Winter Voices

Winter Voices

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Miraglyth 2018 年 6 月 30 日 上午 7:01
Skill name alignment [en_US]
So I'm hoping to make a few fixes to the en_US text files in the game to improve the translation quality and also hopefully push an update that could be used to advertise the Child of the Pyre Kickstarter campaign.

For the most part I can do this alone, but skill names are potentially contentious so I wanted to make a topic so people can discuss and hopefully help decide on these:

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Explanation

In the en_US text, some skills inconsistently refer to each other. The most frequent of these is Flight, which is often referred to by other skills as "Escape" and this can be confusing.

There are files for the skills in ep0, ep1 and ep2. Each episode uses the files for their episode, and Episode 3 onwards seem to all use the files for ep2. We do not need to worry about differences here: I have checked, and all skill names are consistent between episode files.

There are two files for skills: skills.xml and skills_advanced.xml. The game uses both, and decides on one to use by the user's "Detailed skills descriptions" setting in the title screen's Options menu. There are differences here. For clarity's sake I will call skills.xml "basic" and skills_advanced.xml "advanced".

The aim of my effort is not to retranslate! I don't want to suggest new names. I just want to choose one of the basic or advanced names that already exists and change all uses and references of that skill to use that choice.

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There are 5 differences between basic and advanced. I am listing them here in groups with both names, the French original and a direct translation, my suggestion for which to choose and the reasoning behind that:

1. Escape / Flight
French: Fuite (Flight)
Suggestion: Flight (Accurate translation, fits with the psychological concept of "Fight or Flight")

2. Lesser Oblivion / Minor Oblivion
French: Oubli mineur (Minor forgetfulness, Minor oblivion)
Suggestion: Minor Oblivion (Accurate translation, pairs with Major Oblivion)

3. Chatter / Gift Of The Gab
French: Bavardage (Chat, Gossip, Chitchat)
Suggestion: (I have no preference here.)

4. Relevancy / Pertinence
French: Pertinence (Pertinence, Relevance, Relevancy)
Suggestion: Pertinence (The word is already adopted into English!)

5. Effectiveness / Efficiency
French: Efficacité (Efficiency)
Suggestion: Efficiency (Accurate translation, arguably fits skill behaviour better)

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There are also 2 differences in spacing and symbol use that aren't so important:

1. Song: Voluspa - Creation / Song : Voluspa - Creation
French: Chant : Voluspa - Création (Singing : Voluspa - Creation)
Suggestion: Song: Voluspa - Creation (English typography has no space, pairs with "Song: Voluspa - Winter" which consistently has no space)

2. Guilty's too Grand / >Guilty's too Grand
French: Coupable, Facile (Guilty, Easy)
Suggestion: Guilty's too Grand (The ">" seems like a typo)

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Lastly there are 4 differences in capitalisation that are trivial:

1. The Truth is Out There / The Truth Is Out There

Suggestion: The Truth Is Out There
Reason: It is a phrase and would align with all the other phrase skills containing short words that are consistently capitalised including "Far Away From All This", "Such A Cold And Lonesome Heroine" and "Another Brick In The Wall".

2. Strength of All / Strength Of All
3. Line of Defense / Line Of Defense
4. Heart of Ice / Heart Of Ice

Suggestion: Lower-case "of" for all
Reason: Two other skills of the form consistently use lower-case of ("Transfer of Affection" and "Rays of Negation") and only one consistently uses upper-case Of ("Aura Of Benevolence").
最後修改者:Miraglyth; 2018 年 6 月 30 日 上午 8:14
引用自 cthulhu985:
Besides skills.xml and skills_advanced.xml there're also enemy skills in battle.xml (at the end of the file under "<!-- Sorts -->") and buff names in buffs.xml, which sometimes mirror skill names, e.g. both Oblivion skills.

