[FF7PC-98/Steam] Multiple mods and Modding Framework-The Reunion [R06f]

[Tex2002ans]

While not strictly wrong, I've changed it. May as well be consistent.

Exactly. That is one of the key points when working on texts—to make the work consistent within itself.

If you spell things a certain way (or follow certain rules), make sure you stick with it throughout the work.

This one got left alone because I assumed it was some sort of Scottish thing. I mean, they use "no" instead of "no’", for example. They don't place an apostrophe for the missing t. I'll have to check this one again. Edit.  Checked with Prince Lex and it is "You 'n' me", even in Scotland.

Heh. Trying to wrap my head around this new Cait Sith dialogue is making my head hurt—and it doesn't help that a lot of his words get in the way of "legitimate" English words. Plus all the apostrophes make it a giant pain to quickly read + spellcheck.

I may have to do a few passes looking only at Cait Sith's dialogue + trying to make that consistent within itself.

For example, I did a quick word list of Cait Sith's dialogue, and there were:

• 20 "aboot" + 2 "’boot"
• 19 "cannae" + 2 "can’t"
• 1 "ev’ry" + lots of "everyone"/"everyone’ll"/"everyone’s"
  
  • 1 "ev’rythin’" + 1 "Everythin’s"
• 1 "gawn" + 3 "gone"
• 1 "intae" + 1 "into"
• 9 "Ah’ll" + 1 "I’ll"
• 1 "ol’" + 1 "old"
• 7 "th’" but 101 "the"
• 7 "yer" + 1 "your" + 1 "yours"

These types of inconsistencies will probably require very careful consideration/reading + another normalizing pass.

Deliberately left with no space, due to the font being so spacey already.  It looks crap in game when a space is added there.

Well then, there are these two:

[blin62_3.txt]

------------------------------
15. The Space Program:
     A Glorious History ***Vol. 1***
------------------------------
18. The Space Program:
     A Glorious History ***Vol. 2***

There are no more "Vol." anywhere else in the entire text, so there isn't anything else to compare to. The only other times periods are followed by numbers are all of the:

Shin-Ra ***Bldg. 70F***

So grammatically incorrect, but no-one will really notice and it looks better anyway.

Well I guess I will continue being a no one.

PS. I actually have no idea how it looks in the game, so you might know best there with the font spacing issues. I actually haven't played FF7 since way back on PS1. I read the Eurogamer article and was thinking now might be a good time to jump back in... although I still haven't decided whether I want to hold off until R05, or just jump in now!

The hyphen issue is deliberate because it looks crap to use a colon there in game when a lot of colons follow it. It was just a choice to make it look better.  Although, saying that, I did add the {NEW}, so it would now look ok to use the colon.  Ok, I've amended that too.

Great to hear!

I am not that familiar with the in-depth workings of the FF7 dialogue system (Window Size, Font, Window Positioning, etc. etc.).

So is there any sort of rules that strictly have to be followed when editing these text files?

Can extra lines can be added or can text be shifted around from one line to the next?

Or is there a certain max character limit per line?

Or is there another nebulous "rule" you should follow, such as if there are multiple lines, try to make them approximately the same length of characters?

 

[DLPB_]

I did a check on Cait's dialogue not long back - but seems there need to be corrections.
Can you get me the maps that have:

2 "can’t"
1 "Everythin’s"
1 "into"
1 "I’ll"
1 "your"

Gawn does not mean gone Means going.

I'll have a look at the Vol thing again.  I was ok with place names.  But battle menu doesn't use space (D.Blow). Vol will have to be consistent.

So is there any sort of rules that strictly have to be followed when editing these text files?

Has to look nice in game.  I use my own tool BoxFF7 to preview it in-game. But with so many windows, it's impossible to do a perfect or consistent job. I gave up trying. It all has to be done manually.

Can extra lines can be added or can text be shifted around from one line to the next?

All text is fully editable.

Or is there a certain max character limit per line?

There is a max limit on total text - but text in lines is limited by how it looks in game - and screen width.

Or is there another nebulous "rule" you should follow, such as if there are multiple lines, try to make them approximately the same length of characters?

Within reason I try to make the text in the box even and look good on-screen.

 

[Tex2002ans]

I also don't know if you caught some of my edits—I was editing my post for quite a while (didn't expect you to respond so quickly).

2 "can’t"
1 "I’ll"

False alarm on these. Those actually existed in a {CHOICE}.






1 "Everythin’s"

[jailin2.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“Fortune looks good.
  ***Everythin’s*** perfect!”

1 "into"

[kuro9.txt]

#cy 88
{CAIT SITH}
“The Ancients sure did
  put some effort ***into*** aw this.”

And that "aw" made me look it up.

