Publicity stunt

A week ago, right after I made my last Pathologic thread, I got this:

Posting from your ISP, IP range, or country has been blocked due to abuse. 

So, naturally, I sent a nice mail to moot/mods, asking them to lift my ban and whatnot because I wanted to make a regular weekly thread about Pathologic (and shitpost in Payday 2 threads) to draw the attention of new anons to feed this powerhouse. 

And sometime later I got this reply: "This ISP block will not be removed due to persistent spambot activity on your ISP", go figure. It's not like I've got a room full of PCs, mining for bitcoins, no-no, all props go to my ISP. Not sure what I'm going to do now. Probably stay in read-only mode for quite a while.

And here's the part where I ask you, fearless people of the Intraweb, to create (not too often) Pathologic threads on /v/ (where you would casually mention about this project going on). I don't want people to lose this thing out of their sight ( and given youse guys' ADHD, I'm quite surprised that you still manage to read this blog from time to time, that's really nice to see) because I feel that there are a lot of Pathologic diehard fans who couldn't get past Day 1 because of botched translation.

So there it is, I ask you to do something for me, I hope it's not too much to ask. I'd hate this thing being forgotten. Thanks in advance, friends.

I'm well informed that I can post using proxies but I'm too lazy for that...

Houston, we have a progress

Okay, it seems that I made a little progress on this project and now I'm happy to announce that:

Map indications

Names

Interface messages and interface itself

Controls

and also, opening "cutscene" texts as well as characters' biographies 

are done!

Stay tuned for more, this time I'll focus on Descriptions of clothes, weapons and items, people's thoughts and Quest logs.

Don't you dare losing faith in me: this project deserves to be done and I'll see it to its completion soon enough.

A few introductions and announcements

Hi. My name is Igor and my role on this project is… Well, nothing big. I’m sort of a wingman, trying to help in either fronts and failing miserably in the process. I also supply tvirine tinctures to the entire crew, so my presence is essential.

In this post I would like to say a few words about all the wonderful work that our programmer, a really brilliant guy, has accomplished. In a short term of two mere days he created all the tools needed for the extraction and repackaging of the game’s archives, and also tools for deciphering and ciphering the dialogue and sorting all the lines in accordance with the game scripts.

So, basically, thanks to that now we have all the dialogue/diary entries and stuff sorted out in a clean order. This really streamlines the initial workflow.

We would definitely share all the tools and source code once we’ve finished the work on this translation project, so if you’re interested look forward to it.

Here are a few words from the guy himself.

---

Ok, in this case I'll join the introduction part as well. I'm the coder guy, but you can call me DH. It doesn't really matter what my name is, right? So, my task is to provide technical support for this translation project when I have enough free time and it becomes necessary. Even though I was referred to above as a “brilliant programmer”, this is not true. But my skills are enough to make this project possible (at least until now there were no serious issues).

Like Vladeworth and Igor told, 99% of the in-game text is stored in one big file. The most annoying part (for the translator) is that this text is messed in a senseless way, putting common text lines wherever IPL wanted. I tried to make it more readable by matching textlines IDs with those which are mentioned in the script files. I hope this made the text much easier to read (and translate).

If someone would like to get those tools (for example, you think you can do a better job or make a translation to some other language), you can access them after this project (hopefully) is finished. Putting intermediate materials will likely slow down this project and even may result in perishing like many other previous attempts of retranslation. I guess no one wants such a scenario so please bear with it.

I hope this translation project succeeds and will be worth playing with. We appreciate any support and feedback from you!

Quick announcement

I knew that there was something wrong with my blog. Turns out that I've disabled anonymous comments. It's fixed now, comment away!

Setting up goals

Okay, after thorough examination of all the text that I managed to get access to, I can pretty much say that everything is mixed: there is no order, no continuity in dialogues (one phrase is at the beginning of the file and the next one is thousands phrases below) - everything's just mixed together, sort of like a shuffled deck of cards, but nonetheless, I've managed to create a "list" of things that I'm going to translate in this game. The purpose of this list is simple - it will just show my general progress and it will also show you what parts of the game I'm focusing on right now.

Here it is:

Map indications (name of locations and quest marks)

Descriptions of clothes, weapons and items

Names. We had a general agreement that I will keep the original "Russian" version of everyone's names, so I will NOT adapt them (example: Andrei Stamatin -> Andrew Stamatin, I will NOT do this)

Quest log (two folders: main quest log and side quests log)

Letters (they are located in "Quest log" as well, but serve a different purpose)

People's thoughts about a person (when you talk to someone, who's important (i.e. not an "extra" as they call them in this game), you can click on their portrait and see what other people are saying about this person - this gives you a small bit of info on how to effectively talk and gather intelligence from this particular person)

Interface messages and interface itself

And, of course, Dialogues.

In my next posts I will point out the things I'm translating right now, because if I will follow everything in the same order it's arranged in the file - I will only make my work harder.

Right, I have to say something very important: I suck at coding and everything that requires me to think in numbers or think in general, I didn't choose my glorified profession of "translator" to think!

That's why my initial idea was to create "Let's play Pathologic" videos where I would just run around, trying to complete the game AND narrating all the text I see in game. I know, sounds stupid, but hey - I wanted to do what I could do, seeing as I can't code for shit and editing in-game text would be impossible task for me.

Enter Anonymous #1, who commended me on my efforts and offered his help. I said to him that I will stick to my original format of "Let's play" videos because, frankly, I can't do anything else. But he didn't stop there, no, siree. He told me that he knew some coder guy, who's trying to translate some games for DS and other platforms. I honestly had no faith or expectations for getting help from guy I don't even know.

Little did I know that he made all of this possible. Not only did he code a special program for me to unpack all in-game text, but he also spoonfeeded me on how should I use it (I am a very dumb person, I spend about 4-5 minutes on thinking during the whole year).

SO HERE I AM
DOING EVERYTHING I CAN
to finish translating this wonderful game. The die has been cast, I'm motivated enough to see this project to its completion, so I really hope that my efforts won't be in vain.

I'll keep you updated on any new info I get. And don't worry if you don't hear anything from me for a week - it's hard to balance between translating 3 MB of unintelligible Russian text, work and other stuff but I'll try my best - that I can promise.

Well, this is the first introductory message, so I'll explain what I'm doing here.

If you're reading this blog, then it means you know a thing or two about one particular video game named "Pathologic", it's an RPG-quest game with an open world and it has very unique and bizarre atmosphere, I, myself, always compare it to David Lynch movies: it's a personal experience for everyone and each one of you will see something different in this game, something that you detest or hold dear, which is why it's hard to explain it to someone else, when I'm asked "What is this game is all about?". Whole game is built around the idea and the very notion of despair and inevitability because your main foe in this game is none other than Death itself. Pretty formidable opponent, if you ask me. And I have to say that the way death is portrayed in this game - this approach has never been done before.

You have three character at your disposal: a Doctor with a fixation on death, Surgeon who's searching for his destiny and Impostress - mystic character, with no recollection of her past, all trying to survive in this plague-ridden town, looking for answers using their own methods.

I will not list everything that I find wonderful or unique, but I must say that I find the fact that English version of this game was translated rather... poorly, to say the least. And I'm here to change it. I love this game with all my heart and I want to share my joy with other people, who are unable to play it in Russian language, that's why I made it my mission to deliver the best possible English translation of this one-of-a-kind video game for you pleasure. So let's start.