Grammar, Style and the Colopedia

[VegetableRights]

Just wanted to mention someone which seems wrong to me: The English text for chop down forest still says 'burn down forest'.

The icon for removing forests is an axe, the animation is a pioneer chopping with an axe, and civ games have always used 'chop down forest' as the understood method of removing forests. Regardless of the arguments of whether burning is more realistic, could it be considered to revert 'burn' back to 'chop' please. As an alternative, why not just use 'remove forest'. That would avoid the issue entirely.

 

[raystuttgart]

Just wanted to mention someone which seems wrong to me: The English text for chop down forest still says 'burn down forest'.

Agreed, it should be "chop down" because you also get Wood.
(Also this is what is says in Civ4BTS as well, so it is more known and accepted.)

I think it was somehow changed to "burn down" for reasons of immersion though as you also said ...
(Never really liked that change however myself as it is indeed inconsistent and I never saw a problem with "chop down".)

Still it was not worth to argue for me ....
Like always in modding 10 people ... 10 different personal tastes ...

Now however:
Yes it is worse than before because text and animation and gameplay do not match ...
(Text can be changed easily. Animation and gameplay can not.)

My personal philosophie:
Gameplay is alwasy more important than immersion.

But again, other people see it differently.

 

[Kendon]

Just wanted to mention someone which seems wrong to me: The English text for chop down forest still says 'burn down forest'.

I think it was just a mistake that's been overlooked till now.

In BuildInfo I've changed the English text to "chop down the forest" and also, next to it, "chop down the jungle", so it wasn't just the one mistake.

Thank you for noticing this, and for pointing it out!

 

[VegetableRights]

I just want to express my appreciation Kendon. It doesn't seem you get much credit, but you really have done a wonderful job.

The writing is superb. It is flowing and engaging, and is a hugely enjoyable part of the experience for me.

Many thanks.

Edit: I can't even post that without a bucket load of typos - mostly fixed I think. Refer also to my last post with 'someone' instead of 'something' which I just noticed. Oh the joys of the English language

 

[Kendon]

I just want to express my appreciation.

Thank you for your kind words. I hasten to add that much of the best writing, including most of the quotes on the game loading screen, is inherited from The Authentic Colonization (TAC) and Religion and Revolution. I don't know who did the writing back then but my admiration for their work is a big reason I got involved with We The People.

Today when a modder does a new event or other improvement they often write their own English text. I check it. Sometimes I fix minor syntax issues or add some history I might know, but often I just look at it and say,“It's clear and it's in character,” and move on to the next line. For the English I feel the buck stops with me, but often I'm not the primary creator.

Like the rest of the mod, the writing is a team effort. That said, I'm not going to pretend to false modesty. It's not every day my work is called superb, and hugely enjoyable, and it's a pleasant feeling. Thanks again.

 

[Kendon]

Update! Just found the folder "Text" inside XML folder. Those are all the text files I presume. Well... a huge amount of text to translate... but I'm going to move forward... one at a time... I'm going to work on Notepad, is there a problem with that?
After adding the lines in Portuguese, I can save the file normally, right?

Two things to bear in mind: in the past the code would only support four languages so you would have to replace one of the first four. If you're just saving for your own game that's no problem. We often use Notepad++.

If you want to do a translation that's available to everyone who prefers to play in Portuguese (and I think we'd all like to see that) it would be more complicated, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

As far as gameplay is concerned I might translate the Diplomacy text first.

 

[Paivix]

Two things to bear in mind: in the past the code would only support four languages so you would have to replace one of the first four. If you're just saving for your own game that's no problem. We often use Notepad++.

If you want to do a translation that's available to everyone who prefers to play in Portuguese (and I think we'd all like to see that) it would be more complicated, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

As far as gameplay is concerned I might translate the Diplomacy text first.

Hi!
Thanks for your reply.

In the past the code would only support four languages so you would have to replace one of the first four.

My version of Civ4Col, WTP, lets me choose between a few languages (en, fr, dt, it, es, hu, rs). Also, there are some text files where I can see just four languages. But other files have way more than four languages in some parts... So maybe I don't need to do that replacement. Can someone confirm what's the best way to do it?

As far as gameplay is concerned I might translate the Diplomacy text first.

