Klei, Please Update POT File Strings

[Salsa]

Hello, I've been doing the game localization to Brazilian Portuguese since way before the original game released on Steam. I was wondering if you guys could update the strings.pot file. The latest version dates April 24th, however, certain character-quote and UI strings are missing entirely. The news table on the main menu, the Pyro and Wigfrid quotes, and some of WX78 interactions are good examples.

 

I've noticed that there's a new prefix mechanic now. How any chance you guys could make a mod to invert the position and actually make them suffixes for latin-based languages?

 

Finally, it's been well over a year and you guys haven't found a fix for the Belissa Plumilla font and the fact that it's not compatible with ASCII accentuation. Any ETA on that?

 

Thanks for your attention, keep up the great work!

[SethR]

Hey Salsa, thanks so much for your localization work! Not all characters have inspection strings for all the new items and states yet. However, it seems like there's an issue where the new strings aren't getting included in the new .pot file for some reason. I'll certainly look into that. One thing I didn't understand: what do you mean by "news table on the main menu"? I want to make sure we give you all the tools you need!

 

As for the prefix thing, I could easily expose a variable that when set to false would make the SMOLDERINGITEM, WITHEREDITEM, and WET_PREFIX strings be suffixes as opposed to prefixes. My main concern with this is that it's not actually granular enough control? It's been several years since I studied Spanish and that is my only experience with foreign languages: would changing them all to be suffixes actually be what is desired (and be desired for all latin-based languages)? If a wholesale switch to suffixes is in fact the answer, I'm happy to make the change. If not, you might have to make a mod that does it. If you don't have the tools to do so, let us know and we'll make sure we address that.

 

As for the ASCII accentuation, I'm not sure if we'll be able to address the issue, off the top of my head. I'll add it to the list of things to look into as we transition into making sure mods etc are supported appropriately after we release Reign of Giants. A quick bit of information that might be relevant: in order to put umlauts on Wigfrid's font, we actually had one of our artists manually edit the 'o' and 'O' characters and save it out as a separate font.

 

Hope that helps!

[simplex]

As for the prefix thing, I could easily expose a variable that when set to false would make the SMOLDERINGITEM, WITHEREDITEM, and WET_PREFIX strings be suffixes as opposed to prefixes. My main concern with this is that it's not actually granular enough control? It's been several years since I studied Spanish and that is my only experience with foreign languages: would changing them all to be suffixes actually be what is desired (and be desired for all latin-based languages)? If a wholesale switch to suffixes is in fact the answer, I'm happy to make the change. If not, you might have to make a mod that does it. If you don't have the tools to do so, let us know and we'll make sure we address that.

I don't know if it'd address all neolatin languages, but it should address plently. However, if you'd like maximum generality, note that each action string has three elements: a verb, an optional adjective and a noun. If you allow all 3! = 6 shufflings of these, then you'd have complete generality. As a matter of implementation, this could be stored in a table with three elements indicating what goes in which order (e.g., {"verb", "adjective", "noun"}), and as a matter of API it could be set via a function taking 3 parameters (the elements to be placed in this table).

[Salsa]

The news table on the top left of the main screen. Where you mention the "new collectables". It's been quite a while since that section is neglected and not included in the strings file. I believe since the patch after The Screecher mod to be more precise. On the other hand, funnily enough, I've translated items like the Accomploshrine which are not even included in the PC version.

 

As for the accentuation: The required ones would be ^ (circumflex) and ~ (tilde). According to the new Brazilian Portuguese grammar rules there's no longer need for the ¨ (diaeresis / umlaut). However, it could prove to be useful for other languages.

 

Finally, for the prefix issue. Let me give you a few examples of what is currently happening:

 

Wet Goop and Rabbit Hole, these are items with adjectives already in their names. The prefixes for them are Very (an intensifier, not an adjective) and Collapsed (an adjective). While translating, the following happens:

 

1. Very Wet Goop: Gosma Muito Molhada (ideal translation). This is what currently shows up in the game: Muito Gosma Molhada.

2. Rabbit Hole: Toca de Coelho. Collapsed Rabbit Hole: Toca de Coelho Desmoronada (ideal translation). This is the result: Desmoronada Toca de Coelho. 

