Well, I remember that you said something before about the “text-box”, or whatever the little box where we see the displayed dialouge in bishoujo game is displayed are called… you said something about that since the textbox is for the Japanese language, it isn’t just so that you just can “put some text” int he box, which mant seem to believe… care to explain again what you said at that time? I’ve been thinking about some things there… Even if you can’t replace the text there, couldn’t you simply make a “new” textbox that “overwrittes” the old one? Or something like that (I’m no pro in matters like this )
well, there is no stuck term on this…can be a text box, dialogue box, but most commonly known as message window…it’s just where the text is displayed.
Kumiko may probably have explained this already somehow, but I don’t think this much in depth mainly because Kumiko doesn’t know Japanese in the first place. So I guess I will step in since I know 5 languages myself…alright, be warned, this will be a long post and I hope it’s not lecturing aka Kumiko style.
one of the problems peapri has to deal with when playtesting and editing is that these games are originally in the japanese language which works differently than english and other european languages. As you know, Japanese as well as chinese and possibly korean are made of big characters that can fit into a one square block, and a sentence is just one series of these characters one after another (and with punctuation). In contrast, for english and other european languages, words are created via letters and alphabets (as well as accents eg grave, acute for french) and words are separated by spaces and they form a sentence.
Since Japanese literally has no “spaces” between words, or even between sentences, when doing text wrapping or line breaks in these message windows it’s perfectly acceptable to just break off a japanese (or chinese) sentence to the next like regardless of where in the sentence this break occurs, whether it’s breaking the term in half, or if the breaking is just that little “period” at the end of the sentence). You do that for actual essay writing as well.
However, you cannot do that with english or other european languages. The actual word has to stay together and cannot be broken down (except for syllable breakdown like “cott-” and then the next line “age” for “cottage” which doesn’t happen a lot now with word processing). So for the English to be displayed in a japanese-oriented message window where it’s acceptable to break a word into 2 and put it on the next line, extra time is needed to check if any words are broken down undesirably (eg Spe ctator Behol der), and believe it or not, it will happen 95% of the time so literally we have to check every single line. Ok so you just put that big word in the next line…now the next line needs to be checked for the same Spe ctato r B ehol der thing. So for just one message dialog text, one will have to check multiple times to see if no words are broken down undesirably.
And another problem is that generally english takes up more “space” than japanese in terms of the number of characters involved. Woodelf and Ksarchet can surely attest to this; just take my doujinshi they bought which is bilingual and compare the amount of space the japanese comment takes up versus the amount of space the english comment takes up. This means: if for the japanese version the message dialogue is filled like 95% with japanese text, then we are in trouble for the english version because we are pretty much guaranteed that we won’t be able to fit the same english context in one message window. And with the above “broken word” situation where big words will need to be pushed to the next line since it can’t be broken down, the chance of this happening increases, especially for small dialog boxes (size-wise) like brave soul (I will have to say that brave soul has the smallest message window I have ever seen in bishoujo games). In this case, myself being the primary editor and tester for this title, I may have to force/span the dialogue over multiple message windows. The only consequence is the voice that is associated with the text, but it’s better than drastically truncating the dialogue just to “fit” into one message window.
Not to sound like Kumiko here (I think I already did with all the explanation above, I hope it doesn’t sound lecturing), so it’s not just “putting the translated text” overwriting the original script like most of you think. It involves much more including what I mentioned above. So for the same reasons I personally never believe fan translations of Hgames (or even ROMs to some extent) to be fully successful (you know, those people who want to translate the entire Kanon or AIR game) since it’s much more than just “translating the script”. You need to get down right to the source codes if you want a nice and smooth localization.
Damn…I think I am turning into Kumiko here, sorry…but I guess that’s part of my job too explaining how things work. To make things interesting and less lecturing, I will post some Brave Soul screenshots to illustrate what I am saying…tomorrow.
[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 08-02-2002).]
I really apologize in advance if I may sound hard on you in what I’ll write next, but did you hate Kumiko-chan that much, Lamuness-san? I mean… Everytime you’re writting something long, it’s like you feel the need to warn people you won’t talk as Kumiko-chan did. Aren’t you a little hard on her? Though I had many disagreements with her (mostly about technical aspects, as she, as many people here know, had an user level technical knowledge while some here have an engineer technical knowledge and yet would debate with us…), I honestly think she did her best to promote bishoujo games… just as you do now.
She may have been boring sometimes, but does that have to condition the way you write that you feel the need to point out to us you DO write differently from her?
