[Discussion] [DFUnity] Translation of Daggerfall

[Daneel53]

Hello,

Just a fast word to confirm that with the new DFU version 0.11.2 that is online since March 23, the operation given by Interkarma in his message dated March 11 is not anymore to be done: the priorities of the Locale Selectors are now correctly set by default.

I've juste recreated a French localization mod with this version, it works.

Apart from the two text tables Demo_RSC_fr and Demo_Strings_fr, I've also added to the mod all the IMG files (112) and video files (15) that were translated in French for the Project French Daggerfall, they are correctly displayed into the DFU editor. I will write in the following days another message to explain how to achieve that and what are the traps to avoid.

[Interkarma]

Thanks for confirming, Daneel53. I also appreciate you going so deeply into this and sharing your experiences.

I'm trying to get the next couple parts of localization tutorial finished for you guys. I'm so sorry for the delay, work has not been kind to me lately. On top of everything else, our state is back in lockdown now. This amplifies my workload as the businesses I support pivot to working from home again. I'm finding it hard to keep my feet under me these days.

[Daneel53]

our state is back in lockdown now

Well, following your words ( ), our President just decided this evening to lockdown our country once again for four weeks. Maybe at the end of the year, when everybody will be vaccinated, the pandemy will be behind us... For now, all we can do is to stay safely home as long as we can.

Take your time, Interkarma, and stay safe. DFU will wait a little longer, there is no urgency... except that maybe you would like to see the end of this outstanding long project.

[denixius]

Hi!

I want to translate DFUnity to Turkish. However, I'm having problems with the project on Unity.

I'm creating the Mod section as explained in the PDF file, and the Strings, RSC and BOK files, too. Somehow, when I change the texts, it is not working on the game.

I attached screenshots in this message about the issue. I mean, everything is fine, but it is just not working.

I kindly request assistance with this issue.

[Daneel53]

Hi Denixius,

To begin, let's forget the BOK tables because the way to have the localized books into DFU is not yet developed. For the moment you should have translated only RSC and Strings tables.

In the first snapshot you seems to have launched the game directly fom the scene UnityGame when you should launch it from the scene UnityStartup and switch from English to Turkish on the screen Start New game or Load Saved game.

One question: are you sure to have set the tag Preload All Tables as explained in tutorial 3? This may prevent the localized tables to be loaded.

[denixius]

Hi,

I only have Tutorial 1 on this viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3919 page. I can't find another tutorial if there is, maybe there is something I miss. Can you please share the link for these 2 tutorials?

I guess, they are not in the forum, but on the website. https://www.dfworkshop.net/?s=tutorial&paged=2

Now, I'm having, LocaleText-NotFound error.

LocaleText-NotFound.jpg (521.37 KiB) Viewed 139 times

Then, I changed, Text Manager (Script) "Internal" lines manually from "Internal" to "Turkish". Then it's just worked. So, is this it? Now, when I finished with the mod, I can build without a problem?

Text Manager Script.jpg (440.62 KiB) Viewed 137 times

Well, I can translate the words, but this Unity thing... I need to spend more time on it. Now, I can make a build but not stable, it is not even working in the game even though I did the same thing as described in the tutorials. I am not sure if I miss something.

Thanks,

[Daneel53]

Denixius,

You are right, the five existing tutorials are not posted here but into the web page that you have given.

I agree that all this is not so evident as it may seems to be. You are falling into the same traps that I visited during last weeks, but we will find the way to go go out of this because now I've fully understood how to avoid them.

I think it is better not to keep on fulling this subject with what will probably be a long discussion, so I propose you, if it is possible for you, to contact me by mail and we will pursue this conversation in a less public way. Not that what I will have to explain you would not be interesting for other translators, but I will publish here later a summary upon what is to be done to go toward a translated DFU.

My mail is: rdaneel53@gmail.com

[Interkarma]

Thank you Daneel53, I appreciate the assist. Stay safe and well!

