[Luke]

Hi all

I don't want to "hijack" Matth's WCS Open Thread so i wrote my own thread.

In Matth's thread i saw some interesting improvements to WCS and i plan to add a few of this in our german translation mod. But only things i can do with the original WCS build. We must discuss this in the team, but first i need to know which of them we can add with the original WCS and how.

@X3N0-Life-Form
I read about your WCS upgrade archive, downloaded it and have done some tests on it. Very interesting.

Two things i want to add in our own project:

1. Mission goal tooltips (green text). That's nice. Is it possible to use this in every mission?
2. Skippable dialogs. I saw you use this at the main mission #3 first. Is it possible to add this feature in all missions? Also in the prologue? And: is there any danger for breaking the mission flow with this feature?

And i want to add another new feature:

3. In WCS after every mission the next mission will start automatically. For several reasons i don't want this. Is it possible that WCS returns to the flightdeck after a mission is completed and accepted? But not for all, only on specific missions.

[The E]

1. Mission goal tooltips (green text). That's nice. Is it possible to use this in every mission?

Yes. Just requires a lot of mission editing.

2. Skippable dialogs. I saw you use this at the main mission #3 first. Is it possible to add this feature in all missions? Also in the prologue? And: is there any danger for breaking the mission flow with this feature?

Also yes. Requires mission editing and bugtesting on top.

3. In WCS after every mission the next mission will start automatically. For several reasons i don't want this. Is it possible that WCS returns to the flightdeck after a mission is completed and accepted? But not for all, only on specific missions.

Nope, not gonna happen anytime soon. Reason being that this is not something FSO is set up to do. You could hack around it by splitting up the main campaign into separate chunks (after you complete a campaign, a return to the mainhall is automatic), but this is obviously very clunky.

In short, you definitely need someone who has or is willing to learn mission editing skills if you want to do this.

[Luke]

Nope, not gonna happen anytime soon. Reason being that this is not something FSO is set up to do. You could hack around it by splitting up the main campaign into separate chunks (after you complete a campaign, a return to the mainhall is automatic), but this is obviously very clunky.

Yeah. Ok, i remove this from my wish-list. Thx anyway. 

In short, you definitely need someone who has or is willing to learn mission editing skills if you want to do this.

"Someone" is me.  I learned the last months all what i need to integrate our complete translation in WCS plus a few little improvements, but not more. In this Video (german) i documented my current work on Prolog 1 as example. I changed all Fiction Viewer texts (horizontal limit), added the briefing-text-section (not available in original WCS) and fixed some problems with the german language like wrong text positions on the config screens etc. So if i want to change or add a detail, i learn what i need for it by testing or by asking. ^^

[The E]

For all tasks involving the mission editor, I strongly recommend following the original FRED tutorial (Or Diaspora's more recent version, if you do not have FS2 installed). Everything you need to know about basic mission editing is covered there.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

The E answered most of your questions already.
Regarding 1): Directive tooltips are very easy to add. If you look at the event editor in FRED, there are two textboxes underneath the event list, these allow you to add a directive text to an event and a tooltip that disappears when the event turns true or false.

Regarding 2): Dialgue skips aren't very difficult to implement, but are a bit tedious. Basically, you want to 'unroll' the message list event into a bunch of individual message event, each of these being played if a) the first message in the chain has been played and b) the player hasn't pressed the skip dialogue key - I used the warp out key for that (alt+J).
You need to reset your skip dialogue key at the beginning of a new list of message (using the key-reset-multiple SEXP), and possibly tell the player that s/he can skip the dialogue via a training message.
Finally, you need to insert an 'or' logical condition in the event that is supposed to be played at the end of the message list, one of the or's cue being the original event's cue. The other cue is that both the first message has been played and that the skip dialogue key has been pressed.

If you want to see what this looks like, look at, for instance, mission 20, the event M_Avatarr 1 to Moran 1 and each event chained to it and the Activate Nav 1 event, then compare it to the original mission 20.

If you want an overview of the what else has been modified, have a look at the TODO-list.ods spreadsheet, it should give you a list of generic modifications, modification ideas, per mission alterations and what dialogues are skippable, and possibly a bunch of silly comments .

I've added dialogue skips to all but a few missions at the end of the game, and tested most of those at least once (skips at the end of long missions are less likely to have been tested). So yeah, it would require a lot more testing before I'm confortable with making a "dialogue skip" release - nevermind the other stuff.

[karajorma]

One issue I have. Are you actually translating the mission files themselves? Cause that is a bad idea. FS2 has a built-in translation system and you should be using that instead.

