Languages
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*chortle*Canada Join Date: 2002-01-23 Member: 7Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
*chortle*Canada Join Date: 2002-01-23 Member: 7Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
I noticed then when looking through the recent <a href="http://steamgames.com/status/survey.html" target="_blank">Steam Survery</a> how many non-English language people there are on Steam. German and French alone each make up about 10% each. When making NS2, I would think looking at things like this and making those popular languages avaliable upon reason would be a great way to keep the game open to as many people as possible.
Comments
yeah but many people may prefer to hear generic voice commands in their native language.
i only speak english, but would gladly change my language settings to german, just to mear marines yell "ACHTUNG!!!!" or "LOS LOS LOS!!!" <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
it may take a little more time during devolopment, but it would definately help NS2 get a much wider audience, and therefore more money for UW.
I hate audiodubbing, it's rape!!!! rape i tell you!
I'm belgian and whenever i turn on the TV and tune in to a french TV-station i see great hollywood movies completely raped by audiodubbing.
I have Xbox games i bought in belgium that are dubbed in french, IT SUCKS, i never even played them!.
to me, It sounds retarded!!!
dubbing spreads out and people who just want the english version are ######ed by this.
Imagine new players downloading NS and accidentally they choose the wrong language, believe me, they will instantly delete it, and won't bother to reinstall, but avoid it.
I think the whole game should stay in 1 language, so all servers are 1 language. and everybody is welcome everywhere.
English isn't that hard to learn, i don't mind speaking english.
The voiceactors did a great job in NS1, so i expect the same in NS2, and come on, it are just small sentences.
I'm dutch speaking, If NS2 would be dubbed in dutch i would piss my pants, nobody who is native dutch would download it cause we all know it's retarded.
THe only 2 countries that are so obsessed with audiodubbing are France & Germany... not a coincidence you suggest to dub NS in french and german. Audiodubbing is a plague in europe that kills all creative audio mixing and replaces it by cheap retarded voiceactors. It's typical french, they dub everything. even sitcoms and cartoons. Why? it just doesn't ....fit.
my 2 cents
Well i dont like audio dubbing either.
But transferring script with right language would be nice... like amx is avaible in different languages.. this shouldnt be 2 hard to do....
the benefit of the german language is that audiodubbing is very easy to handle with the pictures! german and english use often same length of sentences. it just fits to the facemovement (if this word is existing xP)
But still not everyone is english well. The Most necessary thing is a Tutorial in the nativ language!!!!
If you hear english sounds and get a german description you learn it immidiatly.
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Including all languages in one single installfile will increase the size with a 100 Mb at least.
audiosamples are pretty big. If you want decent quality.
I think the easiest solution would be to create different installfiles each with another language.
It would save up alot of bandwidth, but there's a risk people will download the wrong package, and go completely mad.
pull their hair out & stuff....
If it is a playersetting i could live with it, i wouldn't even notice.
But when it's a server setting, i would avoid the servers.
I think language setting could devide this, allready small, community.
And after all, if you play a game english, you might actually learn something.... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
I know i learned english because of the simpsons & TMNT back when i was a kid.
And in know french only speak french... maybe they can say "yes" and "no", but the next thing they'll say is: "je ne comprend pas"
I speak 5 languages, all because of showbizz and entertainment.
isn 't that nice...
That is alot harder for any kind of texture that uses text, and I dont think you would want it on the UI (which is usualy just a bunch of textures anyway). Maybe the LUA just gives the name of the texture used?
I remember in either an earlier podcast or a news update that they modified the materials system to make that process easier. I can't look it up atm, but I'm 99% sure of it.
Now, finding competent voice actors while fitting in UW's tight bugdet, that's another story. I think providing a translated interface should be a good start already, maybe with a subtitle option or something similar. I'd glady help with the french and german version. We could also create a comparative table showing english terms with their translated equivalents, so that online play on english servers would be a little more understandable. Think about it, UW's slogan is "Unite the world through play", and one of the biggest obstacle for unity is IMO language, so I think it's a good idea to work on that!
