything after the error just shows the number and name. If the number of errors is even, the texts get shifted up. In both cases I still had two errors in each file, and it took me quite a bit to spot them.

Fortunately the game itself provides error reporting on the campaign-dialog.var and dialog.var files, including item numbers, so that was really helpful. Those files are so huge, that it would have taken me ages to spot misplaced hashes and especially semi-colons just by skimming through the files manually.

Now I just need to start playing around a bit. Errors in files like effects and upgrade only show themselves during combat, and I haven't done any of that yet.

Tomorrow I will also start on the still to be done translations of unit.txt and dialog.var, alternating that with some game play testing. I may not be able to do ALL of the translations. Some of them are really hard to make sense of for a non-Russian speaker, so I'll do what I can, but at some point I will need some help. Kettarienne? Drakon? I'll set up some kind of color coded system again. I'll start with unit.txt from the top and after I've done a segment, will mark the imho good enough translations in green, to be checked translations in yellow, and not yet / to be translated bits in red.

Release is getting closer....

Добавлено: Ср Ноя 26, 2014 11:51     Заголовок сообщения:

Wednesday morning update (was too distracted by the Alkari and Screett last night and it was too late by the time I was finished ): all is slowly proceeding... Kettarienne and I have been translating the remaining new units for the last two days, and they're almost done. Then it's just the last few remaining new dialogues to translate, which will take another day or two.

In the meantime, I've been testing and debugging... tutorial works, effects work, GOG version works, most things work... but I still managed to find 10 bugs yesterday, most of them not really bugs, but spelling mistakes, but still also some real errors, like at the big upgrade track at level 10, in which the titles and texts of the 4 career options were mixed up somehow. We're getting there though.

By the time we're done with the translations, debugging should be at a stage, at which a release is possible.

Thinking ahead, this is what I plan to do, and let me know if that's a bad idea:

I'd like to keep the current thread (but unstick it) as an ongoing translation thread, in which people can report language based errors, like spelling, grammar, repeating words or sentences, term suggestions, etc.

I think we should create a separate release thread, in which only the version releases should be placed, stick it and making it closed for further posts and comments, for the sake of clarity, so visitors can easily find and download the latest release. I'm sure that a 2.1 version will be needed immediately after the release of 2.0, after the bug reports will have come in.

On that topic, I think a separate thread just for bug reporting would be useful too, the real ones: texts displaying in the wrong places or not at all, dialogues that look weird and might have been mixed up, etc. As far as I've been able to see, the var files have their own debugging mechanism, because the game engine parses them upon loading. Because of the nature of the translation process I've been using, there were hardly any errors in the var files to begin with. This is because all the numbers with their special separating characters were automatically "translated", not typed in manually. This means that weird bugs of spells or units not working as they should will most probably not appear. It will be more like text based bugs, and I think I've already ironed out a lot of them, at least most of the major ones. Anyway, we'll see how good a job I've done...

Do you guys have space on your own server to host the releases? Or should I use an external file sharing website? I've set up an account at Mega, but I'm not sure yet if that will work well and is user friendly enough. I would prefer not using one of those sites where you're pushed to sign up for a paid account, and the download speed is slowed to a crawl when you're not. Any suggestions?

Добавлено: Ср Ноя 26, 2014 12:33     Заголовок сообщения:

We have used cloud services akin to googledocs for Russian releases.
_________________
Phenomenal self as such is not an epistemically justified form of mental content.

Добавлено: Ср Ноя 26, 2014 15:17     Заголовок сообщения:


Okay, that's a good idea. I'll just use the same Satshanti Google account I set up for the collaborative translation work we're doing.

Добавлено: Ср Ноя 26, 2014 23:06     Заголовок сообщения:

I plan on hosting a self-contained release on eador.online.fr

Добавлено: Ср Ноя 26, 2014 23:46     Заголовок сообщения:

Sat,

Sorry about not finishing translating the "Iron Golem" and Colossus units. I got discouraged when I got bogged down by what I felt were redundancies and incoherence in some of the original descriptions (add the fact that these are non-essential to gameplay). I started rewriting them to my own taste, but then I took a step back, and considered that this might upset the original authors. Once you publish the final translation, I will consider making a proper fork, with my own stuff, separate from the "official" translation.

Regards.

Добавлено: Чт Ноя 27, 2014 0:25     Заголовок сообщения:


Hey Boon, that's okay! I do understand your position too. You had already put a lot of time into creating the version based on Google translations. You must have spent hours trying to figure out how to best parse the files and populate them with the English translations. And then as soon as you've managed to create a working version, with which one can still play, at least us experienced players I come along with the offer to make your work redundant. So my apologies for that.

It's just that for me as a linguist, the descriptions, events and dialogues do add a lot of atmosphere to the game, and the bad Google translation detracted from that a lot. All the way in the beginning I had estimated I would be finished with this translation project within two weeks. Now it's almost been a month already, so it took me quite a bit longer.