[Luke]

First, thank you all for your help. 

@The E
Thx for the link to FRED tutorial, i will study it.

Btw, normaly i am edit the FS2 directly, i don't use FRED for it. Only if i need a feature that is not included in the FS2 i am using FRED. I have done this for the mission text briefing section as example.

Regarding 2): Dialgue skips aren't very difficult to implement, but are a bit tedious. Basically, you want to 'unroll' the message list event into a bunch of individual message event, each of these being played if a) the first message in the chain has been played and b) the player hasn't pressed the skip dialogue key - I used the warp out key for that (alt+J).

So if i understand correctly, if the player don't press the skip key combo at first message, all the messages in this group are played? Btw, Alt+J is fine for me, it's a good idea to use a key combo to skip the dialogue.

You need to reset your skip dialogue key at the beginning of a new list of message (using the key-reset-multiple SEXP), and possibly tell the player that s/he can skip the dialogue via a training message.
Finally, you need to insert an 'or' logical condition in the event that is supposed to be played at the end of the message list, one of the or's cue being the original event's cue. The other cue is that both the first message has been played and that the skip dialogue key has been pressed.

I will test it and as soon as i know how exactly i must build in this feature i will talk with the team (especially with the team leader) about this feature.

If you want an overview of the what else has been modified, have a look at the TODO-list.ods spreadsheet, it should give you a list of generic modifications, modification ideas, per mission alterations and what dialogues are skippable, and possibly a bunch of silly comments .

Can't open this. Is this an Open Office file?

One issue I have. Are you actually translating the mission files themselves? Cause that is a bad idea. FS2 has a built-in translation system and you should be using that instead.

With translation system you mean the text id's after the text in the XSTR command and their assignment to tstrings.tbl? If yes, then you are right, to use the FS2 files for translation is not the best idea, but:

1. WCS is finished, there will be no more updates for it. And WCS is very stable and the missions are also stable and finished at my point of view. So i see no problem to edit the FS2 files directly.
2. After the WCS patch all text id's are replaced with -1. So in this case i must first add new id's for absolutely every text and in every mission file. But if i do this, i can also insert the text at this place. It's exactly the same effort.
3. I like it if i have all what i need for one mission i have in one file. If i want to change/correct something, i need only this file. If i use the tstrings.tbl and if i want to correct something, it is very hard to read and to maintain.
4. In a perfect world a simple switch would toggle WCS (GUI) into german and all is fine. But, we don't live in a perfect world and so i must correct several things after toggling into german. So it is needed to edit every mission file and several TBL files.

[The E]

1. WCS is finished, there will be no more updates for it. And WCS is very stable and the missions are also stable and finished at my point of view. So i see no problem to edit the FS2 files directly.
2. After the WCS patch all text id's are replaced with -1. So in this case i must first add new id's for absolutely every text and in every mission file. But if i do this, i can also insert the text at this place. It's exactly the same effort.
3. I like it if i have all what i need for one mission i have in one file. If i want to change/correct something, i need only this file. If i use the tstrings.tbl and if i want to correct something, it is very hard to read and to maintain.
4. In a perfect world a simple switch would toggle WCS (GUI) into german and all is fine. But, we don't live in a perfect world and so i must correct several things after toggling into german. So it is needed to edit every mission file and several TBL files.

You are already editing the mission files, and for a full translation, you will have to edit the tables as well. So editing another table isn't that much extra work. By using the built-in translation abilities, you will make it easier for other translators to do the same work.

[Luke]

By using the built-in translation abilities, you will make it easier for other translators to do the same work.

I understand this.  But for this it's needed to edit every mission file to add the missing id's. And then i must create the tstrings.tbl with all this id's and text's. Generally i know how this works, but not exactly and this is not the point. The point is, if any other team wants to make their own translation this team must also edit every mission file because all id's was replaced by -1. So i can't see here the benefit for other teams. To create mission files other teams can use, we must build two collections of mission files: the german one with our specific changes and the original one only with id's added. Sorry, we have enough work to do with our own translation. And as i know, we are the only team working on a translation. And maybe another team wants to add other features or other corrections or wants to change other things like our team, then they must anyway edit the mission files.

If all missions would have already this id's, yes, then i would maybe work with tstrings.tbl. But at the current state i can't see here any benefit to our team or any other team, only more work.

[The E]

It's very, very simple.

In order to do a proper translation, you need to:
1. Build a catalog of all messages and strings that need to be translated
2. Index all these messages, and make sure that the indices are referenced in tables and mission files
3. Add translated variants of those messages.

