Language Support / Campain Length

[Tridus]

Also nowhere I said about putting google translated text directly into the game. It seems that instead of reading the message you have just snapped on the familiar concept (google translate) ignoring the context.

The only usage of google translate that I suggested is an optional verification that the translated piece from a volontier is not a complete garbage. The final review of the translation (when all pieces are complete) should be done again by volontiers (or a professional translator).

It is a recurring pattern on this board. The other day I mentioned Kicktraq in context of the average daily rate required to reach the goal, and people snapped that Kicktraq predictions are worthless (even though I was not writing about Kicktraq predictions at all).

How do you use a potentially crap translation to tell if another translation is good or not? Without knowing if the google one is any good, you can't use it as a comparison, and you can't know if it's any good without having someone who knows (aka: a translator).

It's a handy tool during development to put some placeholder text in to see how things look with an early translation during development (and to make sure there's no hardcoded English text), but it's of little to no use when it comes to translation quality.

[jenya]

Not sure why Google Translate gets such a bad rap. Purely anecdotal, I have google translated your comment to my native language and most of the meaning was preserved.

[Draco18s]

Not sure why Google Translate gets such a bad rap. Purely anecdotal, I have google translated your comment to my native language and most of the meaning was preserved.

The meaning alone isn't always sufficient.  How was the grammar?

For example... I ran Tridus' post through Translation Party.  Here's one that came out after a while

You may tell better than crap translation or another. Comparison is a good one knows someone who might, you know, you Google almost that good (which is known: translation) something. (Whether or not to display the translation of the early stages of development to develop a text hard-coded English, now and then, and take into account

And when it finally gave up trying to reach equilibrium

If you can convert shows for spamming or any other. One little known comparison Google knows it (which is known: translation) something. (Account of whether or not to display the translation of the early development of hard to develop text for English encoding.

Then start trying sentences that contain the same word with a different meaning.
"I object to this object." or "When the award was announced for the most rose rose Rose rose to accept it."

[Tridus]

Not sure why Google Translate gets such a bad rap. Purely anecdotal, I have google translated your comment to my native language and most of the meaning was preserved.

Because I've seen people translate memos and records in software with it, and what came out was barely coherent. It's gotten a lot better over the years, but it still regularly produces nonsense. If you're asking for money for the product and claim it's in a given language, people expect it to be done properly in that language.

It's also much, much better at some languages than others.

(Years ago, a friend of mine named their World of Warcraft group by putting "hug Warlocks" into Google Translate, translating it, then translating what came out back to English. They ended up with "Magicians of Kisses". Not exactly a confidence boosting experience.)

[Draco18s]

I just tried translating "the old man the boat" (that is a sentence, it means "the elderly crew the craft") into Japanese.  It comes out as gibberish, http://goo.gl/3FQXHJ or "old man boat."  Because it assumes that man means "guy" or "person" as opposed to "work at, run, or operate."

The "correct" (my best guess) translation should be http://goo.gl/s6zwd9 or "old boat crew" (where "boat" has become a modifier noun).

By the way, what is the correct order that adjectives get applied to a noun?

Edit for goo.gl links as the Japanese characters did not save.

[jenya]

For example... I ran Tridus' post through Translation Party. 

Not that I disagree, but I'm sure if we hire a lot of humans to translate an initial text back and forth (each human pass the result to the next one), the end result also could be unexpected (with right grammar but possibly different meaning altogether).

Just saying that each translation step magnifies the differences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers

[ptarth]

Random thought: Amazon Mechanical Turk, 5 repetitions, take the most common answer.

[Chthon]

EGT cucumbers, cucumbers I, like a cucumber, are cucumbers, cucumbers are like cucumbers, please take pickling city.

[Captain Jack]

please take pickling city.

DEAD. 

[iob]

Modern game these days should have auto-resizable text boxes anyway. One of the problems of AI War is that font size is fixed.

Have you looked at the ship tooltips lately?

There are several stats that are in fixed places horizontally inside a window of fixed width.
Lets say, for argument (as I don't feel like booting the game) that Damage, Attack Range, Reload, and Speed are all on the same line and pretty much juuuust fit with the units with the largest numbers possible in each.

Watch what happens when we translate to German.
Damage xxxxx Attack Range xxxxx Reload xxx Speed xxxx
Schaden xxxxx Angriffsbereich xxxxx Reload xxx Geschwindigkeit xxxx

It's longer!  It no longer fits in our text box.

THats not really a problem if you do it right, like, first get your translations for those elements and then get your UI done. If you want to target 5 languages, get your translation to those 5, if you know the english one is 5 symbols, the longest one 10, then put in the 10 word thingie.

But as I stated earlier, such problems only come up if you don't start the project with stuff like this in mind.

