Spiderweb Games in other languages

[Mistah Q]

I was on Steam today, and right now Avernum: Escape from the Pit is on sale so it's getting a bit of attention on that particular medium. Somebody posted a question (in french) on A:EftP's steam forum -- asking whether the game had a french version, and how to change it to french. I had to break the "helas" (alas) to him...

 

But it got me thinking. Spiderweb games are of course very text intensive and I couldn't expect Jeff to go through the trouble to have worthy translations when he's basically one-man development. But has he expressed any interest in having any translation, volunteer or otherwise, done on the games? At least the newer ones, say A6, EFTP, the Avadons, and future games/remakes...

 

I'm not a computer code person but I think I understand that all the game text can basically be extracted. If I could figure out how to do that I'm sure, though it would take me a good few months, I could probably get everything on a particular game translated into French. I imagine there are other Spiderweb fans who could pull off other languages. Is having those translations or offering it as a game option, something Jeff would even interested in?

[keira]

This is definitely something you'll want to email Jeff about (spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com). It's pretty easy nowadays to set up i18n for games, so he might be interested.

 

Even if he isn't, most of the game text (at least the non-interface stuff) is stored in plaintext scripts. It wouldn't be too much of an issue to release a "language mod" on this forum

[Randomizer]

Basilisk Games modified how texts were stored for the later Eschalon games to allow for translations. However getting a completed translation was rare and a Russian version was hacked in violation of the game license.

 

Jeff's current games have two parts, the easier scripts that have the dialogue and the parts that are stored separately to work with the graphics. It is a lot of material to translate.