(PC) Trapped Dead (.v files + translation):

[KLseeker]

::[ Who am I? ]
First of all hello entire XeNTaX Community! I searched around but didn't find a "Presentation-thread" so I'll do it here. I'm a general knowledge fan of IT and like a lot to learn always new things. Newly, I discovered a person who would like to have the pc game Trapped Dead translated into Italian. So I decided to pick up this "personal challenge" and discovered the world of game-translators. I really found a lot of information and was impressed how much knowledge and dedication someone must spend into creating those "Unofficial (or Amateur) Language Patchers"! I don't want to be annoying so I stop here by saying that I think this Community could me further.

::[ What is my aim? ]
My intent is to create a language patcher (into Italian) for the game Trapped Dead (http://www.trappeddead.com). I know some ppl would like it. At the same time I learn more about file structures and such.

::[ Introduction + assumption of what I have already done ]
The game has an about 1GB _GameData.v file. Further after their official patch (1.0.71) another file was added _Patch0.v. Thanks to chrrox (viewtopic.php?p=35770#p35770) and to Aluigi for his xor 0.2 tool I managed to decrypt both files. Among the large amount of files inside them I managed to localize the 3 language files:

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%ProgramFiles%\Trapped Dead\_GameData.v\language\en\GlobalStringTable.xml
%ProgramFiles%\Trapped Dead\_GameData.v\language\en\Missions.xml
%ProgramFiles%\Trapped Dead\_GameData.v\language\en\Story.xml

Changing them happened nothing to the flow of the game (was in English, yet). I discovered in then the same files in the patch (which are few bytes larger):

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%ProgramFiles%\Trapped Dead\_Patch0.v\language\en\GlobalStringTable.xml
%ProgramFiles%\Trapped Dead\_Patch0.v\language\en\Missions.xml
%ProgramFiles%\Trapped Dead\_Patch0.v\language\en\Story.xml

... ok. I translated then the entire GlobalStringTable.xml replaced in the extracted .zip file the original with the Italian-translated one. Then I xored (thx Aluigi) the entire _Patch0.zip file (with 0x55) back to _Patch0.v! Replaced the original one and then...

::[ Actual problem where i need help please ]
... and then the game works, but there are no the Italian strings and neither the English (obviously) ones. Just the kind-function-name strings see picture:

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http://www.sendspace.com/file/gjgm96/GlobalStringTable_ORIGINAL_.xml
and
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ybvp2z/GlobalStringTable_TRANSLATED.xml

So my questions are... Does someone already experienced this situation? Have I overlooked something? Is my approach completely wrong?

Just in case you could need it, the entire original official patch file is here:

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http://www.sendspace.com/file/kn4d6r/_Patch0.v

::[ Conclusion ]
I really do hope that I didn't break any rule (I read them!). Btw if this is the wrong section, sry didn't find anything which suites more (others are GFX, audio, etc.). Moreover thanks to you all who read this long post, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible. That's it. Waiting for kind responses I wish you all a good time
Cheers

[KLseeker]

Hmmm... I see many posts in other threads. Just wondering if my request is "strange" or is it in a wrong section, or even wrong forum? Plesae let me know if I did something wrong, but I really would like to create such a translation patch.

Thanks once again

[XRaptor]

Try to save your translated xml as utf-8 with BOM.

[KLseeker]

Try to save your translated xml as utf-8 with BOM.

First of all thank you very much XRaptor for pointing to the "encoding-clue". You are right. I alway use NotePad++ for quite everything and since when opening the original .xml, it kept ANSI. So I tried the following options and the result is:
[*]ANSI -> does not work
[*]UTF-8 without BOM -> works!
[*]UTF-8 (with BOM) -> does not work
So now we solved this part. I will translate everything and encode all files with the 2nd option. But now showed up another problem. Italian language has a lot of vouels accented (grave or acute) which will show in the game as an invalid char like ß? or such... Any idea or may I just use the ' sign, because the game-font does not support those chars probably?

Many thanks in advance one again for a reply... Btw thx again XRaptor Works like a charm!

[XRaptor]

But now showed up another problem. Italian language has a lot of vouels accented (grave or acute) which will show in the game as an invalid char like ß? or such... Any idea or may I just use the ' sign, because the game-font does not support those chars probably?

It is simple, if game doesn't have all characters in font, you have to modify all font files and add missing chracters

[KLseeker]

The contents of this post was deleted because of possible forum rules violation.

[XRaptor]

Every xml must be saved with the same encoding as is entered in header. So it is just up to you what you choose. Default xml encoding (if encoding attribute is missing) is utf-8. Just set all encoding attributes to utf-8 and save all files in utf-8 format.

BTW you really found working font editor for this font version?? With working dds edit and info export?

[KLseeker]

Hi dear XRaptor and thank you for keeping helping me in my lonely job. Concerning the FNT Editor unfortunately it didn't work in my case. Its About says it all:

Using this editor, you can edit C&C RA2's game.fnt file to change the in-game font. Please note that only the RA2/YR "fonT" format, which applies to "game.fnt" only, is supported by this tool.

So it is not working for Trapped Dead's font files. Their extension is .fnt and the first chars of the header are "BMF".

Regarding the encoding, he I'll try do manage it. On first news I'll post again here Btw thank your for taking your time for me. Sincerely.

[merlinsvk]

Hi KLseeker, new fonts for that game can be created with BMFont from AngelCode.
Just choose font you like (I was searching for orignal font used and it's Blambot Hometown Hero BB Regular, but it's not free), and set as output .dds texture without compression, and binary font descriptor (that is .fnt file).

I have not tested it in the game yet, but it looks exactly like the original fonts.

[KLseeker]

Hi there merlinsvk and thanks to you too for joining the thread Helpful post, but unfortunately I'm completely new into "fonts" in *this* manner... I'm downloading right now 1.8GB compressed font files + an archive with 235 Bomblat fonts. Unfortunately in no one of these is the one you said. In this manner I would like to ask some things:
01) one of the .dds files IngameText_00.dds looks like that and we see the a-grave, e-grave, i-grave, (the vowels-accented). So why are they not in the .fnt file? Or at least usable?


02) I can't find the right approach to AngelCode's BMFont? Is there a simple/basic tutorial which explains what we are trying to do now? It seems I can't understand those proposed on its homepage.

By the way I managed to translate already the majority of system dialogs and the first 2 mission dialogs I'm getting proud. But it's not enough, I would to share with you this final patch (whenever I'll finish it). For now the only problem are the encoding "things" and font "things". All your help is really appreciated.

[merlinsvk]

Hmm it looks I was wrong. I tried BMFont to create a new IngameTitle font from Arial, but game can't run with it.

[XRaptor]

Well, it is not so hard. You have to check original fnt file to get setings like size, charset, padding etc. Then just in BMFont set the same values and generate a new font. Just make sure you set output dds size to fit all characters to one file. It will not work if more dds files per font are made.

[KLseeker]

The contents of this post was deleted because of possible forum rules violation.

[merlinsvk]

Hey guys, look what I've got. Tools from Vision Engine. And yes, Font Generator is there

Now there is only one question. How to display correct characters? Because I tried other font (A.C.M.E. Secret Agent by Blambot), font was there, but chars like Á, É weren't.

[XRaptor]

All you need is ttf font with all characters. Use any unicode version or just edit any ttf and add missing characters. Then use BMFont