Hi everybody,

I thought, I’d share some information about what I’m up to, what’s going on and the like…

Progress so far is quite vast as this turns out to be the typical 80-20 project. As it turns out, the translation has been sequenced as follows:

1. Translate all items, books and signs
2. Find all already existing dialogues and copy them to their appropriate target files.
2a. Correct the spelling to comply with the rules from 2006
2b. Rework the structure of the existing files to work with the English binaries.
3. Translate all new and modified dialogues
4. Rework all terms used in the game to comply with other translations. Especially Dungeons, Shrines, Ships, Pubs Places and Armour need a closer look
5. Rework the wording, which is – for my liking – not “ultimaesque” enough every now and then.
6. Proof-reading and beta testing
7. Check if intro and menu screens can be translated
8. Bug fixing Galore

Taking into account the existing translation, I am confident that I will have something useful on my hands pretty soon – I started working on this translation quite a while ago, since DK let me know that he was confident to being able to come up with a working editor.

By now there is a good deal already being translated, adapted to the new structure and compliant with the new German spelling:

Items and descriptions: 1257/1257 (1523) – DONE
Books: 145/145 – DONE
Dialogues: ~200/645
Signs and Plaques: ~80%

In case you still wonder, what I am doing other than copy&pasting here, I’ll elaborate point 2b a bit more:
Ultima 7 Complete Edition not only comes with the Add-on pre-installed but also with quite a few bug fixes, some of which have altered the structure of the dialogues to a degree. In order to have text files, I am able to compile, I need to make sure, that all translated lines are in the same rows as their original counterparts. Plus, the jump addresses (“names”) of the text files have all been mixed up.
A short example to make that somewhat clearer: Let there be the decoded (aka original) file 0498.txt in which you can read:
57: her
58: his
59: (…) “The book is a copy of the Avatar’s diary, written about two hundred years ago during
60: most recent visit to Britannia. Of course,” she smiles sardonically, “it has been annotated by others.~~ (…)

It is quite easy to figure out that this text will be displayed in this order: 59-(57 or 58)-60. Use of the possessive pronoun makes it necessary to split the text here once.

Now you use a search over all dialogues to find the German counterpart. You may want to use hopefully unique names or places to dig up a file, most likely with another name such as 0679.txt, in which you can find the following text:

74: ihres
75: sie
76: seines
77: er
78: (…)~~Das Buch stellt eine Kopie des Tagebuches des Avatar dar, das
79: während
80: letzten Besuchs in Britannia vor etwa zweihundert Jahren führte.” (…)

This text is intended to be displayed in this order: 78-(75 or 77)-79-(74 or 76)-80. German makes it necessary to use a personal pronoun as well as a possessive pronoun. Hence the text is split twice and uses more lines than the English version. While the dated German binaries have been compiled to expect the text where it is, this is not possible for the patch, as we will use the English binaries, which expect this text to be split in the original order.

Alas I have to rework the text in a way, that only one set of pronouns is used, and come up with e.g. a passive structure to circumvent the use of the second set of pronouns. In case you are interested, my solution to this very snippet was:
57: ihres
58: seines
59: (…)~~”Das Buch stellt eine Kopie des Tagebuches des Avatar dar, das während
60: letzten Besuchs in Britannia vor etwa zweihundert Jahren entstand.” (…)

I hope this was somewhat interesting – didn’t mean to bore you to death 😉

Have a nice weekend – wherever you are!

John