Schnittertm

I tried this, put the line encoding="UTF-8" is in the top line ( <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8559-1"?> ), but it does not render the German specific character. Even tried it with ISO-8559-1 enconding for western european languages. Doesn't do it there either. Either I'm doing something wrong or the game just doesn't like to render those character. For now I'm working with the ASCII codes, although sometimes it seems to produce a funny error, doubling everything of the word up to and including the special character. Thing is, it only does it rarely and I have yet to find a pattern on when it does this and why.

I don't know how it is with Russian, as that is what you are going for, but for German I'd have to at least estimate an increase in digits of about 20-25% without thinking. With thinking it won't be much less text, but I've already seen areas where I would have to rethink on how I would want to convey certain things in game, as the German translation just does not fit. Then again, I think the start of the beta would be the best time to have a translation prototype at the start, as there will be people available that can test them and give feedback on where the translation is lacking or causing problems. The only problem right now is, that we do not know what Chris has planned for any of the translation. Has he already hired people to do a German or French translation, as he hinted in some posts? Does he want to hire a professional translator after release to do that? What kind of job would that translator do? I ask this last question, because I've read quite a few books in German that had an original English language release and found some of them quite lacking, as the translator was just a translator but not someone familiar with the subject matter at hand. I remember some old Warhammer 40,000 novels, where the translator made up a german name for one of the Space Marine chapters, even though in all german publications by Games Workshop themselves the chapter names were (and still are) only in English. Well, if Chris is interested in commuity translation, made by the community for the community I certainly could help with the German one. Right now my prototype of the strings.xml that I do mostly for myself is coming along nicely. I'm not a professional translator by any means, but since I've been living in the US for a year almost 20 years back and have been using and listening to the English language since then quite extensively I can use it almost as good as a native speaker, meaning I think in English when I use English. That alone has to count for something, I believe. Oh well, we'll have to wait for Chris to answer our questions.

That is a very good question. I don't know where we go on from here. For me it actually doesn't matter if there is a German translation or not, as I usually play any foreign language games in English and my command of English is good enough that I do have grasp of what is going on. But I also do understand that there are a lot of other Germans that would prefer to have version in their native language (well German is my native language), as they either don't want to learn or don't care enough about the English language to actually bother with anything else than a German language version. Currently, because I think I was bored, I have translated the about 50% of the lines in the scripts.xml (at least according to my Vim text editor). For now it is a very rough translation and I don't even know why I did it. There are certainly a few things that would have to be decided on before a full scale translation is made, however. For example, should the English names of the planes, tanks, equipment be kept where possible or should they be germanified? F-17 Condor or Kondor, Avalanche Torpedo or Lawine Torpedo, Extraterrestrische or Aliens? This stuff is important from more than one standpoint, but immersion being the main goal and a bad translation can be an immersion breaker. Then there is the testing, that is something that definitely can not be done by the translator alone, you'd need several people to test it. Both because of strings being too long for the place they should go in or because of mistakes or even strings that can be mistranslated, because they are just there without context. I found the string 'Executed' on its own and this can, depending on context have several translations in German (e.g. Exekutiert, Ausgeführt) with different meanings. Well, it will have to be decided upon at some point in the future. Translation could be done alongside the beta, though.

I did notice that Arial is used and while it does look out of place it's quite alright for a short demonstration. As for letters needed for German, you'd just have to add in Ä,Ö, Ü and ß, those are the only exceptions used in German in comparison to English. The first three should be very easy, as you'd just need to add two dots at the right place only the 'eszet' is a bit harder, as it is would have to be created anew. There might be a case made, too, for É, as it is sometimes used in a few foreign adapted words like Café, but it is also permissible in German to right it without the accent (e.g. Cafe). Though I guess if there is a French translation made, they might need it.

So, I played around a bit today and I found that at least for German it is much easier to get the few special letters that we use in the german language. Just put in the corresponding xml ascii code for the specific letter (e.g. Ä for Ä) and it will render nicely in game. As an example here are a few screens with a rough translation into German: Please note, that the current research project is 'AAGH! Help, the ET's want to eat us.' Just put that in there to test what would happen if I changed the string.

Not really a minor but, but a missing or wrong word on in the Ceasan Autopsy report. On the last sentence in the first paragraph it reads '...;it seems that have a telepathic link with each other.' I think it rather should read: '...; it seems they have a telepathic link with each other.' or '...;it seems that they have a telepathic link with each other.'