Cait Sith says ~21 "all" + ~7 "aw".






There is also 1 "awready" + 1 "already".

[fship_23.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“Och.
  Ah’ve told ye that ***already***.”

 





1 "your"

[nivl_3.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“{CLOUD},
  did ye make up ***your*** story
  juist tae gain our sympathy?”

I also caught this one just now. 1 "been" -> 11 "bin":

[chorace2.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“See,there’s somethin’
  aboot ye that’s ***been***
  botherin’ me.”{NEW}
“It’s the way that ye live.”{NEW}
“Ye dinnae get paid,
  ye dinnae get praised.”{NEW}
“Yet ye still risk yer lives,
  an’ continue oan yer journey.
  Seein’ that makes me…”

Gawn does not mean gone Means going.

Haha. Well that is what I get for only looking at word counts and making quick assumptions.

Well he says 20 "goin’". That is the only "gawn" in the entire text!

 

[DLPB_]

Yeah, there is inconsistency with Cait, but it's deliberate.  The use of one 'gawn' is to place it into people's minds that he is Scottish. If I used gawn for all goin', it would be very jarring.  I toned down the Scottish dialect a lot for the sanity of everyone, and so sometimes you will see aw and sometimes all.  Depends on how I felt it sounded in text.  Some words are ALWAYS used like 'tae' (which is why into is definitely incorrect).  I think the 'already' one needs to change, though, and so does the 'been'.

But bottom line I tried not to overdo the Scottish dialect - and Prince Lex discussed how strong I needed it.  It would become an annoyance to have a strong true dialect, rather than its intended purpose - making Cait unique, and making sense of the scene with Heidegger/Scarlet.

Also, I saw your edits and edited ages ago to respond to them

Thanks for those!

 

[DLPB_]

Hopefully someone finally fixed the mistranslation of North Pole into Knoll's Pol.  Knowlespole was one of the most famous mistranslations in the original US version, i'm rather surprised it was mistranslated twice.  Also I hope in the next version I can finally play it without needing to run the game exclusively on disk 3.

The Japanese kana is difficult to decipher, but it certainly isn't "North" or "Pole". The likelihood is that Knoll's Pol is correct to a high degree of certainty.  That would place the literal meaning as "Pole at the mountain top / Mountain's Pole"  - which is precisely the correct location.  it may even be a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knoll 

But the point is the Cetra called the location a geographical north "Pole" [Pol is what the kana is and is very likely from a non-English language https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pol, designed to make the place sound more foreign - since this is the Cetra who named it] on a mountain.  It not only fits the kana perfectly, but also the logical location in-game. The Great Glacier is a mountain - and the whole region is a mountainous area. 

In other words, we didn't mistranslate it. North Pole would be a 100% inaccurate translation (doesn't match the kana at all) - and Knoll's Pol has a very good chance of being the exact intended name.

You see, the issue is this:

ノース (Noosu)  North.  FF7 uses ノルズ (noruzu) 

You can already see that the kana is different.  It's of course entirely possible that they took the English and mangled it (the argument against that is how different the kana is).  As in, the actual name is based on North, but different to give a uniqueness to the Cetra's name for it. If that's the case, Knoll's (or Knolls') would be incorrect, even though it matches the kana they've used; and a better localization would be something close to North Pole, like Nordpol.  Something that allows an English person to see a North Pole influence, while not being the actual English. In either case, the Japanese writers made it clear that they definitely do not want North as a 1:1.  And I have to go with likelihoods that Knoll's  is what they meant.

Similarly, Pole is ポール and not ポル.

The reason it ended up Knowlespole in the original game is because Baskett was clever enough to see that it was too different to be North Pole - and so he conjured something up.

< From another forum.  I'm just clearing up our use of "Knoll's Pol".

 

[Ver Greeneyes]

[Pol is what the kana is and is very likely from a non-English language https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pol, designed to make the place sound more foreign - since this is the Cetra who named it]

FWIW, pol doesn't mean "pole" in all the languages on that page (for instance in Dutch, it means a clump of plants growing together). The languages in which it does mean "pole" are Catalan, Danish, Irish, Norwegian (both), Serbo-Croatian and Swedish.

What I find a bit odd about "Knoll's Pol" is the possessive apostrophe. In Danish, for instance, the genitive ending would simply be "Knolls Pol". Оf course, "Knoll" is the English word, but it seems odd to me to use an English word for the first part, a non-English word for the 2nd, and use the English possessive apostrophe. Something like "Nordpol" would avoid that problem, but is perhaps harder to justify as you said.

 

[DLPB_]

There is no way to tell. The only two possibilities are that this is meant to be a deliberate alteration of North Pole (or North Pole in another language) - or Knoll's Pol (pole) meaning "Pole on a mountain". 