IMHO, you should just write the way you want and not care about people comparing you to anyone. We’re adults, damn it, not kids who would pinpoint to each other’s bad points! And more than that, I think we’re a close enough communauty to be beyond that.
[This message has been edited by olf_le_fol (edited 08-02-2002).]
The thing that bothers me (as well as a number of people here) the most is that there are things that are being repeated in almost every single post, and we are know what it’s about, and people were complaing about it in the past. Although many of the posts tend to be explanatory, the tone is just too lecturing. So it’s not about the length but more on the content. Anyhow, I don’t want the same problem to apply to me.
And I do recall one time when I did write something long someone did ask me if I was feeling okay…
However, being the mod myself, I am sure people here have a different perspective towards me than everybody else here (the regular visitors). Also, me being the “new” mod, I am sure there are still some “preoccupations” associating myself and Kumiko. Hopefully this will start to dissolve as time passes.
And honestly there is no need to apologize. I do take criticisms (ahem), it’s a way for me to learn, and I will take what you said into consideration in future posts. I am sure in time I won’t have to bother writing warnings. Sorry if I was too hard on Kumiko…but to answer your first question, yes, and I will leave it at that. Yes, Kumiko is dedicated and to be honest that’s what I appreciate the most about Kumiko…but on the other hand…
[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 08-02-2002).]
Well how about a Bishoujo Games FAQ
for all the repeated questions.
There is a FAQ page on the site already…and a good part of it is written by Kumiko just by judging from the tone and style.
Thanks for the explaination, through I’m a ltitle too tired to get it to make sense right now (really, if you want to go on a couple of anime days, you gotta hate sleep). anyway, this willb e one of my last posts before going off to gotland. i’ll read your answer more closely when I get back (and have got plenty of sleep)
Lemme just add my two cents here…
When I first came across this site I was convinced, for a time, that Kumiko was not real and was an invention of Peach Princess (or was at least a real person assuming an online persona significantly different from their own). I don’t recall exactly why, though…
did anyone ever meet kumiko in real life? in all seriousness, i still think kumiko was a guy lol
quote:
Originally posted by ladyphoenix:
did anyone ever meet kumiko in real life? in all seriousness, i still think kumiko was a guy [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img] lol
I know a few people suspected that she was Dave E.
quote:
Originally posted by Doug:
I know a few people suspected that she [b]was Dave E.[/b]
I don't know why, but I've thought that ever since Kumiko and Dave both co-incidentally left at the same time. (I miss those disagreements about technical subjects [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img])
Anyway, about the text wrappying problem. Would it not just be easier to re-write the function that displays the text so that it can work out which word would go off the end of the box and automatically insert a '\ ' character before that word? Then maybe even make it so that, with large amounts of text, the excessive text can automatically be moved to an additional message (i.e. the user has to to press return to see the remaining message)? I'm sure that I could even write a function to do that if I wanted to; it's really not that difficult.
I mean, surely that's easier to edit a single function in the code than to manually edit thousands of lines of script to add in the '\ ' characters? I'd even do it for you if it will speed up development of your games. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
[This message has been edited by TurricaN (edited 08-03-2002).]
quote:
Originally posted by TurricaN:
I don't know why, but I've thought that ever since Kumiko and Dave both co-incidentally left at the same time. (I miss those disagreements about technical subjects [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img])
I have exchanged emails with Dave E. before, and K's writting style is nowhere close to Dave's style. Unless he was indeed "she", he made an incredible effort to fake that other personality.
quote:
Originally posted by TurricaN:
Anyway, about the text wrappying problem. Would it not just be easier to re-write the function that displays the text so that it can work out which word would go off the end of the box and automatically insert a '\ ' character before that word?
It's not that easy, anyway, as, I am not sure if you have noticed, the text tend to skew a bit depending on the text speed you are using. So a line there, is not necessarily a line.
Lamuness: it is odd that you didn't mentioned this, but does the fact that non-European characters are two bytes has anything to do with it?
It gets more complicated if the game does not use a fixed width font.
Well well well…the lady (the goddess to some) suspects something. for those who are suspecting…yes you are correct. I never wanted to reveal this, but if a girl/lady/female/goddess doesn’t think Kumiko is female, then I guess we got a problem. Sorry Dave, but your character doesn’t seem to pass the lady’s eyes, and I guess she blew it :P. Actually, Dave E and Kumiko’s style of writing is very similar in my opinion. Trust me, I have seen enough of his emails.
Back to text in games.
