How to translate Spiderweb Games?

[Excessive]

Hello,

 

I would like to translate Nethergate to my native language in order my daughter (she is 10) will be able to play. 

 

Are there any tools available for translation, or am I forced to use good old hex editor for translating the game text?

 

Thanks in advance.

[osnola]

Hello, in old games, strings are stored in a complicated way (together with other data: city maps, ...), which makes modifications complicated. In more recent games, they are rather stored in separate text's files which allows to translate them more easily (provided that you limit yourself to languages which use basic roman characters, no accented letters, ...)

 

I just downloaded an old demo of Nethergate, I have the impression that it is the first method that is used ; I could be wrong, but I have the impression that for this game, a hexadecimal editor will be necessary (as well as a minimum understanding of the format of the data files).

 

[Kelandon]

If the game predates the use  of scripts (as Nethergate probably does), then the Mac version stores the text in a way that a resource editor can access, if you can find a resource editor that still runs. Not sure how it's stored on Windows.

[Celtic Minstrel]

The mac versions of older games store most of the text in STR# or DITL resources (the latter being dialog definitions). There are usually some unused DITL resources that are holdovers from older games though. For resource editors, as far as I know, ResKnife can still run on any Intel Mac, but may present IDs backwards (so it'll show as #RTS or LTID instead). I don't know if it works with Apple Silicon.

 

It seems likely that the Windows versions of those games would also use string resources where the Mac version uses STR# resources, but I can't be certain. I have no idea how they handle dialogs. Nethergate might be new enough to no longer use native dialogs, though; if so, string resources probably contain most of the text.