Programmers/Hackers Needed

[Sil]

Hello Again Everyone,

Short Version: Our translation group needs a hacker/programmer that can help us figure out a way to get long sentences of dialogue/narration into small game dialogue boxes that only allow 150 characters max.

Long Version: Having just finished and released a project, my group has now moved onto one of our next projects and we've run into a bit of a problem. The game engine runs off of the Will Co .Arc system. Our issue is that the dialogue boxes are extremely small and can't even fit half of the English translations. The boxes are usually filled to the end with bricks of kanji, and if you have any experience with translating Japanese, English text usually ends up being much longer and taking more space than kanji. So now we often have translations that cannot fit into the dialogue box and end up getting cut off (the box can only fit around 100 to 150 characters, which includes spaces and punctuation. A lot of our lines end up being 200+ characters). Originally, we were going to try and cut down the translations, but it just wasn't the same anymore, and ended up harming the original too much. So we won't be going down that route.

We also thought of adding more dialogue boxes, but don't think it will work great with voiced scenes. With the voice only working for that one box. We are trying to figure out if it's the cause of the backlog breaking or the sentence length. As of right now, we believe it's an overload from the sentence length.

We have also considered changing the font, but again, that's a bit over our programming skill level and so we can't figure out how to go about it aside from ways that keep failing.

As you can see, this is a problem that will effect the whole game. So if anyone can give us any ideas on how we can go about fixing this error, or methods to get around it, and/or are willing to help us out we would greatly appreciate it. Feel free to P.M me if you are interested, or comment here.

Ps. As with our other project, we will not be openly mentioning what the game is called unless you are willing to help with the project. This is to keep our group as safe as possible, so I apologize for any inconvenience that may cause.

Also, the main tools we use are AnimED and Sakura Editor.

Thank you very much for your time,
Sil

[Unregistered]

We also thought of adding more dialogue boxes, but don't think it will work great with voiced scenes. With the voice only working for that one box. We are trying to figure out if it's the cause of the backlog breaking or the sentence length. As of right now, we believe it's an overload from the sentence length.
Most likely, it's the cause of your breaking long sentences per several dialogue boxes and not an overload of any sort. I think this is just the way the engine works.

You didn't mention what game you want to translate, but I presume it's Hana to Otome ni Shukufuku o Royal Bouquet. Basically, there are a few options you can choose from. First, you can add one more line per dialogue box, that requires modifying the engine in its part where it increases Y before going to the next line and it would also require changing the current font size. If you're lucky, it will give you about 80 additional characters per screen. The other option is to replace the fixed-width font with a proportional one. How easy (or rather how hard) that would be to do depends on a game, but there is a good chance that it would require making extensive modifications to the executable. Also, you would have to experiment with different fonts to see which fonts look nice in the game.

[Unregistered]

As with our other project, we will not be openly mentioning what the game is called unless you are willing to help with the project. This is to keep our group as safe as possible, so I apologize for any inconvenience that may cause.
I'm sorry, I overlooked this. I can't edit my post, but please feel free to ask a mod to do it if you believe it's necessary.

[Unregistered]

>I can't edit my post
You've always was a piece of crack, aren't you? First you revealing the project, then what? You'll betray them? Go away and don't come here anymore.

[Unregistered]

You've always was a piece of crack, aren't you? First you revealing the project, then what? You'll betray them? Go away and don't come here anymore.
Why, aren't you a nice guy.

I didn't reveal any project. I'm not the part of the op's team (nor, hypothetically speaking of the possibility of my "betrayal", have any intention to be since the game isn't my cup of tea for that matter) so it's not like I'm leaking (or going to leak when entrusted with) some secret inside information. The name of the game was a mere guess on my part and the op didn't bother to make any secret about the company's name in the first place.

And no, the whole thing had nothing to do with my being a piece of crack or anything. I've read the op's post before he edited it the next day and I believe (though I may be wrong) that the part where he says that he doesn't want the name of the game to be revealed wasn't there yet. And even if it was, I honestly didn't see it. And like I already said, it was a mere speculation on my part. As for why I tried to guess the name of the game, in case you're curious, that's because considering the nature of the op's question, seeing some screenshots and knowing at least some details before giving an answer would definitely help. For example, there are games which have enough space in the dialogue box so you can add a line without considerably altering the size of the font. Unfortunately, the aforementioned game isn't one of them.

[Sil]

Thank you very much for your reply. Don't worry there's no harm done in regards to the game name, as that is not the one we are doing^^ However, the issues you stated I think are exactly the same as the game we have, as it runs on the same engine. (And actually in regards to stating the company name, other companies surprisingly use the same engine, so it's not always Will games using the Will Co .Arc system).

Thank you for the ideas on how we might fix it. The issue is, we don't really have the skills to go about editing the executable. My team is more skilled in dealing with translations and wording, than the programming front. Which is why we need outside help. Any suggestions on how we should go about editing the executable?

And I apologize for the trouble not being able to state our project causes. If you are willing to look into the issue for us, I can discuss it with you through PM. Or Email.

Oh and just for confirmation I stated the PS. part from the beginning^^ What I changed when I edited the post was the character length numbers, since I talked with our programmer and she told me I was off by a digit. And also some information on the box breaking. But like I said, no harm done since that's not our game and it appears you didn't mean any harm by it.

Thank you,
Sil

[Unregistered]

>I can't edit my post
You've always was a piece of crack, aren't you? First you revealing the project, then what? You'll betray them? Go away and don't come here anymore.

You are now my second favourite poster (don't worry fujifruit, you're still number one).