Exult Forum

Hi all,

this post is to inform you of the latest news about the French translation of SI (as the title says).

Basically, 2 of the 3 files are done (text.flx and fonts.vga). They are still in version 0.9 as we need to see if it's reliable.

Usecode is obviously the hardest part. KlownK has translated most (if not all) the books plus more and on my part I've finished the trial in Fawn plus more. Fabien also is in our team and participate to the translation. We also have a recent fourth member who takes care of correcting our (many) mistakes and consolidating the texts.

All the stuff can be found under www.serpentisle.fr.st. I think it was down for the last couple of days because of an upgrade on the server side. It should be up now.

Now, I'd like to address the exult dev team. It seems that there is a pb with the books. As soon as the usecode function containing the books is included in our test usecode file, the game crashes at the very beginning, when the monk should appear.

I remember talking with you guys about the usecode functions and some of you mentionned the horrible book hack that had to be done. We are wondering if this hack could be the source of our pb.

Could you give us any info we could use to fix it, or to understand what we should do to fix it?

Thx a lot,

Artaxerxes

ps: I've also prepared a page on the side for those who want to translate SI in your own language. The page is not finished but it is a good start. Please visit http://artaxerxes_2.tripod.com/serpentisleenfrancais/id2.html for more info. (sorry for the popup)

I think the easiest would be to send one of us (me, for example ) the usecode file that crashes exult so that we can figure out what exactly causes the crash.

The best would probably be an (almost-)original usecode file with just the book function replaced.

Say... did you ever hear back from EA?

Jeff: nope... not a word. I will contact you first thing when I receive news, ok?

Willem: I'll send that as soon as I can check out a proper usecode. KK sent me one but I haven't had time to look at it yet.. work, work, work.


Artaxerxes

Question.

Is there any plans of implementing the french language pack into the main Exult code, or will it be a seperate patch? Something along the lines of, a choose your language option at the Serpent Isle start screen. Just curious, nothing more.

The patch contains copyrighted material by EA, so we cannot integrate it. Sorry

I think it is ok to redistribute patches.

It would be redistributing full copyrighted files that would be wrong, no?
Artaxerxes

At most we may code in specific support to help using translated versions.

-Colourless Dragon

Well, when does a patch infringe on copyright and when doesn't it. A patch will contain portions of the original material. Icky stuff...

No. An IPS patch only includes the changed data, it does not include
any of the original copyrighted data within it. If you added a module
to automatically patch the files before running, like zsnes does for snes
rom patches, you would not be infringing on copyright.

But the patch itself uses translated conversations, and data from the original game. The conversations themselves can be considered copyrighted.

-Colourless Dragon

Yes, it would be just as risky as, say, translating Jurassic Park into French and distributing it. My guess is that EA won't care about this. (And personally, I think they ought to pay the translators.)

I don't believe translations fall under copyright law like that. But as for
it being as risky as translation jurassic park into french and distributing
it, that's not true. It would be like translating jurassic park to french
and distributing -only the script-. Which isn't something anybody would
care about, even if it did fall under copyright law.

The script of Ultima VII is as important as the sound track of
Jurassic Park, since Ultima doesn't have any speech but text.

Willem:

I just tried the usecode file and it is unusable to a high degree.
Simply clicking on Journey Onward generated a Seg Fault, SDL parachute deployed.

As a consequence, I'll get to KK and review his creation of the usecode file. Maybe there is something I can figure out.

I'll contact you if I can create a working usecode that still poses a problem with the books.

Thx

artaxerxes

Artaxerxes:
Can you log your progress ina way that people who want to try translating to another language can use your experiences?
*I seem to have some problems voicing my thoughts today*
I mean can you also write q auick guide on how to translate and where the stumble points were and so on? Whenever you put the finished translation up I think it would be nice to have this as well.

You never know when some other people are crazy enough to do this.
Keep it up!!!

Artaxerxes: feel free to send me totally broken usecode files. Since we're planning to support custom usecode someday, we should also introduce some proper error handling in the usecode interpreter. Now's as good a time as any

wjp:

ok then... It is on its way.

Dominus:
I have. It is found there: http://artaxerxes_2.tripod.com/serpentisleenfrancais/id2.html
(sorry for the popup)
The tools mentioned in the article will be made available soon.

Artaxerxes

Nicely done. A bit scetchy but still nicely done. I guess the fonts.vga patching could be easily done with ipack now but maybe not
But your site is a good reference. Everyone brave enough to do this will have a good starting point. Thanks

btw, I'm not in the least interested in doing this for German

oh, another question, Artaxerxes are you actually French or Franco-Canadian?

I'm pure own-made wine-drinker cheese-eater grumpy hairy dirty French

My IP and such show Canada as my residence since I moved there about 2 years ago to be with the person who is now my wife.

Artaxerxes

I've updated the site.
It now contains the perl scripts mentioned.



Please note I did not originally plan to distribute those files so the quality is real poor. I must mention too that those are among my first perl scripts so I am sure it can need some tweaking.

Hope you enjoy the information.

Artaxerxes

Just telling that we've found the problem with the usecode file, and you are going to need to wait a while for a fix.

The translated book function has caused a 16 bit integer overflow, and WJP and myself have proposed a set of 32 bit Usecode extensions that will solve this problem.

You'll have to wait till this is all implemented before you'll be able to use that function.

-Colourless Dragon

thanks a lot

I'll make sure the translation team is aware we can't make .uc files bigger than 64k.

Artaxerxes