 

As you can see intensifiers go before the adjective but after the noun. The correct position of an adjective prefix is after the noun, that's no problem, up until the point where we have intensifiers into the fray. As I mentioned, there are ways to circumvent this by using a different word. For example, I could say Gosma Molhada Demais = Goop Wet Too Much (basically).

 

Another solution was to simply put the prefix between brackets. That way the player understands it's not part of the items name.

 

[Very] Wet Goop = [Muito Molhada] Gosma. As you can see, I removed the adjective from the original item's name and transformed the prefix into a combination of the Very and Wet adjectives.

 

Other items became things like: [Desmoronado] (Collapsed) and [Escorregadio] (Slippery). Notice the word ends in O, cause that's just a generalized use of the masculine-adjective version. In latin-based languages, nouns have individual genders. That is another issue when we consider for example that the word Toca (Nest, Mound, Hole) for Rabbit Hole is actually feminine since it ends in A. So now, my adjective has to be Desmoronada just like Gosma is feminine and therefore we should use Molhada and not Molhado (see the previous examples above). If another items included Very as a possible prefix, I'll have to change everything. Chances are it won't even fit correctly because now the gender becomes another factor too.

 

Please contact me over skype (salsamarcos) if you wish to go into further detail on this so we can find a possible solution.

 

Thanks!

[SethR]

Thanks for the extra info! We'll definitely be looking at making this the right way once we move into making sure Reign of Giants works with the rest of the mod stuff. I may indeed reach out to you over skype when that time comes.

 

As for the .pot file in general, we'll make sure an up-to-date one comes out ASAP, hopefully with the release on Wednesday.

 

Unfortunately, the news table (sorry I didn't know what you meant at first: we refer to that message in the top left as the message of the day in the office) is a string returned from a server based on a variety of variables. The text is entirely contained on the server and changes with some frequency. Because of all this, there's not a good way for us to expose it for localization. If you want to take a look at the code, check out mainscreen.lua, specifically the SetMOTD function (starts on line 500).

[Salsa]

I considered the MotD was server-based myself, but I had to make sure. Thank for all the help and the clarification Seth.

 

As for the up-to-date .pot file, it did include some additional strings but none of the character quotes that are missing (and not a single quote from Wigfrid, even though there's a .lua with all her quotes). In fact, once I tried to updated from the .pot file POEdit considered all the stuff I had included manually for WX78 so far obsolete and removed it from my translation.

 

[SethR]

I considered the MotD was server-based myself, but I had to make sure. Thank for all the help and the clarification Seth.

 

As for the up-to-date .pot file, it did include some additional strings but none of the character quotes that are missing. In fact, PO Edit considered all the stuff I had included manually for WX78 obsolete and removed it from my translation.

 

My pleasure! What are you referring to when you say "character quotes that are missing"? Bear with me, I'm still learning about our localization pipeline, but I thought that the .pot files we pushed had all the character lines. Are you looking at the strings.pot file in the data\scripts folder or the data\DLC0001\scripts folder?

 

Just to follow up about the prefix stuff: I'll be looking at that when I am spending time on DLC mod support in general.

[Salsa]

As far as the prefixes go, Simplex helped me a lot with a mod made especially to properly position the words. Here it is:

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/35480-mod-request-invert-prefix-mod-for-latin-based-languages/#entry464530

 

Yes, the .pot file I'm using is in the DLC folder. I don't know how busy you are at the moment but I could show you what I mean exactly over Twitch or Skype.

 

http://www.twitch.tv/salsatheone

 

Just let me know and I'll fire up the streaming.

[SethR]

As far as the prefixes go, Simplex helped me a lot with a mod made especially to properly position the words. Here it is:

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/35480-mod-request-invert-prefix-mod-for-latin-based-languages/#entry464530

 

Yes, the .pot file I'm using is in the DLC folder. I don't know how busy you are at the moment but I could show you what I mean exactly over Twitch or Skype.

 

Cool, I'll check out that mod at some point. Today is launch day so we're pretty busy with odds and ends. When I have a chance to dig into this, I'll get in touch. Thanks again Salsa.

[Salsa]

No problem, Seth. Thank you for all your attention