I agree with most of your suggestions. Two exceptions:
1) I would keep "Gift of the Gab".
2) In French typography there's a space before a colon, but in English usually there's none.
I think it's better to use the expected English style for English texts. That applies to the other "Song: Voluspa" skill and elsewhere too.
Btw, in basic skill descriptions those skills sometimes appear as "Song of Creation" and "Song of Winter" respectively.
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cthulhu985 2018 年 6 月 30 日 上午 7:35 
Besides skills.xml and skills_advanced.xml there're also enemy skills in battle.xml (at the end of the file under "<!-- Sorts -->") and buff names in buffs.xml, which sometimes mirror skill names, e.g. both Oblivion skills.

I agree with most of your suggestions. Two exceptions:
1) I would keep "Gift of the Gab".
2) In French typography there's a space before a colon, but in English usually there's none.
I think it's better to use the expected English style for English texts. That applies to the other "Song: Voluspa" skill and elsewhere too.
Btw, in basic skill descriptions those skills sometimes appear as "Song of Creation" and "Song of Winter" respectively.
Miraglyth 2018 年 6 月 30 日 上午 8:12 
引用自 cthulhu985
there're also enemy skills in battle.xml (at the end of the file under "<!-- Sorts -->")

Yeah, I checked these with a view to the Episode 3 "Shadow Self" boss since I thought that might use Lesser / Minor Oblivion.

Looking through it again (for all episodes - fortunately consistent), I can see I missed a use of Escape there. Thanks! Is there anything else? I can't find anything else that lines up with a player skill.

引用自 cthulhu985
and buff names in buffs.xml, which sometimes mirror skill names, e.g. both Oblivion skills.

Yeah... there are a LOT of differences between skill names and the buffs they provide. For instance I had pointed out in the past how long it took me to find Sad Truth, which is the buff provided when using Detection with the Self-Flagellation passive.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to change these for the most part, as they may be designed to be different and it could become a can of worms. But "Lesser Oblivion" within the buffs would be very tempting to make an exception...

引用自 cthulhu985
I agree with most of your suggestions. Two exceptions:
1) I would keep "Gift of the Gab".
2) In French typography there's a space before a colon, but in English usually there's none.
I think it's better to use the expected English style for English texts. That applies to the other "Song: Voluspa" skill and elsewhere too.

I'd be happy with either for Chatter / Gift. I think I'll remove my suggestion in the OP because I really don't have a preference.

You've just pointed something out to me: "Song: Voluspa - Winter" IS consistent about not having a space. Between that and my own typographical preference for no-space I'm now preferring the no-space version too. Isn't discussion good? :)

引用自 cthulhu985
Btw, in basic skill descriptions those skills sometimes appear as "Song of Creation" and "Song of Winter" respectively.

Yep, I'm aware of descriptions. Obviously if Flight is chosen I'd want to fix all the Escape uses in descriptions, and this would be a similar exercise. Those descriptions in basic also uniquely don't preface their names with the word "skill" or "ability".

You've pointed something else out to me now - Voluspa. In just one instance (in basic) it retains the inflection normally removed from the French (Voluspä). I think for sanity's sake it's best to leave changes that aren't in the name of consistency alone?
cthulhu985 2018 年 6 月 30 日 下午 12:00 
引用自 Miraglyth
Thanks! Is there anything else?
There might be something in the tutorial or battle goals texts, but otherwise I don't think skill names are mentioned anywhere else.


引用自 Miraglyth
I'm not sure it's a good idea to change these for the most part, as they may be designed to be different and it could become a can of worms. But "Lesser Oblivion" within the buffs would be very tempting to make an exception...
I only meant the buffs where the name is clearly supposed to be the same as the skill name. I'd say if the French names are the same, then the English ones should be too.
This is the case for Minor Oblivion skill and buff, both are "Oubli Mineur" in French.