Now Qlippoth, I think you're overreacting.. I don't think you need to fear multi-language support. I too almost only play game in their native languages (so mostly English), and there has never been any problem with that thanks to Steam. Yes, that's right, Steam. Remember that the game will be distributed on it, so that solves the "download the wrong language version" issue. Steam downloads the game in the same language you set the application (if it exists), and you can always change it with a few clicks and it will download the additional content (language-specific sound files). So this deals with the increased install file size. Oh and about using a lot of bandwidth, don't worry about that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
I learned a lot of my English trough games, and now I'm glad I can do this with other languages. For example, games like Beyond Good&Evil and Tomb Raider : Legends (to name a few), are available in multiple languages (and the tranlations are pretty good if you ask me) and you can freely switch between them, so I play through the game in English first to understand everything, and then I move onto German for example, and subtitles help a lot too! So yeah, it goes both way.
Also don't even think about suggesting a Dutch sound version of NS2, they've done that with Black and White and the people who bought it demanded an English patch to fix the damn Dutch spoken stuff in the game. Or they simply imported the game from the UK after being warned about it. Don't get me wrong I love me language, but it just doens't work very well in games <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
That still doesn't rule out the many, many people who wouldn't be able to understand it. Since Steam supposedly has 13 million user accounts, that 10% that speak German or French is actually still a lot of sales.
I remember this too as an old blog entry. It had to do with the dynamic textures that could be changed during runtime. Bah, I'll go and find it. <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2007/06/a_good_sign" target="_blank">A Good Sign</a> is the blog entry. As long as mappers use it even ingame signs won't be a problem. Neat, no?
And people speaking english will be kicked from those servers...
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->DUBBING SHOULD BE BANNED BY LAW<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Damn right!
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also don't even think about suggesting a Dutch sound version of NS2, they've done that with Black and White and the people who bought it demanded an English patch to fix the damn Dutch spoken stuff in the game. Or they simply imported the game from the UK after being warned about it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
yeah, my brother bought the game in dutch as well. He sold his copy because of it (while he is dutch).
hehe. it sounded retarded, although we had a good laugh at first...
Some people might say i'm overreacting, well, I admit, i was overreacting...
But you don't live in Belgium.
I overreacted cause audiodubbing frustrated me my entire life.
We are flooded by dubbed media...
I'll inform you a bit so you'll understand where my frustration is coming from.
Belgians are very adaptive to other cultures.
Whenever we go to another country, we always speak the langauge.
If we can't speak the language, we will at least learn the basic words.
Whenever a foreigner comes to Belgium, he can speak his native language.
Even our country is trilangual (3 governments+1 federal gov.), dutch(60%), french(30%) and german(5%). +5% other languages.
IF you go to a store in Brussels you can buy games in 2, sometimes 3 languages (english, french and sometimes german)
Insn't that weird??? For those of you who don't know, Brussels is actually Dutch.
If you ever visit Brussels you'll notice everybody speaks french... while 70% is native dutch...
That's just because french are die-hard conservatives, like it's in their nature they are incapable of learning other languages. (just like americans, hehe <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/turret.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::sentry::" border="0" alt="turret.gif" /> )
But all media is infected by their conservative attitude.
French dub everything, and literally everything....
I even saw a speech of George Bush once on a french TVstation, the original sound was trimmed and a french voice-over was added.
You could still hear Bush, but only very very far in the background. The voice-over didn't wait for him to finsih his sentence and then translate, but instead they tried to sync it with his lips... that's insane!!! I won't be suprised if some french folks actually believe Bush is native French...
well, sorry to go off topic, i'm overreacting again, sorry for that...
This has nothing to do with NS2, I just don't want to see my bad experiences from the past repeated in NS2.
Whatever you do...i warn you, handle it very carefully...you give them a hand, they rip of your arm.(like banning english entirely from their servers).
i can allready imagine what will happen with multiple language support in NS2:
me:" hello people, what's up, are we winning??"
he:"merde, fils de putte, c'est un anglais, admin! bannir le!
....
***you have been kicked form the server ***
***reason:Les infidels ne peuvent pas parler anglais***
you'll laugh with it now, but some day, when it all happens, and you are crying...
I'll be there, tapping on you back and saying:
"there there, don't cry....now you know how it feels..."
but off course if you want people to be kicked cause they speak english, then there is no problem...