About gender marks...

[Dweller admin]

Ok, so for some other languages things would be a whole lot better if the @0Shortsword@1 was Shortsword@1@0 and we made some other changes to how the item name was compiled. I guess we'd need to break it up into these parts:

Shortsword@0@2@1
Shortsword[ of Fire][and][Swiftness]

@0 [of Fire] = the standard item suffix that we use today. this part doesn't need to change, the translations can be kept as they are
@1 [Swiftness] = the standard item prefix that we use today. these need to change for languages such as Polish and Russian.
@2 [and] = this is a new translation key, let's call it PREFIXSUFFIXSEPARATOR. This needs a translation for languages such as Polish and Russian.

Note that in languages such as English and Swedish the item names would still look like @0Shortsword@1 and nothing needs to be done with these translations. The @2 would be omitted.

But what about an item with double prefix? Would the system described above work for an item such as this:

Knightly Swift Shortsword of Fire -> Shortsword of Fire and Knightly Swiftness

[Mateusz P-G]

Won't work for double prefix (like in the last example). To be honest,
I ran thru the list of prefixes and stuff a lot of them won't make sense
at all - what would, say "indestructible" turn into? "Of indestructability"?
What about "Old" or "Drained"?

We're barely scratching the surface of the problem.
 

[Dweller admin]

Ok, so back to the drawingboard then. Is what I wrote here: http://forum.dwellergame.com/index.php?topic=163.msg1953#msg1953 correct for Polish as well? Ie, does Deadly, Swift, Defenders etc change depending on gender of item?

[Mateusz P-G]

Yes, that is correct - the prefix needs to change according to the gender
of the item. This means 5 possible different prefix variations (some can
sound the same):
- masculine singular
- feminine singular
- neutral singular
- masculine plural
- feminine plural

Even worse, the same gender-version of a prefix will be different depending
on the gramatical case it's used in! For exaple, in english:

(You see a) Swift Shortsword is the same as (You are now using) Swift Shortsword

But in polish, it's:
(Widzisz) Zwinny Krótki miecz as oposed to (Używasz teraz) Zwinnego Krótkiego miecza.


Pandora's box has been oficially opened.

;p

[Dweller admin]

Oh my!

I think I can manage to deal with one prefix per gender in a generic way that a) doesn't affect existing translations where the prefix doesn't change depending on gender and b) that doesn't require that much work for translators

Each item needs to be gender marked per translation. This can easily be done by adding a 6th field to each item:

ITEM_SHORTSWORD = @0Shortsword@1|@0Shortswords@1|a @0Shortsword@1|the @0Shortsword@1|the @0Shortsword@1's|f

Languages that do not care about gender can omit this parameter and translations can be kept unchanged.

Each prefix needs to have one version per prefix:

ITEMPREFIX_SWIFT = masculine singular|feminine singular|neutral singular|masculine plural|feminine plural|neutral plural

Languages that do not vary prefix depending on gender can be kept as is. No ITEMPREFIX_ needs to be changed.

I will NOT be able to handle context sensitive prefix though. It will either have to sound a bit weird or translations need to be changed into something like:

You see: Swift Shortsword
You use: Swift Shortsword


Would this solution take us closer to an acceptable translation for items in Polish, Russian and similar languages?

[Mateusz P-G]

This is a very good solution... as long as the sentences only use
one grammatical case. To sum it up, comparing to current mechanics,
there will be either:

- different cases for items' names depending on situation, but the
prefixes are messed up or need some workarounds (current)

- nice gender-correct prefixes for all items, but - same case for all
texts regarding items (proposed)

I think this new solution sounds more "rough" as all the texts need
to be dumbed-down. This is basicly a step back.

The real solution for all european-derived languages would be having
each prefix available in all genders and count, multiplied by all cases.
Phew!

Seriously, I think the method we're using for now offers more flexibility
as we only have to worry about genders/cases of prefixes. My current
solution of putting prefixes into brackets together with the word "item"
seems the most elegant when it comes to being able to build proper
sentences.

Here's how it works:
a "Swift Shortsword" is "(Swift item) Shortsword"
something with a different gender works the same:
a "Swift Mace" still uses the same "Swift", because it's "(Swift item) Mace".
Even when the case changes with the context (say, to possesive), this
"(Swift item)" still sounds ok, because these brackets kinda hide the
prefix form view, making it less relevant.

[Dweller admin]

Ok, so to sum it up: Let's not change anything?

[Mateusz P-G]

Unfortunately, that's the coclusion I'm closing in the deeper
I look into this. Otherwise, the game would need a massive
overhaul with all the text based stuff.

When considering all languages of Indo-European descent,
you'd need 8 cases (just in case, my languages "only" uses
7 but some other might use all 8 or just a different set) and
multiply them by genders (2-3) and singular/plural versions
for all the item prefixes.

Besides, currently items names only have 5 versions (cases)
and the text messages which use them assume that they
will use the same case as in english.

For example - the sentence:
"You block @0 attack with your @1"
uses Nominative "Shield" as in english it sounds the same as
possesive "Shield", but in my language it simply doesn't work,
forcing me to downgrade this message into:
"You block the @0 attack with your shield"
dropping item name part. Luckily, it's always "some shield"
and knowing which shield exactly player has used to block this
attack is not very important. This is going to be troublesome
if some other "offhand" item types or two-handed weapons
will be able to block hits as well, tho.

It's not like I'm trying to be overly negative and discourage you,
just trying to shed some light on the bigger problem ahead.
 

[Dweller admin]

Hmm, well, I guess translations shouldn't be more complicated than they already are. There's already quite a few strings to translate, and adding even more complexity will make it hard to keep the translations up to date as I add more features to Dweller. You guys are after all making this for free (if you disregard the in-game item and my eternal gratitude).