引用自 Miraglyth
You've pointed something else out to me now - Voluspa. In just one instance (in basic) it retains the inflection normally removed from the French (Voluspä). I think for sanity's sake it's best to leave changes that aren't in the name of consistency alone?
"Voluspa" is spelled inconsistently throughout the game. Mostly as "Voluspa", but notably it's "Voluspä" in the intro (btw in the real world it's Völuspá). I'd leave it alone, it isn't confusing like inconsistent skill names.
Miraglyth 2018 年 6 月 30 日 下午 12:45 
So I've changed all the skills.xml and skills_advanced.xml files with the above suggestions and discussions (I've gone with "Gift Of The Gab").

It turns out the ep0, ep1 and ep2 versions of both are identical; I changed them all separately (six total) and ran a compare to make sure they were still the same afterwards so it was a bit of a redundant time-spend but on the other hand I've got triple-entry verification of the changes!

I'm keeping a full changelog as I go, including line numbers.

引用自 cthulhu985
There might be something in the tutorial or battle goals texts, but otherwise I don't think skill names are mentioned anywhere else.

You know what's stupid? I remembered the tutorial taught you Repulsion but not that it taught you Flight. Checking that, it is Escape there too.

tutorial.xml only exists in ep0 (where I have made the above change and also fixed a lacking space between sentences), ep1 (where I can't find anything to change) and ep2 which seems to be a possibly unused copy of ep0 (I have repeated the change just in case though).

引用自 cthulhu985
I only meant the buffs where the name is clearly supposed to be the same as the skill name. I'd say if the French names are the same, then the English ones should be too.
This is the case for Minor Oblivion skill and buff, both are "Oubli Mineur" in French.

True... I'll add that to the to-do list.

引用自 cthulhu985
"Voluspa" is spelled inconsistently throughout the game. Mostly as "Voluspa", but notably it's "Voluspä" in the intro (btw in the real world it's Völuspá). I'd leave it alone, it isn't confusing like inconsistent skill names.

Agreed!

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Edit:

Just made a second pass on both sets of skills files to fix up all the spelling. For the most part this was various common errors (absorbtion > absorption, additionnal > additional and targetted > targeted).

But I have found one misspelled skill name in "Cynism". The original is "Cynisme" which translates to "Cynicism" so I've fixed that too.

Lastly the description of "By the River" denoted Energy Points as "PE". I've amended that to "EP".

Overall 12 changes to basic and 13 to advanced, with a little overlap.
最後修改者:Miraglyth; 2018 年 6 月 30 日 下午 2:15
Miraglyth 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 2:02 
Memo to self: Find the seemingly episode-based dialogue for Imaginary Friend so I can fix all the uses of "PM" for MP.
cthulhu985 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 2:26 
That's easy: ep?/texts/en_us/dialogs/imaginaire.xml

If you don't know it yet, the dialog trees are in ep?/dialogs/*.dlg files, but the texts are in ep*/texts/*/dialogs/*.xml
"Text" parameter of a tag in a dlg file corresponds to the text id in the xml file.

There're also ep?/dialogs/sources folders which contain what I assume are files used by the dialog editor, which have both trees and texts together, but those aren't used by the game AFAIK.
最後修改者:cthulhu985; 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 2:32
Miraglyth 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 2:57 
Yeah I knew about the dlg and xml combination. I'm actually a few episodes of Ven dialogue away from having a Steam guide for companions ready to publish, and recently used the pair to check for all the NPCs that give XP in episode 6.

I've done pretty much everything except battle, buffs and the dialogue files now! Getting there.
最後修改者:Miraglyth; 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 2:57
cthulhu985 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 3:35 
I find source files much easier to read, and I haven't seen any discrepancies between those and dlg/xml. And even if you have to modify something you can easily find the corresponding lines then.
Miraglyth 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 4:02 
If they do match I would rather alter both in sync to retain parity. I'm hoping to get the rest done in 2-3 days, probably 3 with some private testing to make sure changes are good.

