skell
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The engine supports translations out of the box. I must admit I had thought about that but decided it might not be worth the additional workload. Maybe we should but I don't know

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mrimer
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Damien wrote:
On a different note, is it possible to translate the game into another language ? If text is stored in .po files or something similar, I could do it (in French).

I've been wanting to do something like that for the series for some time now, but I can't seem to find a good starting point ; this could be it.

Thanks for the offer, Damien. If you'd like to help with French translation for DROD, here's a good way to start: download the 4.0.1 source code archive from the linked to on the Development board. It contains a directory called Texts with several .uni files inside. You can send me updated copies of these files with [Fra] sections added or corrected for each file, and I'll include them in a future version.

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Damien
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mrimer wrote:

It contains a directory called Texts with several .uni files inside. OK, those contain menu texts, preferences, credits and the like, but are the in-game texts translatable ? Because things like "play", or "settings" are easily understandable, even if just through trial and error, but in-game dialogues and tutorial texts are not, so those are even more crucial.

(Maybe I should have started a new topic on the Development board...)

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[Last edited by Damien at 04-19-2012 09:31 AM]

mrimer
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Damien wrote:

mrimer wrote:

It contains a directory called Texts with several .uni files inside.

OK, those contain menu texts, preferences, credits and the like, but are the in-game texts translatable ? Because things like "play", or "settings" are easily understandable, even if just through trial and error, but in-game dialogues and tutorial texts are not, so those are even more crucial.

(Maybe I should have started a new topic on the Development board...)I'm guessing by in-game texts, you mean the text that is included in a particular hold, correct? Sure, you can provide translated texts for a hold also. Let's discuss this further on the Development board.

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Elfstone
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Reading through various threads, catching up with what I have missed in the last 6-7 months ( including an excellent new version of the game). Clearly you are all very excited about this but having read the whole thread I am still none the wiser. So forgive my ignorance but what is "Flash DROD"?

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skell
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Elfstone wrote:
Reading through various threads, catching up with what I have missed in the last 6-7 months ( including an excellent new version of the game). Clearly you are all very excited about this but having read the whole thread I am still none the wiser. So forgive my ignorance but what is "Flash DROD"?

Basically it's a DROD you can play in your browsers without installing anything on your computer, from wherever you want. The bad thing is the progress is not saved between computers .

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Someone Else
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Well, DROD is written in a certain programming language - C++. However, this doesn't work online. So what skell is doing is converting DROD to another language - Flash - which works very well indeed. So then we'll post DROD (it'll be KDD) on various game sites, and people can play it in bite-sized chunks without having to download anything.

This is awesome in part because it's DROD and in part because it'll likely cause lots of people to come here.

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Skell wrote: Basically it's a DROD you can play in your browsers without installing anything on your computer, from wherever you want.

that sounds good.

Skell wrote: The bad thing is the progress is not saved between computers.

why not? can't all these things be stored in "the clouds" these days (again forgive my ignorance; clouds were completely different things when I was young).

Someone Else wrote:
Well, DROD is written in a certain programming language - C++. However, this doesn't work online. So what skell is doing is converting DROD to another language - Flash - which works very well indeed.

well done skell!! I have to say that sounds, to a non-geek (pay attention Syntax!), like an awful lot of work.

Someone Else wrote: So then we'll post DROD (it'll be KDD) on various game sites, and people can play it in bite-sized chunks without having to download anything

Does this mean that I will be able to play DROD on my iPad?

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Keiya
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I don't think the iPad plays Flash... Apple doesn't really like it, because it eats into their marketplace sales.

And while yes, you could in theory save everything to some remote server, with all the players we hope to have it adds up to a LOT of data to store.

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Jacob
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Apparently Apparently not.

But not all of DROD is being ported into Flash.
(i.e. you won't be able to play any level in it, just the ones that skell, and the rest of the team, have remade in the Flash version)

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[Last edited by Jacob at 04-10-2012 11:19 AM]

Keiya
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I'm pretty sure that's only for video, Jacob, not Flash apps.

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skell
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Flash apps can be packaged to iStuff, 'nuf said. No plans to go in this direction as of yet though, I am afraid the tablets might not have the processing power and besides I have neiter iPad nor Android machine .

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Damien
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mrimer wrote: I'm guessing by in-game texts, you mean the text that is included in a particular hold, correct? Sure, you can provide translated texts for a hold also. Let's discuss this further on the Development board.