If it's the former, then Nordpol would be a very good localization.

Edit.  It really is impossible to tell, because Knoll's fits the kana - and the meaning seems to work well - but at the same time, it could be a variation of North Pole.  I'll see which Luksy finds more likely:

Knoll's Pol (The reference being a Pole on a mountain/mound)  or a variation of North Pole (I'd opt for Nord Pol, which is also German for North Pole).

 

[DLPB_]

Actually, after all that - THIS is what it is:


matches the kana...

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=north

The kana uses "zu" simply because it isn't the English word North, it's the Old English / Norse.

Nord Pol.

 

[Ver Greeneyes]

Cool, that does seem plausible Not "Nordpol" though? That's the actual German word, and many of the languages this may have been based on are agglutinative (though most of the languages where "pol" means "pole" have the actual word as "nordpolen", it seems).

 

[DLPB_]

Hmm so german doesn't separate the words?

You're right. Nordpol it is.

 

[Tex2002ans]

Here are a few potential things I ran across today:






Cid

"Whadda you" -> "Whaddya".

There are 5 other cases where Cid says "whaddya":

[sea.txt]

{CID}
“***Whadda*** you guys up to?”

I think in this case, "them" -> "’em" would work better:

[itown2.txt]

{CID}
“Dammit!
  It’s one of ***them*** freak Weapons!!”{NEW}
“Of all the times to show up!”

Some Cid Word List Stats:

• 13 "’em" + 4 "them"

Cait Sith

Cait Sith only says 1 "with" + 12 "wi’":

[loslake1.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“Rufus wants tae defeat
  Sephiroth ***with*** it.”

 
1 "My" -> 8 "Mah":

[yougain2.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“Gil! The gil!
  ***My*** gil is missin’!”

"until" -> "’til":

[fship_24.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“But the reactors create channels
  where the energy leaves the ground.”{NEW}
“Once those are open,they cannae
  be plugged ***until*** the flow runs dry.”

2 "dae ye" -> 3 "d’ye":

[yougan.txt] + [yougan3.txt]

{CAIT SITH}
“This one?
  What ***dae ye*** mean ‘This one’?”{NEW}
“Got a guilty conscience
  fer somethin’ else,aye!?”

Some Cait Sith Word List Stats:

• 3 "c’moan" + 3 "come oan".
• 33 "o’" + 3 "of"

Barret

"taking" -> "takin’":

[fship_25.txt]

{BARRET}
“At first,it was revenge
  against Shin-Ra for ***taking***
  my hometown from me.”{NEW}
“But now…”{NEW}
“Yeah,I’m fightin’ for Marin.”{NEW}
“For Marin…
  For Marin’s future.”{NEW}
“Yeah… I guess I’m doin’
  all this for her sake.”

This one could potentially be changed from:

"apologize" -> "’pologize"

There was one other time that was used in the text (the only other time Barret said any form of "apologize"), and it might work well here too:

[ithos.txt]

{BARRET}
“You got nothin’ to ***apologize*** for.
  We’ll come back an’ check on ya.”

I think it would fit well with the rest of his dialect.

Yeah, there is inconsistency with Cait, but it's deliberate.  The use of one 'gawn' is to place it into people's minds that he is Scottish. If I used gawn for all goin', it would be very jarring.

Then I would argue to change that "gawn" into "goin'". There are already so many other "Scottish" words being used—plus every other usage throughout the entire game Cait Sith says "goin'"!

I toned down the Scottish dialect a lot for the sanity of everyone, and so sometimes you will see aw and sometimes all.  Depends on how I felt it sounded in text.  Some words are ALWAYS used like 'tae' (which is why into is definitely incorrect).

Heh. I would think this Scottish is  already pretty in your face throughout all of his dialogue. I will have to take a closer look at the "aw" and "all" usages specifically. I guess that is why I am partially trying to post the # of usages. Saves me work later on when trying to take closer looks at some potential mismatches/oddities.

But bottom line I tried not to overdo the Scottish dialect - and Prince Lex discussed how strong I needed it.  It would become an annoyance to have a strong true dialect, rather than its intended purpose - making Cait unique, and making sense of the scene with Heidegger/Scarlet.

I agree completely.

And were these discussions somewhere on the boards (maybe in the old Beacause topic?)? Or was this something discussed via PM? I would be interested in reading the explanation/reasoning/levels being discussed.

I must admit, I haven't read through the entire old Beacause thread yet. I typically try to do my research before posting!

