Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: lars on April 23, 2010, 02:03:44 pm
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Hi everyone. I've been a follower of the WC games since I was a child. I recently discovered this FreeSpace conversion and I can only say I'm honestly surprised about how good work everybody in the crew has done. I think you're making a fantastic game, and I find amazing that you are willing to do it for free. Just congratulations.
Now, here is a question for the WC Saga development crew. Here at Spain, my natural country, Wing Commander stills being a very popular and well-known game. Unfortunately, this country has also on of the lowest leves of english knowledge (can you believe it). I was just wondering if you guys considered the possibility of doing translations to other languages. In its case, I'll kindly offer myself for helping you in this task.
Thanks again for the great job you're doing with this WC Saga conversion. ;)
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I don't know of an ongoing translation attempt on WCS, but due to the nature of FSO and WCS, nothing stops you from doing your own translation. The translation procedure consists pretty much of the following steps:
- get a .vp opening tool from the Wiki (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Category:Tools) (VPView, QuickVP or Maja)
- use the tool to open the .vp files that came with WCS and find a file called strings.tbl (it should be located in the \data\tables\ directory in one of the .vp files)
- extract strings.tbl from the .vp to a location of your choice
- use Notepad or equivalent to open strings.tbl and translate away
- save the changes
- place strings.tbl to \wcs\data\tables\ (create the directory if it doesn't exist).
That should do it in theory. And if it works, just get the file hosted somewhere, give us the link and then people can download it and use it by placing it to \wcs\data\tables\ , since that will make the game engine use the edited one instead of the one in the .vp files.
It is also an option to create a new .vp that contains the edited strings.tbl, and this would actually be easier for the end-users. But note that it must be in a completely new .vp. Don't try to cram edited files into the original .vp files unless you have backups AND you know what you're doing.
People who are more experienced with the translation procedure are free to comment on the matter.
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Given the efforts that were allready made to get just the Prologue properly translated and dubbed into German, I doubt a Spanish version of the main act of Saga would be realistic. Just let us get it done in English at all, right? :)
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I was just saying that (once WCS is finished and released, ) it is relatively easy for any player to pull out strings.tbl, translate it and use it. I'm completely ignoring the voice acting phase here, because it is indeed a huge load of work. I think it's awesome and quite enough if you can get WCS fully voice acted in English.
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Thanks a lot for your help. Of course, I wasn't thinking about including voices into my translation (at least not yet, ha). I think translating those subtitles will be enough.
I'll try to translate the Prologue texts by now. When the full game is released, and if it doesn't bothers you, I'll translate it as well and will send you a "spanish version" of the strings.tbl file.
Just thanks again to both of you, Jeff and Arrow. We'll keep in touch.
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As Jeff allready stated, it´s quite a load of work but your´re most welcome to start. You should definitely find someone to assist you, at least if you´re planning to translate the five fictional story chapters, too. It took me almost a year to get those done.
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Yes, it's quite a lot of work and I couldn't say when will be it finished. Of course I have thought about those fictional chapters; I find those stories pretty interesting and would be nice to have them translated into spanish.
Now here's another question, if you pardon me... I would also like to translate the Prologue mission texts. I mean all those debriefings, all lines that Sandman, Baws and company say during missions... but I don't know where are those texts. Can you help me about it?
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They're in the mission files (if you open the vp files, the .fs2 files in the data/missions/ directory). They are simple text files that you can edit using a text editor of your choice.