Still have some questions : [can't post links, but it's in the development board]

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Stoney
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You guys should port GatEB to iOS on the iPad. It might be very well received.

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[Last edited by Stoney at 04-14-2012 05:35 PM]

Donny
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Uhh... Did my eyes play tricks on me or the bar is REALLY 99% NOW!?

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Stoney
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Donny wrote:
Uhh... Did my eyes play tricks on me or the bar is REALLY 99% NOW!?

Seems like. Hope it´s no mistake.

Zecks
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Well skell did say it's relatively close to completion in the OP. Dunno what the 1.3% was doing there for so long.

Pekka
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I also notice this and proudly posted to the Watch the Bar thread because I read the forums bottom up. But it was already noted here, so I removed that observation.

There was actually a reason given somewhere for the 1.13% figure. But I am of course going to ignore that reason and theorize wildly.

You see, an evil bug had sneaked into skell's code and he had trouble figuring out what was causing it. Sometimes it happens to programmers and a seemingly simple bug turns into an intractable problem. No matter what you try you can't figure where it comes from and you start to doubt everything, including the language and the computer you are working on. Then, finally, you realize the culprit was a simple mistake or some corner case you forgot to check for and then you can fix it easily.

This realization usually happens when you are not at the computer working on the code, actually. It can strike anywhere and make non-programming people nervous if you the sort of programmer who actually shows some emotions. I head that using the (redacted to avoid a flame war) language actually dulls you emotions so much it doesn't happen to many programmers any mre at all.

Anyway, I think this must have been the case with skell. He just had to revise his estimate a bit and lower the completion percentage until he tracked down the bug and eliminated it.

Being a perfectionist he is, this probably had to do with some very special combination of events that caused some behavior that ordinary DROD players would not even notice as non-standard. That might be what 1.13% actually means in secret DROD-programmer code. "My snake is turning south when it has to turn north, but only if a goblin is adjacent to its tail."

That probably was it. I'm actually quite sure that goblins were involved now, having typed all this. But we can happily now see it all is fixed and things are progressing very nicely.

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Skell put in a very, very long day.

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enzi666
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Great idea porting it to flash and bringing it to Kongregate. It's one of the best portals I know of. Having it in flash should also make it much more easy to make an iOS port although I'm not sure if the iPad crowd is really interested in a non-casual experience.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to unlock my first achievement for DROD!

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Jatopian
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Personally I dislike Kongregate a bit for requiring me to have that stupid chat pane loaded. Ah well.

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Donny
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enzi666 wrote:
Having it in flash should also make it much more easy to make an iOS port although I'm not sure if the iPad crowd is really interested in a non-casual experience.

Have you tried SpaceChem in iPad? Now That's one non-casual puzzle in iOS I'm addicted right now (nah, I'm doing TCB 24/7 right now).
But if DROD is going to be ported on iPad, I'll buy it for sure!

Just curious but... isn't that Apple doesn't support flash?

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skell
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Donny wrote:
Just curious but... isn't that Apple doesn't support flash?

Flash stuff can be packaged (that is converted & compiled) into iPad and Android apps.

@Pekka:

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Keiya
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Are there any plans to do a small deploy on something you have easy access to, for a bunch of people to hammer on while you can reasonably update it before it gets deployed to dozens of sites?

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skell
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Some more testers will be invited to look through the final game when we fix all currently existing issues.

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SirNiko
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Jatopian wrote:
Personally I dislike Kongregate a bit for requiring me to have that stupid chat pane loaded. Ah well.

There are multiple tabs to the UI, most of which do not show the chat interface. When I play on Kongregate I set mine to show the "Game" tab by default, so on 90% of games I never see the chat UI for even a second. It only seems to reset when I clear my browser cookies for any reason. I strongly recommend this configuration.

Chaosgamer
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Back in the day, Flash games was where things were at. We'd play them on school computers all day long.

PigmyWubba
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Man i cant wait for this its going to be great!

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Jatopian
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Chaosgamer wrote:
Back in the day, Flash games was where things were at. We'd play them on school computers all day long.

Wait, "back in the day"? Kids do that now. I'm pretty sure it's only gotten more popular.

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Briareos
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Jatopian wrote:

Chaosgamer wrote:
Back in the day, Flash games was where things were at. We'd play them on school computers all day long.

Wait, "back in the day"? Kids do that now. I'm pretty sure it's only gotten more popular.

Meh. Back in the day we were playing DOOM and a few MUDs on the computers...

Kids these days, get off my lawn, etc.

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