 

[DLPB_]

Thanks

I'm happy with all of those, except "My" and "Until" for cait. I'm aware of the issue with Cid / Barrett not always using the same words - but if you take this example:

“At first,it was revenge
  against Shin-Ra for ***taking***
  my hometown from me.”{NEW}

< I deliberately left "taking" intact here because it's a very serious dialogue and I thought him using a full word had more impact. I did actually think about that as I used the full word   Plus I don't want every single character using the same words all the time in every dialogue.  I've allowed for some flexibility.  But keep bringing this stuff up, because it's helping and the "My" by cait is a mistake.

 

[Kaldarasha]

While it's correct to write Nordpol, I would write Nord-Pol or Nord Pol. Because I assume that the double meaning is intended. It refers to the most northern point on the map and also to the great mountain at that point. That's why I would separate the words to have double meaning of Pol intact and making it more noticeable.

 

[DLPB_]

Yeah, but that's just a style choice.  The German word is joined - and the Japanese could easily have intended the same.

 

[Tex2002ans]

Plus I don't want every single character using the same words all the time in every dialogue.

Exactly! Just like when you are writing Fiction, you want each character to have their own voice (using certain words/sayings, have certain levels of intelligence, etc. etc.), and not merge into one unforgettable blob.

You want them to be unique, such as:

• Yuffie is the only character who says "gawd" (7 times) + from a quick look, she seems to be the only one who drags some words: "c'moooon" + "boooooring".
• Barret/Cid are the only main characters who say "whaddya" + they like cuttin' their "ing"s.
• Cait Sith wi' his Sco'ish accent.

Earlier this morning I split each main character's dialogue so I could get individualized Word Lists. This is how I spotted some of those inconsistencies. I will probably do a few more broad passes like this before drilling down into the real nitty gritty.

I find it also helps you spot errors when you rip apart the text and visualize it in multiple different forms.

< I deliberately left "taking" intact here because it's a very serious dialogue and I thought him using a full word had more impact. I did actually think about that as I used the full word

I was thinkin' the same thing before I posted, and I could see the reasoning. I had the same exact thoughts runnin' through my head when looking at the places where Cid said "them" <-> "'em".

I will have to gather more stats/evidence in the more nitty gritty phases... I believe you will learn to see my ways!






"{PURPLE}♥{WHITE}" occurred 63 times total. 61 of those were placed DIRECTLY after the punctuation. Only these 2 had an extra space before. I have no idea if this extra space changes the actual display in game.

[onna_52.txt]

#xy 172 64
“Okay,okay.***{PURPLE} ♥{WHITE}***”
  (You moody thing…){NEW}
“Come on,everyone’s waiting.”
{CHOICE}Everyone?
{CHOICE}What the hell am I doing?

[onna_52.txt]

#xy 188 72
“So,shall we begin?*** {PURPLE}♥{WHITE}***”{NEW}
“Sir,{PURPLE}♥{WHITE}
  did you choose this room
  because…”{NEW}
“…you’re feeling lonely?”
{CHOICE}I’m used to it
{CHOICE}I don’t want to talk

 

[DLPB_]

Yeah, I think that is a slight inconsistency. I've removed space.

 

[DLPB_]

I thought I'd fixed the parade, but seems I didn't.  Had to recode a lot of it because of problems with the ff7 engine - and to make sure this game is consistent and fun. I've tweaked the ratings too so you need a score of 60% to get the best prize.  This is difficult to achieve and needs a near perfect run.

This is mostly complete:
Code: [Select]

Cloud can enter the formation from places other than the rear.A successful parade will occur even if Cloud is nowhere near the correct formation location.Soldiers disappear before fully leaving the left hand side of the screen.Cloud's speed is not consistent, and he will therefore move out of sync with the other soldiers.Even if Cloud is in the correct location, the game can fail to detect it.The gun move sound effect is not synced properly with Cloud's animation.The original script programmer accidentally left in a debug dialogue message to himself.The example soldier does not enter the formation properly.

Not much more left to do now on field fixes... just a ton of testing.

 

[Salk]

Incidentally, a "score" of 60% indicating a near perfect performance is completely counter-intuitive.

 

[DLPB_]

Incidentally, a "score" of 60% indicating a near perfect performance is completely counter-intuitive.

It's down to 50 now.  But this is TV ratings... you wouldn't get 100% - and there are only 2 digits anyway The original was 50 for a perfect score, also. The prize thresholds are set to the game, not the other way around.  It's a waste of effort and time to try to make the game (especially this parade) work to a score. It's ended up on 50 mostly by chance.

 

[DLPB_]

All right, now I am guilty of making doing both.  Made it so that it's very difficult to reach 50% - but that's top prize. You need a perfect run to do it - and you must do it on first attempt.  After 3 failed attempts, the game will be made easier.  Because it's hard to finish it regardless.  With a keyboard, it would be extremely hard without the easier version.