That'll get them to Sea Author within the 10 days requested with time to spare, provided I know how to send them... I'll ask in the Kickstarter topic later. Did you want to check the changes too?

Back to skills... with my recent discovery on Augmented Reality I'm in two minds about tweaking incorrect descriptions to match the actual effects. Other candidates include Emptiness' "half damage" (+50% mitigation) and the one that heals more the closer you are to an enemy (which might be correct but has unclear bracketing in the math). Mostly I'd worry that the description is right and I'm making a freakish misunderstanding.
最後修改者:Miraglyth; 2018 年 7 月 3 日 上午 9:00
Miraglyth 2018 年 7 月 6 日 下午 4:43 
I found out why the Episode 3 Secret of the Norns speech is missing.

During the game, there are three encounters that have extras with Secret of the Norns. These require you to step on a tile whereupon you're given a dialog from one of the goddesses and a power.

Skuld: Episode 1 battle 2
Verdandi: Episode 3 battle 11
Urd: Episode 5 battle 4

The dialog is controlled by distantvoice.xml, and the presence of these files is different for all three languages:

en_US: ep1, ep2, ep3, ep5, ep6
fr_FR: ep1, ep2, ep5, ep6
ru_RU: ep1, ep6

There are two versions which are consistently identical between episodes: ep1-3 and ep5-6. In all languages, the first version only has two text elements with ids of 0 (Skuld) and 1 (Verdandi). The second version adds 3 (Urd) and 4-9 (used in the episode 6 battle).

Now our problem is that in the first version for en_US, the text element with an id of 1 is blank! Fortunately, it exists and translated in the second version. So I'm just going to copy it across and that should fix it.

Edit: Tested successfully. The game uses the file in ep3 but I'll change it for all three to maintain parity.
最後修改者:Miraglyth; 2018 年 7 月 6 日 下午 4:56
Miraglyth 2018 年 7 月 6 日 下午 7:39 
Working on buffs now, two points of discussion here.

Firstly, following the earlier talk about adjusting status names when they're matching the skill name in French, there are very few changes I can find for that:

- Effectiveness to Efficiency (to match the skill alignment).
- Lesser Oblivion to Minor Oblivion (to match the skill alignment).
- Acceptance to Resignation (to match the skill name, as with the French).

Secondly, this is where I fix the missing text for the companions' romance buffs. All buffs have three elements - a name (writtenName), an icon and a description.

The game is most helpful in providing the name values needed:

Crow: CorbeauInterieurBuff
Ven: FinDeAmourBuff
Chichi: AmourAmourBuff

It emerges that there are working skill icons for the codes used by these skills (CO4R, VE4R and CH4R) too, which I was uncertain about since they don't appear in the companions' status menus. Ven's is used separately for a status called Invasion, though I'm not sure that's used in the game.

Knowing the above, I can see that the buffs don't exist, even with a mismatching name, and this is the case for all languages. So there's no translation potential either - I'm going to have to create them from scratch.

Thankfully we already have two elements known. But we lack the description. For simplicity and accuracy's sake, I'm just going to reuse the descriptions of the advanced skills file verbatim. It helps that those don't even show up in the game, so there won't be any redundancy.

I'll do the same for the fr_FR and ru_RU versions too.

Edit: Completed. I've made a separate (much smaller!) changelog for the fr_FR and ru_RU versions to show they only fix the companions' romance skills. (Incidentally yes I am aware that Ven's and Chichi's can't be acquired legitimately anyway).

With a view to time left (now being into the 10th day as Sea Author gave) I won't spellcheck all the NPC dialogues, so it's just battle.xml and it's ready to go.

Edit 2: Done! Took a while to spellcheck all the battle files. Fortunately, ep0 through ep3 were all identical at source, while ep5 and ep6 only had minor differences.

Now I just need to know how to get these to Sea Author.
最後修改者:Miraglyth; 2018 年 7 月 6 日 下午 11:02
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