Still, a lot has been done. Just a few more days... hopefully the release will happen this weekend. I managed to solve the last major bug with the upgrade tree today, and all seems to run well. Despite having had to "upstage" you in a way, I think it's all been worth it, not just because we'll have a really good English version soon, but also because with a next release, hardly any work will need to be done. All the work that's been done now, will not have to be done again. The translation software will do it all for me.

So thank you for all you've contributed, creating your own version, and helping out with this one.

And thank you too, Kettarienne, for your continued help, and all the great pieces you've written, especially for the Alkari. They are really good, and fit very well with the excellent work Drakon's team has done last year.

Okay, anyone else to thank?

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 28, 2014 11:55     Заголовок сообщения:

Friday morning update: things are on schedule. Kettarienne and I have moved on to the remaining dialogs, which I expext to be finished with today. That means all translations will finally be done! YAY !!!

As far as I can see now, debugging has reached a stage at which a release is imminent. I'm sure it's still not a 100% perfect, but I'm positive all major bugs have been ironed out by now.

I did notice something yesterday while playing and testing, which had not occurred to me before, which is that the dialog answers don't wrap, so they shouldn't be too long, otherwise they will be cut of by the frame edges. but the main text of the dialog does wrap. So I assume it's caused by the game engine itself. Is that correct? That's quite important, of course, because if this is the case, I'll have to quickly go through all the new dialogues and make sure the answers are short enough, which is a pity because English just takes up more space than Russian. If this is an inherent and unavoidable issue, does anyone know the character limit? How many characters can I safely use. If nobody has an answer ready I can just count them myself in the game.

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 29, 2014 15:14     Заголовок сообщения:

New Horizons v14.0920 ENG v2.0 will be released within the next few hours.

I did some last minute culling of certain pieces of text yesterday night, notably the dialog answers, but also the dungeon guards that can only have 17 characters to fit into their boxes.

After the last test runs this morning, all things are looking good. Now I just need to upload the large ZIP-file and write up some accompanying texts.

If anybody's up for it, could someone write a short piece of text with an overview of the main additions and improvements of v14.0920 vs v13.0421. I have not yet been able to play with either long enough to get a sense of that myself. Just a few sentences would be enough, just to give us English-speaking gamers an idea of what has changed since Drakon's version 1.5.

Thanks in advance, and.... be back soon!

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 29, 2014 16:09     Заголовок сообщения:

Hard to trace everythng through all the updates, but luckily, I was working with Jazz closely from nearly that time, so I'll just list the biggest things I remember myself or others doing.

3 races (Dwarves, Alkari, Dark Elves) fully reworked.
Hundreds of new images and visual improvements, including the models for all the hero subclasses.
New music pack from the composer of original Eador.
Several hundred of new event and dialogs.
Nearly a hundred of new neutral armies, suited for different playstyles.
Dozens of new combat abilities for units both old and new.
Dozens of new sites and encounters.
Many new spells and item sets.
Several new buildings and rituals.
Countless improvements to balance.
Countless improvements to game lore and universe logic.
Nearly every alliance quest reworked for consistency.
Campaign balance and flow improved.
Countless bugs and mistakes fixed.
_________________
Phenomenal self as such is not an epistemically justified form of mental content.

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 29, 2014 17:26     Заголовок сообщения:

Thanks, Ket, that was the last piece I had been waiting for, arriving just in time..

I've created a seperate release thread HERE

If one of the moderators could maybe unstick this translation thread, and stick the release thread in stead, that would be great!

I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as I definitely will.

Добавлено: Пт Dec 05, 2014 3:01     Заголовок сообщения:

Quick question for modders:

In encounter.var for example entry 690 is

/690 Тайная лощина, заселить
Type: 0
Possibility: 0
Dialog: 0
DlgParam1: 0
DlgParam2: 0
Attacker: 0
EncWin: 0
EncLose: 0
EncDraw: 0
Karma: 1

*Answers*:
Answer1: 0;

*Effects*:
Index: 28
Power: 63
Param1: 0
Param2: 0;

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, Power: 63 points to entry 63 in site.var
Is that correct?
What does Index: 28 point to???

/63
Name: Picturesque Valley;
MinLevel: 0
MaxLevel: 12
Guarded: 0
Place: 2
Event: 2
Dialog: 0
Encounter: 688
Treasure: 0
Coastal: 0
WorkHide: 0
WorkGuard: 0
WorkFree: 1
CanEnter: 0
SelfDestroy: 0

Terrain:
Plain: 0
Forest: 0
Hill: 0
Swamp: 0
Desert: 0
Tundra: 0

Guards:
Guard: 0
Poss: 1;

Ability:
Ability: 19
Param1: 1
Param2: 0

Ability: 7
Param1: 1
Param2: 0;

What do these "Ability" (19 and 7) point to???
Should be "Population mood" and "Population growth" but I can't locate them...

Regards.

Добавлено: Пт Dec 05, 2014 6:39     Заголовок сообщения:

Those indexes are hardcoded. They were somewhat described in Russian by game creator himself, English translation can be found on GOG furums. It's quite old, and some extra functions have been added by now, so feel free to ask me, if you can't find something there.
_________________
Phenomenal self as such is not an epistemically justified form of mental content.