Turrican, as a doujin-soft programmer myself, I was thinking the same thing too. The thing is, after I look at the source code more and more, it seems that the japanese never programmed any automatic line breaks simply because that’s how the japanese language is written (you just go on and on); we have to do the line breaks on our own. As for spanning over multiple message windows, yes that may be the only solution, but like I said before, it won’t be totally synchronized with the voices. And sorry, since I do a little bit of music composition myself (very amateur) I can’t disagree with you on technical aspects eg MIDI “quality” that Kumiko was so stubborn about (Dave E most likely was using a on-board sound card (ie crappy sb16)…either that or he doesn’t know how to enhance the drivers). I do know a wide range of stuff.
Fxho, double-byte characters…to me personally (after giving it some thought) I don’t think it matters a lot anyways. Bottom line, a english sentence will most likely take up more bytes/spaces than the same sentence in japanese.
quote:
Originally posted by Lamuness:
Turrican, as a doujin-soft programmer myself, I was thinking the same thing too. The thing is, after I look at the source code more and more, it seems that the japanese never programmed any automatic line breaks simply because that's how the japanese language is written (you just go on and on); we have to do the line breaks on our own. As for spanning over multiple message windows, yes that may be the only solution, but like I said before, it won't be totally synchronized with the voices.
But need the text splitting be done manualy
or edited and viewed in the game windows? It seems like a text utility program could be written to help format the text. The fly in the ointment is that you may have different
text speeds and breaks need to handeled differently.
All spanning, I am afraid, will have to be done manually by myself (for brave soul)…these games are not modelled for the english language.
Since I promised you guys a screenshot, here’s an unedited text:
http://www.peachprincess.com/lamuness/text.jpg
…“with my” what???
let the imagination and guessing begin 
[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 08-03-2002).]
quote:Yeah, but that's why I mentioned re-writing the function - I mean, if you can look at the source code, why leave it as it originally was? Surely you can also modify it to work better with the English language right? And if you're a programmer, then I'm sure that you wouldn't find it to difficult to do that?
Originally posted by Lamuness:
Turrican, as a doujin-soft programmer myself, I was thinking the same thing too. The thing is, after I look at the source code more and more, it seems that the japanese never programmed any automatic line breaks simply because that's how the japanese language is written (you just go on and on); we have to do the line breaks on our own.
quote:Good point, I never would have thought of that.
As for spanning over multiple message windows, yes that may be the only solution, but like I said before, it won't be totally synchronized with the voices.
The thing is, I doubt they even implemented a sub-string function (or any string related functions since I don’t see any real use of it in the japanese language or in this game)…and I don’t think I would want to rewrite/add the code in any way for various reasons…Turrican, it’s not as easy as you may think and it’s best not to compare peapri with other typical game companies. Crowd, copyright-wise, has the ultimate say in the game, regardless of graphics, music, or engine, and I don’t want to mess around with their stuff; whatever I have to change will have to go through them first. I was given the source code but not the full documentation (there are some comments/documentation in the codes) or manual of commands so I have to guess/reverse-enginneer by myself. Also, peapri is just a localization company, not a game creation/programming company…honestly I don’t want to invent any more codes which will lead to more time in testing and debugging (via Crowd, not us) and more problems , which will lead to an increase in price of the product as well as delay…will consumers be happy about that? I prefer working with what I have right now.
And also, an automatic function may not be perfect, it may work theoretically but given how screwed up english can be…in my opinion it’s best to check line breaks manually.
As for spanning, as much as the voices will not get synchronized, that may be the only solution for me right now…the message window is way too small as you can see in the screen shot; it’s hard to put in a single long sentence in there. Before Turrican responds by reprogramming it, the message window is of that size for a reason…
Bottom line, everything will have to be done manually, and with what we are given right now and leave it as close to the japanese version as possible.
[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 08-04-2002).]
quote:
Originally posted by Lamuness:
Well well well...the lady (the goddess to some) suspects something. for those who are suspecting...yes you are correct. I never wanted to reveal this, but if a girl/lady/female/goddess doesn't think Kumiko is female, then I guess we got a problem. Sorry Dave, but your character doesn't seem to pass the lady's eyes, and I guess she blew it :P. Actually, Dave E and Kumiko's style of writing is very similar in my opinion. Trust me, I have seen enough of his emails.
i knew it i knew it i knew it!!!!! i knew kumiko was a farce!!!!!! woohoo, i love being right!!! [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
ok, wait a minute, does that mean she ceases to be one of the trio of goddesses?
quote:
Originally posted by ladyphoenix:
ok, wait a minute, does that mean she ceases to be one of the trio of goddesses?
Trio? ....trio? Who's the other two (one actually)?