Denixius, I should add the tutorial series is still incomplete. There are a few more parts still in draft that I need to wrap up and publish. I've removed the old tutorial document from that topic now and linked to the new tutorials on web site.

There's also more work to do on the localization feature to expand this to other systems - primarily books and quests. And there are some other stray text sources I'm yet to wrangle in. Daggerfall unfortunately didn't have a unified text database to start with, and bringing all this together into a more unified system is very challenging. Thank you for your patience and understanding as this system develops throughout Beta.

[denixius]

Denixius,

You are right, the five existing tutorials are not posted here but into the web page that you have given.

I agree that all this is not so evident as it may seems to be. You are falling into the same traps that I visited during last weeks, but we will find the way to go go out of this because now I've fully understood how to avoid them.

I think it is better not to keep on fulling this subject with what will probably be a long discussion, so I propose you, if it is possible for you, to contact me by mail and we will pursue this conversation in a less public way. Not that what I will have to explain you would not be interesting for other translators, but I will publish here later a summary upon what is to be done to go toward a translated DFU.

My mail is: rdaneel53@gmail.com

Hi Daneel53,

Thanks for your explanation, I will look forward to solving the puzzle-like Unity. I may contact you if I encounter something weird, if that is okay with you, too.

Thank you Daneel53, I appreciate the assist. Stay safe and well!

Denixius, I should add the tutorial series is still incomplete. There are a few more parts still in draft that I need to wrap up and publish. I've removed the old tutorial document from that topic now and linked to the new tutorials on web site.

There's also more work to do on the localization feature to expand this to other systems - primarily books and quests. And there are some other stray text sources I'm yet to wrangle in. Daggerfall unfortunately didn't have a unified text database to start with, and bringing all this together into a more unified system is very challenging. Thank you for your patience and understanding as this system develops throughout Beta.

Hi interkarma,

Yeah, I understand how difficult to do such a thing, especially for the game which developed in 1996. However, I still appreciate you and the people who works the projects like this and the ones who are trying to make it good for gamers. I'm a classical Daggerfall player, but playing DFU with some cool mods is feels like this needs to be done with nowadays technology, too.

I think I can't solve %ark thing in the Attributes section. Because I think there is something I need to solve with Unity knowledge. There should be something else than powerful, I mean there should be a Turkish letter, but I don't know how to reach that %ark script. I think I will just pass this translation project for now. Because I can't do it on my own, however, I will still continue to support the DFUnity project. For now, I will be stay away from that translation thing. At least for now.

All the Best,

[Daneel53]

In one of the mails that we exchanged today with Denixius, he asked me how to translate buttons as Start New game, Yes, No, etc.

Well, here we enter the translation of the classic Daggerfall because the texts of those buttons are not strings but bitmaps. All the buttons and menu screens are bitmaps, which means that to translate them you have to draw! To produce a fully localized French Daggerfall, we had to draw the texts into 112 .IMG files and into the special file BUTTONS.RCI that contain 20 buttons as for example YES, N0, MALE and FEMALE. We had to convert all those Daggerfall .IMG files into another format that nowadays drawing tools are able to edit, to change all the letters by hand, pixel by pixel, in order to draw our own language words to replace the English ones, and then to convert back the modified files into .IMG format so that Daggerfall is able to display them.

Today, with DFU, there is one step less because DFU displays .png files, so once the needed .IMG files are converted into PNG, you still have to draw your own text but the result may stay in PNG format. To convert the .IMG files in PNG can be done with DaggerfallImaging2 for example.

The case of the file BUTTONS.RCI is special because the 20 small buttons that are inside must be split into 20 different PNG files with mandatory names for DFU to be able to find and display them. Because I've already done the job for the French file, I've done it too for the English file, so people that want to convert the 20 buttons in another language will just have to redraw their content with a painting software as The Gimp for example and export them as other .png files with exactly the same name.

You can take the English PNG files here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSNNfP ... sp=sharing
And here are the French files, if somebody wants to see what have been done to change the text on the buttons:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TUdoSS ... sp=sharing