I also first used the Desura version and it happened there. I then downloaded the Standalone version and this bug does not seem to be present there.

I, too, had this bug occuring starting with the second UFO shot down. The first one was a Light Scout with Caesians on board, all follwing Light Scout UFO's did not yield any aliens. I then shot down a Scout UFO, which had Sebilian Guards in it, but the following Light Scout did, yet again, not have any crew. This bug is both present in the Desura and Standalone version for me.

Yeah, noticed that too, on my way to work, was just to lazy to change the post after coming back home or at any later point in time.

I shall, for now, stop my lurking and post my experience on my 4th crashsite. There were my two 4-man/woman squads and the Hunter-001 hunting down Sebilians from the crashed scout, a dead policeman leading me in the general direction. The Hunter taking point down on an open street to serve both as mobile gun platform and as cover for the squad tasked to clear that direction. The Hunter gets sight of the first of the reptilian aliens, standing in a doorway, and starts to open up, .50 cal bullets ripping through flesh and taking out the invader without much of a problem. The right squad moved up to support, taking cover behind building corners and crates on both sides of the street, which led up to the UFO. Sgt. Jane White the DMR of the squad was looking down the street from one of the corners of the buildings on the left side through the scope of her G3A3ZF, trying to find other targets. As the remaining Sebilians had not yet been spotted, the Hunter was moved up to scout ahead with its armored hull. Slowly lumbering up the street another Sebilian was found, peeking out of the doorway of a storage building on the right street side. The targeting sensors of the Hunter locked on and fired on the Sebilian, but a glitch in the software, caused the guns mark to fall short. A return barrage of heated Plasma, burning the armor of the unmanned ground vehicle, but failing to penetrate. The head of the Sebilian, though, was now showing clearly in the scope of Sgt. White's scope, the rest of the body obscured by the military robot, that flushed it out in the first place. She took careful aim, held her breath and took the shot. Through a freak accident, something happened now, that she did not intend and that showed that 7.62mm NATO bullets are sometimes more powerful, than you can imagine. What caused the accident, could not be reconstructed, maybe the wind did cause the bullet to deviate, maybe it was small specks of dirt in the barrel, no one knows. But lets return to the bullet, it left the barrel as it should, but then it first penetrated the back armor on the right side of the Hunter vehicle, apparently hit the fuel tank, left the weapons carriers armor on the right side and still had enough force to explode the head of the Sebilian. In the wake of the event one Hunter vehicle was destroyed and unsalvagable due to, what could be called, a friendly fire incident. But as in any case, friendly fire isn't. A later inquiry found no fault in Sgt. White's conduct and absolved her of any responsibility for the destruction of vital mission assets. While all this was happening, the second squad moved up an alleyway on the other side of the office building, where the first squad was already engaging alien forces. The move through the alley was uneventful, but at the end the crashed scout craft of the invaders was finally visible. Sgt. Kei Sato, the squads DMR, and the SAW guy, which will remain unnamed here, where staying a bit back, covering one of the entrances to the UFO, while Sgt. Barbera Williams and the other rifleman moved up to prepare for a breach. Sgt. Williams was poised on the right side of the door and slowly pushed, what looked like the opening mechanism for this door, which was being met with success. With the sound of equalizing pressure, both halfs of the door smoothly slid into the wall of the craft, while a distinct reptilian stench was coming out. Some smoke shortly obscured the vision of Sgt. Sato, so she was unable to engage the Sebilian that was waiting inside. Because of this, Sgt. Barbera swiftly moved around the corner, gun held up ready to engage any enemy targets. A lonely Sebilian was standing there, just beyond the doorway and before the monstrously hideous alien could react, it was hit by a burst of bullets from the M16 rifle and dropped lifelessly to the floor. What happened next, was an explosion, likely caused by either the alien suiciding, trying to take one of the humas with him or, because bullets had penetrated some vital piece of equipment in the UFO. Sgt. Williams was lucky however, as her armor protected her mostly from the blast. She'll be in the hospital for a few days to recover from the minor bruises and burns she suffered, but she'll be up again fairly soon, having learned a lesson, too, from all of this. Stay a bit further away, when shooting into an UFO, as otherwise stuff might blow up. So, there you have it, 7.62mm NATO rounds, with the power to penetrate armor and go on as if nothing happened and explosive aliens/UFOs. Needless to say, that I'm enjoying the experience.