Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
How many ways can I say "We're going to crush you like a bug!"?
Published on January 23, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

I'm glad I'm not doing translation. There's a lot of it. For a strategy game, GalCiv has a lot of text.  GalCiv II may have more text in it than most RPGs.  This really stems from the decision to be a single player game.  By focusing on the single player game, we can sit down and put in per-race dialog on a per situation basis.  Most people won't see a fraction of it.  Play as the Torians and you'll get a different set of dialog and reactions than if you played as a human or a Drengin.

The tool we made is really pretty neat.  I can type in a # and type in alternative text.  When the parser sees a # it knows that there's another randomly available bit of dialog to select or in other cases another bit of text based on a slightly different situation.

I don't know how many people even care about that kind of thing.  Strategy games usually have a pretty narrow set of text. Part of that is to ease translation and part of it is the consensus that it adds little or at least not enough to justify the effort.  But for me, I enjoy seeing players that say a lot of different things.  And plus, I type 120wpm so it's not a big deal to type a 10x10 grid.  We also have a "generic" category so that if it can't find what it needs specifically, we can wimp out and just fill in the generic stuff.


Comments
on Jan 23, 2006
Looks pretty cool. Other strategy games annoy me when they don't try to make diplomacy interesting. For example, Alpha Centauri was a great game, but it's diplomacy was dry. Galciv is shaping up to be a great, polished game.
on Jan 24, 2006
I think it helps to have unique dialogue for different races. There's nothing worse than seeing the same tired text every time something is said - except perhaps hearing it.
on Jan 24, 2006
I appreciate things like this - I think it makes the game more interesting and feel less repetitive. It gives the game more character. It's also the kind of thing I've done on the rare occasions that I've written (very, very small and simple) games.
on Jan 24, 2006
Looks great! Don't worry - I think most of us will enjoy all that text a lot.

My all-time favourite of GalCiv still is the Drengin suggesting to meet for dinner...
But I already laughed out loud when I first saw the opening dialog of the Thalan: "Brothersss, Sssistersss,...".
on Jan 24, 2006
THAT is exactly the sort of editing/modding tool I hope you guys release sometime after the game goes retail And a good variety of text and dialogue is what makes a singleplayer game feel more dynamic. I know I got tired of the AI dialogue in MoO2/3, and the older Civ games (heck, even 4 was a bit dry). It adds a lot of "feel" and "depth" to the game
on Jan 24, 2006
The Drengin have a pink skin fetish.
on Jan 24, 2006
THAT is exactly the sort of editing/modding tool I hope you guys release sometime after the game goes retail


Seconded! With this tool players could not only provide alternate text but could also translate to languages Paradox chooses not to support.
on Jan 24, 2006

We also made our scenario editor able to use alternative dialog.  So when you play each mission in the campaign, the AI will act and speak differently to the player.

on Jan 25, 2006
Brad, rest assured, there are probably a lot of people that DO care about the text. Especially some of the tongue-in-cheek texts, in diplomacy or technology. You could see it as another type of eye candy, like the extras on the ship design. Not essential to the game mechanism, but VERY nice to have, making the enjoyment last. Personally, I like the text better than the ship design graphics, even though that is cool too.

As I have posted in the "Dutch" thread, local language translation might let relatively young kids ( 9+, or 10+ according to the ESRB rating) enjoy the game too. And as Paul DesRivieres said, the ability to customize the text using this tool (or some other tool) might also give the smaller language groups a chance to translate anyhow if Paradox doesn't do it....

I posted a thread on the Paradox forum to see which languages they would support, and at what date they would be available... We'll see.
on Feb 21, 2006
The snarky computer text is my favorite part of the screenshots so far. I mean, yeah the game is beautiful, but the dialog is awesome.
on Feb 22, 2006
120WPM eh? Are you one of us nutty Dvorak typers or are you butchering your keyboard under Qwerty for that?
on Feb 24, 2006

If I had that Conversation Editor, I swear I'd have that Polish version done in half the time before Paradox releases it, and with half the mistakes... Not that anyone cares 'bout a Polish version... it's all 'bout those damn German, and Dutch, and French, and Italian folks off in the middle of nowhere...


and thx @ Kazriko for reminding me 'bout the existence of the Dvorak keyboard layout, I keep on forgetting to check it out... it takes me a while, I swear I'll use it once I get back to uni...