It's - imho - sad to see that the limited viewangle of the creators will ensure another bad / mediocre arcen game despite the ideas are fantastic are there is a HUGE need for challenging games especially with coop (look at dark souls or gears of war 4).

If only blizzard would make AI war 2... .


On a sidenote, anyone knows how the solo / multiplayer ratio in ai war classic was? I feel like nobody played it multiplayer because I had a ton of errors in a build where there was 2nd expansion already out and I wondered why nobody else reported this.

[ptarth]

That's a bit harsh there.

If language support is easy, then many games would have it.
Many games do not have it, therefore, to consider it easy, is mistaken.
Strategy games are very hard in this respect, because of the amount of text. Worse yet, it is the continual revising of the text, or replacement of entire ways of saying something.

I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:

• This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
• This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
• This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.

Now fit that into a text box and have it work for 4 different languages. I'll accept google translations and English as one of those translations.

re:multiplayer AI Wars
I believe this works just fine. They are running a discord channel if you'd like to have someone try to get it up and running with you. https://discord.gg/VDvVAUk

[Cinth]

If only blizzard would make AI war 2...

Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.

[iob]

If only blizzard would make AI war 2...

Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.

I wrote an Email to arcen about this. It's about polish.

Take hearthstone for example. I think the team wasn't that big, like 10 or 15 ppl? So basically it's compareable to an indie title. I am just saying that they spent so much time into polish and accesibility.

There are even tons of very very polished indie titles. Arcen isn't one who brings out polished games - thats ok, they give you he "rough cut". But you can't expect to hit a 300k kickstarter with rough games for a very very small market. You will have to go more mass market.

I doubt that it would be a different game. If you tasked Blizzard with reimplementing AI war and give them the task to add most mechanics, it would be a very similar game. But I can tell you, the units descriptions would be alot shorter, the ui would be coherent and there would be a different learning curve. I even bet that there would be tons of less options and units... But in the end, it would be just as hard to beat the ai - but less hard to learn the game.

That's a bit harsh there.

If language support is easy, then many games would have it.
Many games do not have it, therefore, to consider it easy, is mistaken.
Strategy games are very hard in this respect, because of the amount of text. Worse yet, it is the continual revising of the text, or replacement of entire ways of saying something.

Tbh, I don't know of any release on Steam recetly who has no german translation in the top 10. Transport Fever, Battlerite, Master of Orion - they all have it. Sure, if you are a very very small indie dev and are producing a very specialised product, it's not worth it. But if you want to sell more than 1000 copies, better get your game a translation if possible.

I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:

• This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
• This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
• This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.

If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.

You could simply replace it with 10% more damage dealt, 10% more missile damage and 50% more damage dealt and 50% reload time reduce.

The way the texts are written is just clunky, overcomplex and irritating.

[Draco18s]

If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.

That's because the mechanic has been written and rewritten 14 times, both trying to make it make sense, make the description make sense, and to provide consistent benefits.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

If only blizzard would make AI war 2...

Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.

I wrote an Email to arcen about this. It's about polish.

Take hearthstone for example. I think the team wasn't that big, like 10 or 15 ppl? So basically it's compareable to an indie title. I am just saying that they spent so much time into polish and accesibility.

There are even tons of very very polished indie titles. Arcen isn't one who brings out polished games - thats ok, they give you he "rough cut". But you can't expect to hit a 300k kickstarter with rough games for a very very small market. You will have to go more mass market.

I doubt that it would be a different game. If you tasked Blizzard with reimplementing AI war and give them the task to add most mechanics, it would be a very similar game. But I can tell you, the units descriptions would be alot shorter, the ui would be coherent and there would be a different learning curve. I even bet that there would be tons of less options and units... But in the end, it would be just as hard to beat the ai - but less hard to learn the game.

That's a bit harsh there.

If language support is easy, then many games would have it.
Many games do not have it, therefore, to consider it easy, is mistaken.
Strategy games are very hard in this respect, because of the amount of text. Worse yet, it is the continual revising of the text, or replacement of entire ways of saying something.

Tbh, I don't know of any release on Steam recetly who has no german translation in the top 10. Transport Fever, Battlerite, Master of Orion - they all have it. Sure, if you are a very very small indie dev and are producing a very specialised product, it's not worth it. But if you want to sell more than 1000 copies, better get your game a translation if possible.

I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:

• This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
• This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
• This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.

If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.

You could simply replace it with 10% more damage dealt, 10% more missile damage and 50% more damage dealt and 50% reload time reduce.

The way the texts are written is just clunky, overcomplex and irritating.

You know what I like about this? If you are so set against the text and have ideas on how to improve it, you can redefine 99% of the text in game by going to your RuntimeData/Languages/en/a_bionic.xml file for Starward Rogue (I think thats the file name, if not you'll be really close to the file). Best of all, we will give you credit for improving the writing and if its such a massive improvement, there is always the chance that you could work with us.