Synchronism between BG:EE & BG2:EE (& IWD:EE)

[Cahir]

The Polish translation has undergone the same long verification process across all 3 games (BGEE/BG2EE and IWDEE), to unify the original translation of those 3 games, both in terms of lore and gameplay mechanics. Fortunately (mostly) the same team coordinated BGEE, BG2EE and IWDEE translations, so this process was pretty well coordinated from our side, and I think the end result is visible in the the games. We faced the dilemma, if we should unify Polish translation in such cases, if the English text is not unified, but we decided to go with it. We realised that those discrepancies were not the effect of conscious decision, but rather by the fact that at some point of development, different devs were writing the text and the text consistency was not set as a priority.

I know Beamdog already corrected a good part of such discrepancies, I still remember how many English lines were changed during development that we needed to catch up, but with so many things to correct they would need to dedicate one person to spent time only on this. 

Anyway, I perfectly understand Jazira and if anything, EE Fixpack is the perfect place to get rid of those discrepancies, if possible. 

 

[jmerry]

What's going on is that the BG2 dialog.txt started with the BG1 (with TotSC) dialog.txt and added a bunch of stuff onto the end of it for the new resources. ToB added more stuff to that. Then the EEs added stuff onto the end of the full BG1 and BG2 dialog.txt files for their new content, preserving the old pre-EE strings.

The problem is that the first part of that isn't exactly accurate. BG2 didn't exactly copy BG1's strings. It changed some of them.. And the EEs inherited those changes. This thread is about the nebulously large project of assessing those changes and making things the same across both games when they should be the same.

I've also had an idea - we really need a tool that systematically looks up where a string is referenced in the game files. That would let us automate the first two steps, leading to a much more manageable project that has more of a chance of actually getting done. I call this tool SULU (String Usage Lookup Utility). I ... might be able to write it. In theory, it would take a list of numbers as input and give a (tab-delimited text?) list of places those numbers are referenced.

[CamDawg]

45 minutes ago, jmerry said:

I've also had an idea - we really need a tool that systematically looks up where a string is referenced in the game files. That would let us automate the first two steps, leading to a much more manageable project that has more of a chance of actually getting done. I call this tool SULU (String Usage Lookup Utility). I ... might be able to write it. In theory, it would take a list of numbers as input and give a (tab-delimited text?) list of places those numbers are referenced.

NI's string lookup tool is excellent, but it lacks is a way to do it en masse and report.

To the broader question, I'd like to circle back to the original EEFP structure. (I'd like to make a quick aside here: I'm speaking personally, not declaring this as official.) Remember that when I coded up the string fixes--both in the mainline component, and the optional GTUs--I made the languages independent from one another. This is primarily because I know there are issues in one language that don't occur in others and, more to the point, I wanted to defer these decisions to the same translation teams and communities that led the original projects.

With that in mind, the primary question instead shifts to whether the French players want these changes. If the French version wants to synchronize these strings in the GTU--as apparently the Polish team did, from Cahir's post--I don't have an opinion on it, and the discussion should be held by and with the French players. Whether these changes constitute a fix and should be included in the in the core French fixes component is a tougher discussion, but I'm again comfortable deferring to the French players. Since the Polish community already did this, Cahir or one of the other Polish translators may be able to give you a better framework on the pros and cons of a synchronization approach for discussion.

The natural followup questions are whether we would want synchronization within the other translations. From the comments I've seen on the thread so far, it looks like the answer is leaning towards no for English at least, unless we're talking about material differences. If the Polish or Russian or whatever versions want to synchronize is, again, something I'd defer to the respective players and translators.

[ahungry]

I've been working on https://github.com/ahungry/overdexer (with random gaps to play some BG haha) - currently it indexes items and dialog.tlk into an sqlite database - my dialog.tlk on a megamod for instance has 1.6 million rows of dialog entries, but the cool thing is I can query with any valid SQL syntax, making checking for duplicate or similar string entries very easy.

A similar indexer could be done for .tra files, but might be overkill if you just want to sort them into strref ids and string content (tra files seem pretty simple structure wise).

The other neat thing with having the data in a database, I can check for duplicate strrefs for item descriptions/names etc. in a similar way as querying my dialog.tlk table.

The program would need some minor update for alternate dialog files, I think I heard there was a dialogf.tlk to go with dialog.tlk, and I only handle the latter (but the dialog/language directory itself is a user input).

[CamDawg]

41 minutes ago, ahungry said:

The other neat thing with having the data in a database, I can check for duplicate strrefs for item descriptions/names etc. in a similar way as querying my dialog.tlk table.

There are some hidden pitfalls here. In oBG2, scook.cre uses strref #12895 ("Cook") as her name and 12889 ("Cook") as her tooltip. In BG2EE, she uses 12895 (still "Cook") for both, and 12889 (also still "Cook") is used as both name and tooltip for ohdhcook.cre. This is one of the times we made a change to game files for gendered language translations, because the latter is a male cook. We simply repurposed the redundant string--e.g. in Polish, 12889 is "Kucharz" and 12895 is "Kucharka".

 

[subtledoctor]

On 10/5/2022 at 10:43 PM, Sam. said:

For whatever reason I was under the impression that the first X dialog.tlk entries between BGEE/SoD and BG2EE were "theoretically" supposed to be the same (in other words the BG2EE dialog.txt started with the BGEE dialog.txt, and then added its new entries from there).  A quick test of using WeiDU to traify the DLG files and diffing the two shows this is absolutely not the case.  Is my original assumption completely wrong, or is my method flawed?

