Polish translations
 

Hi everyone, you may not remember me, but to the point - I've made a MO polish translation, now I'm working on SW, but I wanted to mess around with LED's and hint bugs in AO. Can It be done with Paul's/LIJI/anyone's editor? I really need help on that, thanks.

It can't be done with a level editor because all the LED and hint fly messages are contained with the game's .exe. You can modify this easily, but redistributing it is dodgy. Maybe once you'd translated all the text someone could put together a patcher.

I have good contact with Stewart Gilray, so I can ask him for permission. Second, the problem would be extracting text from the .exe. And third - patcher? I have no idea how to do that, as I only can write basic java programs.

Most Hex Editors have a Find feature built-in like notepad so if you knew the text strings I'm pretty sure you can edit them easily from there.

You'll have the same issue as my hook dll for Exoddus, it will only work with ONE version of the game. Each version of the game will have different offsets etc and the steam version is protected/packed.

Do you mean a patcher couldn't work because each version of game has different offsets for each string? Or that translating the strings in the .exe wouldn't work because the game uses hardcoded offsets to insert them?

If the former, couldn't the patcher use search/replace?

Search and replace could work but there are more issues. The strings are fixed length so that can/will bugger things up.

There are many versions of the game, search and replace in the French version for example isn't ever going to work.

I think the best way any of this can work is to assume all game versions are not supported, with the exception of the steam version! Since anyone can easily buy the steam version etc.

Only problem is that this means somehow unpacking the game at runtime and then doing the patching, I've got no idea how the steam binary packing protection works..

I've found those LED's in hex editor. Now I will replace one of them and try will it work.

I've just dumped the steam version of the game using LordPE, it appears the function offsets are the same as the version I have that is not from steam!

I think to make my dll work with the steam version I may just need to delay the memory overwriting code until the binary has been unpacked. I think at DllLoad its still packed!

I shall give it a try and report back with results.

Thanks Paul, you're so helpful.

It worked! :D

I'll release new DDrawHook dll in lvl files thread. It might/should be possible to do translations/custom messages too. I'll have to look into it.

I assume that you wish to only change LED and HINTFLY messages?

I would like to alter anything that I can, eg. those signs (grinding area, etc.) main menu, pause menu and so on. I just started with hintbugs and leds, because I thought that they will be the easiest ones. Those "hand" screens are .cam screens, right?

Correct, I can likely make LED and HINTFLY msgs in AE easy to edit in steam and English none steam version.

That would be great, as I may get to them at some point. What about editing signs and "hands"?

Those are cam images so you can use my editor to change those, the AE cam editing requires the hook dll to work

Hmm, when I edit AbeWin.exe with my HEX Editor and I try to use it Windows either says it's unproper Win32 Application, or just crashes it right after launching it, any help?

Because you've overwritten code segments and damaged the binary. You can only replace the strings, you CANT expand them which is what I was saying before.

Also if you edit the steam version I'm pretty sure the copy protection will go mental and not allow it to run. Hence a hook DLL is the way to go.

Edit: So overwrite anything that isn't a string, or change teh size in anyway and the binary is buggered!

When I replace any letter, even eg. A to B. It goes red and doesn't work. And steam control isn't very good, as AO with changed AbeWin worked and crashed after all those checks.

It won't crash if you're using a proper hex editor, if youre using something like notepad then it certainly will

I use hex editor Neo.

Hi lismati!
I did AO, finished the translation of the Russian version:).
I used the program - Ogregui
Have a question for SW. How do you translate SW, open *. smb files, if so, how?

I will try that program later. Oh, and to translate SW I got special language table from Stewart Gilray.

I want to translate SW into Russian, can you help me with this?

Not with translating itself, but I can talk you with JAW for help.

Like that. Translations will be doing myself. Tell me.
JAW - what is it?

JAW are the company that converted SW to PC, are managing MO on Steam and are developing the future Oddworld releases. They're the people to talk to if you want to assist an official port.

With JAW understandable. :)
How can I make a translation?

You contact JAW. They tell you if it's something they want to work on. They tell you what needs to be translated. You give them the translated text. They put it in the game.

Not sure about that last bit. Is lismati's Polish translation going in the game?

I work on SW now, and try to alter AO or AE. Oh, and yes, It is supposed to be official - I should be relased on MO language update.

I see your point. I consciously left out several caveats in order to make my answer easily understandable.