This is a bug for EE Fixpack? A SoD cinematic subtitles problem

[ElGamerViejuno]

Hello!

Currently, I'm translating into Spanish the SoD expansion and several related mods as well.

I remembered something that I see many times, but until now I have never reported it to anyone in the IE modding community. Jastey recommended me to post it here to see what you guys think about it.

The last two cinematics of the expansion do not have a subtitle system. It's strange because the intro (the introduction of the shinning lady) does have subtitles.

The cinematic of Bhaal's assassination on the bridge by Cyric doesn't need subtitles because nobody speaks any words.

But, the cinematic of the remembering the murder of Skie has no subtitles and it's a big problem if you don't know English.

Also the cinematic with the end of the game with the attack of the shadow thieves has no subtitles. It's a pity that Beamdog left it like that.

Should this be considered a bug to report for the EE Fixpack? Would it be difficult for someone to create a mod component (for example, on "Jastey's SoD Tweak Pack") with a subtitle system for those 2 cinematics?

Thanks for your attention.

PS: I have tested this in Spanish, Italian and French and I think it happens in all languages.

[argent77]

Subtitles in the games are handled via Lua scripting.

In BGEE.LUA you can find a nested array "movies" with several entries.

movies =
{
    {'intro', 1, 120, 32207, 0, 1},
    {'intro', 719, 779, 32166, 1, 1},
    {'intro', 809, 869, 32167, 0, 1},
    {'intro', 889, 959, 32168, 0, 1},
    {'intro', 949, 989, 32169, 1, 1},
  -- ...and so on...
}

Each entry defines a single subtitle. The individual elements of an entry are defined as follows:
index 1: name (resref) of the cinematic (without file extension)
index 2: starting frame of the subtitle
index 3: ending frame of the subtitle
index 4: string reference of the subtitle
index 5: horizontal text alignment (0=left, 1=right, 2=center)
index 6: vertical text alignment (0=top, 1=bottom, 2=center)

Btw, the murder cinematic (sodcin03) is already defined in the BGEE.LUA, but has been commented out. If you remove the comments then you'll notice that the timing is off and there are more subtitles than spoken lines. It was probably created for an earlier revision of the cinematic. However, the lines already exist in the game, so you'd only need to adjust the timing.

There are no subtitles available for the ambush cinematic (sodcin05), however. Those have to be created from scratch.

[Roberciiik]

Thank you! I want to report the same issue, as noticed in Polish language. In the first time I thought it was something wrong in my EE 2.5 version build, but it seems that Beamdog hasn't fixed it even in 2.6.

@argent77 Do you know if all languages have the same subtitles timings or it can be provided per language?

[argent77]

18 minutes ago, Roberciiik said:

Do you know if all languages have the same subtitles timings or it can be provided per language?

This is defined globally for all languages. It might be possible to override it by adding definitions to language-specific Lua files, but I haven't tested if or how it works.

[argent77]

I've taken a closer look and think it is possible to restore subtitles for both cinematics with relatively little effort.

Text of the subtitles for both cinematics already exist in the game. Only the "Ambush" cinematics title requires a text update. The actual string entry for it exists but is currently empty. Apart from that, only the timings of the subtitles have to be created or adjusted in BGEE.LUA.

[Roberciiik]

Hello!

Have you had a change to report this to Beamdog by their bug reporting site?

[zenblack]

Beamdog is done doing anything for the EE editions and has been for a while.

[Roberciiik]

It's an obvious thing. However, this submitted ticket will be in their support database. So it would be tracked somewhere, at least.