I think your impression is just mistaken. BG1 and BG2 had quite different .tlk files, BG2 didn't just add onto t he BG1 one - there were tons of BG1 strings that were  not needed in BG2 so they were  removed and used for BG2 content. BGEE put BG1 into the BG2 engine, more or less, but unlike TuTu or BGT, it didn't have to import  it  into an engine where a .tlk file already existed. So they could keep BG1 strings in BG1 places. Then BG2EE was made, and I suppose it was an opportunity to put the .tlk files together... but that would have meant  changing string references for gobs of .ITMs and .SPLs and .DLGs etc., creating a ton of work with no discernable benefit. And they needed to get the game out  the door and there was already enough work to go around because IIRC, BG2EE v1.2 was rather buggy.

To the current question... I don't know, I'm just not seeing what benefit is obtained from all the work involved in  this idea. Like, the actual BG1 text for leather armor talks about how it, "despite the popular misconception, is not soft and supple," and BGEE is supposed to let you play  BG1. The BG2 text talks about how leather armor  is "made of thick, wax or water-hardened leather" etc.  That is a choice Bioware made 20+ years ago, it is the content of that game, and BG2EE is supposed to let you play that game. Somebody put a lot of hours into the text of these games... it would be doing one game or another a bit of a disservice to remove some of it.

Not that that actually matters. I mean, they had a good run, it's 2022, who cares. If there was a concrete benefit to making them identical then I would say sure, and that the BG2 text should probably control since BGEE uses the BG2 engine and mechanics.

But... I don't see any concrete benefit to putting the time into this. At least, it hasn't been explained so far. (Unless the implication is that unifying the English text would make things easier for translators? I suppose that might be possible... but there I would say, just translate the BG2 text for the reasons I just mentioned, and call it a day. Still no call to do anything with the English-only BG1 text.)

[Jazira]

On the sound part of the subject, I wish to report [REPUP] sound file and sound texts entries is missing on BG2:EE (@10468 and @19686)

It seems this sound was added in BG:EE by Beamdog, but it was not imported on BG2:EE.

It is not on the scope of our project (CorrectfrBG2EE), we believe it is more on the EEFP, but if you do not want to add this sound, please tell us so we will make some exception in our project.

On 10/7/2022 at 1:12 AM, CamDawg said:

With that in mind, the primary question instead shifts to whether the French players want these changes. If the French version wants to synchronize these strings in the GTU--as apparently the Polish team did, from Cahir's post--I don't have an opinion on it, and the discussion should be held by and with the French players. Whether these changes constitute a fix and should be included in the in the core French fixes component is a tougher discussion, but I'm again comfortable deferring to the French players. Since the Polish community already did this, Cahir or one of the other Polish translators may be able to give you a better framework on the pros and cons of a synchronization approach for discussion.

There is no need for French GTU in EEFP for BG:1EE & BG2:EE, CorrectfrBG1EE and CorrectfrBG2EE already do the job. And we do have already unified most of the shared texts.

This thread is not about unifying French localization, but to report all the other one that there is a ton of discrepancies in English, which is the core for everyone.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Jazira

[Jazira]

Oh, and I almost forgot, but some icons, or at least their resolution seems to be different too. I don't know if it's from NI, tho.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Jazira

[Jazira]

dwchan02.itm bg2:ee:

@46657  = ~The sturdy craftsmanship of the drow allows them to design many beautiful yet utilitarian goods. Among these is drow chain mail, which is so finely wrought that it can be worn under normal clothing without revealing its presence. This and its lightness allows it to be worn by Thieves and Fighter/Mages with few restrictions.

This item, like most drow equipment, is created using adamantine, an alloy of adamantite that quickly turns to dust if removed from the Underdark.

STATISTICS:

Equipped abilities:
– Open Locks: -5%
– Find Traps: -5%
– Pick Pockets: -20%
– Move Silently: -10%
– Spellcasting is not disabled

Armor Class: 0 (4 vs. crushing)
Requires:
 5 Strength

Weight: 12~

dwchan02.itm bg:ee:

@51969 = ~The sturdy craftsmanship of the drow allows them to design many beautiful yet utilitarian goods. Among these is drow chain mail, which is so finely wrought that it can be worn under normal clothing without revealing its presence. This and its lightness allows it to be worn by Thieves and Fighter/Mages with few restrictions.

This item, like most drow equipment, is created using adamantine, an alloy of adamantite that quickly turns to dust if exposed to sunlight.

STATISTICS:

Equipped abilities:
– Open Locks: -5%
– Find Traps: -5%
– Pick Pockets: -20%
– Move Silently: -10%
– Spellcasting is not disabled

Armor Class: 0 (-4 vs. crushing)
Requires:
 5 Strength

Weight: 12~

Edited October 10, 2022 by Jazira

[kjeron]

bg2ee description version is correct:

Quote

Armor Class: 0 (4 vs. crushing)

bgee icon is more complete.  It has both the large and small icon (NI just defaults to display the second one, in-game you'll see the larger one).  The EE's generally don't use the secondary item icons anymore, they just scale down the main icon to fit the inventory slots instead.  Notable exceptions include scrolls (when picked up you see a rolled up scroll).  For whatever reason the secondary icons were deleted from most item icons in BG2EE.

[Jazira]

While looking for the difference of enchantment between BG:EE and BG2:EE of arrows of fire, I found this article on bg wiki.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Arrow_of_Fire

@6767  = ~Arrow of Fire +2~

@6767   = ~Arrow of Fire~