By doing it your way, anyone who wishes to add a translation has to redo all the work you did. If you had done it properly, all it would take would be to look at tstrings.tbl and translate everything in there. You have a chance to save others a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort here.

Basically, from the perspective of someone who wants the FSO ecosystem to be as inclusive as possible, you're doing an admirable, but flawed job of translating the game, that with a tiny change in procedure could be much better.

[Luke]

1. Build a catalog of all messages and strings that need to be translated
2. Index all these messages, and make sure that the indices are referenced in tables and mission files

This is a lot of additional work and we lost the context for the texts. At the current state we must simply insert our texts in the XSTR string. And that's exactly the same other teams can do. In my eyes: very easy.

You have a chance to save others a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort here.

And it costs me a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort to do this. My free time is not as much as i wished.

I understand you and what you want and i respect your work and knowhow. But please also respect my point of view.

[karajorma]

You are aware that m|m wrote a program that will automatically parse all the missions and tables in a mod and spit out corrected versions of the files along with a tstrings.tbl you only need to edit, right? I'm not asking you to do all that stuff manually! I don't think the link works any more but I'm sure m|m would provide the file if asked for it.


As far as I'm concerned, a tstrings.tbl is much easier to edit than 50 missions + all the tables.

[Luke]

This sounds very interesting.  And you would laugh maybe, but in the last 10 minutes i thought about to write a tool like this after my discussion with The E.   But if there is already a tool for this job... great! I will play with it and if this works realy as designated, then yes, then i can use tstrings.tbl with not this much more work i said before.

[Luke]

Addition:

As far as I'm concerned, a tstrings.tbl is much easier to edit than 50 missions + all the tables.

To edit, yes. But not to translate. We have a full dialogue script for WCS. So our translators can see WHO have speak, this is very important. So i must add another point to my "disadvantages list":

5. The translator can not see from which character the sentence is.

And that's also the cause why it is much easier to translate directly the FS2 file if you have no dialogue script.

What we need is a tool like m!m's that can also add comments to the tstrings.tbl. Btw, is this possible? Comments in tstrings.tbl  i mean?

And another point: must i use a number for the id's (indices) or can i use whatever i want? My idea especialy for WCS is to use a special syntax for indices like:

CMMIIII

C = Campaign
MM = Mission number
IIII = Indices

So P020348 means:

P = Prologue
02 = Mission 2
0348 = Indices 348

Possible?

[karajorma]

You have to use numbers unfortunately. Adding comments to the table wouldn't be hard though. I'm sure the tool could be made to do that pretty easily in fact.

[Luke]

You have to use numbers unfortunately. Adding comments to the table wouldn't be hard though. I'm sure the tool could be made to do that pretty easily in fact.

Ok i test it. m!m sent me a download link.

But...

I found another case why using the tstrings.tbl is not the best solution for a translation: In all help overlays i must correct all text positions after translation. So for the help.tbl using indices to tstring.tbl is absolutely nonsensical!

[karajorma]

Yeah, that is an annoying issue. I can't do much about Wing Commander Saga but for other games it might be possible to allow the game to use indices from tstrings.tbl instead when dealing with a foreign language. I'll have to look into that at some later date.


My main issue however is with altering the mission files. If someone else ever releases an update/patch for WCS, all your hard work is undone.

[Luke]

My main issue however is with altering the mission files. If someone else ever releases an update/patch for WCS, all your hard work is undone.

Yes i read about that argument before.  But at my state of knowledge, this will not happen. ^^

Well, i will test m!m's tool. If this is what i am searching for, maybe we use tstrings.tbl. At the moment i don't like the tstrings.tbl because there would be only a massive amount of text without any context and info. And we had already done a lot of work for our translation project, on some points beginning by scratch, especially for the technical part. So the last word how we integrate our hard work is the decision of our translator team. We do the hard work, so we have the choice. At WCS release last year i never heard about FSO. ^^ I begun as WCS player.

[Dragon]

Note, it's likely that some missions will be changed as WCFSO expands (and I hope it does). It's a modification for WCS that can bring it up to speed with the latest FSO builds. It doesn't fully replicate the functionality of WCS builds yet, but it's just a few features away.

[MatthTheGeek]

At WCS release last year i never heard about FSO. ^^ I begun as WCS player.

That's exactly the point of WCSOpen. A lot of people discover WCS but don't discover FSO, which is both a loss for the players and for the community.

WCS has no future. FSO has a bright one.