I already started to translate some files... Right now i'm in the Achievements file. Diplomacy will be the next one!
Probably it will take me months to do everything, because there is a lot of text and it is mixed with code. So it must be done very carefully.
Also the style and the idiosyncrasies of the narratives and of some technical terms must be met. In some parts I have to do some research... So, it will be a long and hard task.

If you want to do a translation that's available to everyone who prefers to play in Portuguese (and I think we'd all like to see that) it would be more complicated, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

I will do it... I want to do it... For my own use? For sure! For the use of others, well, if you can use my effort somehow, I'm happy to contribute. I will make all the files available when finished.
The best scenario would be if another one who knows portuguese could review and collaborate also...

 

[Nightinggale]

My version of Civ4Col, WTP, lets me choose between a few languages (en, fr, dt, it, es, hu, rs). Also, there are some text files where I can see just four languages. But other files have way more than four languages in some parts... So maybe I don't need to do that replacement. Can someone confirm what's the best way to do it?

I rewrote the code to read languages because vanilla is prone to crashing from xml changes (among other things). The following is how it works now for We The People and this will not apply to any other mod.

Assets\XML\Interface\Languages.xml lists which languages to display ingame. Valid options are hardcoded in C++. I want to make it cleaner, but that's not a high priority task.

XML text files will now support any number of languages. If the chosen language isn't present for a specific key, English will be used. Order technically doesn't matter, but it's more human readable if the same order is used consistently.

The list of valid languages. I wrote that list based on what languages we can support with the charactersets we have available. That is Chinese and Japanese are likely not supported, but the first part is copy pasted from some BTS code as I figured it might prevent problems later if we are consistent.

    case 0: return "English";
    case 1: return "French";
    case 2: return "German";
    case 3: return "Italian";
    case 4: return "Spanish";
    case 5: return "Finnish";
    case 6: return "Hungarian";
    case 7: return "Polish";
    case 8: return "Russian";
    case 9: return "Chinese";
    case 10: return "Japanese";

    case 11: return "Afrikaans";
    case 12: return "Albanian";
    case 13: return "Basque";
    case 14: return "Catalan";
    case 15: return "Danish";
    case 16: return "Dutch";
    case 17: return "Faroese";
    case 18: return "Galician";
    case 19: return "Icelandic";
    case 20: return "PortugueseBR";
    case 21: return "PortuguesePT";
    case 22: return "Norwegian";
    case 23: return "Scottish";
    case 24: return "Swedish";

    case 25: return "Tag";

    case 26: return "Greek";
    case 27: return "Turkish";
    case 28: return "Hebrew";
    case 29: return "Arabic";
    case 30: return "Estonian";
    case 31: return "Latvian";
    case 32: return "Lithuanian";

 

[Kendon]

I've finished proofreading the English text files. Extra links were added to a lot of the Unit and Yield entries. Now new players have several entries showing how to connect raw materials, finished goods and the workers who produce all of them.

@Schmiddie created several new Events and Achievements while I was travelling. In a few places English is changed to be more idiomatic but generally it's quite good. New events often develop in sequence where characters change and learn (or not). The overall story becomes more immersive.

Having work to do on the English shows that game improvements are happening, which is good. For the moment the English text is up to date. A good to time download and play.

 

[Paivix]

I've finished proofreading the English text files. Extra links were added to a lot of the Unit and Yield entries. Now new players have several entries showing how to connect raw materials, finished goods and the workers who produce all of them.

@Schmiddie created several new Events and Achievements while I was travelling. In a few places English is changed to be more idiomatic but generally it's quite good. New events often develop in sequence where characters change and learn (or not). The overall story becomes more immersive.

Having work to do on the English shows that game improvements are happening, which is good. For the moment the English text is up to date. A good to time download and play.

Where can we access these new text files? Is it version 4.1 (20 November 2023) or a new one?

 

[Kendon]

Where can we access these new text files? Is it version 4.1 (20 November 2023) or a new one?

The latest version is "develop" in GitHub. Here's the URL: https://github.com/We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod

That gets you to Master. Scroll down to "develop". You'll fork that to your own repository.

The reason you want to work on the mod in your own repository is so that you don't accidentally change someone else's code. It's easy to do unintentionally. Once, after I rewrote the English on a large document, I committed it. Automatically Microsoft invisibly changed the line endings from LF to CRLF, causing a general crash.

You don't want to repeat my mistake. Make all your changes in your own repository, proofread them in Preview until everything sounds good to you and then upload to "develop" on We the People.

It's easy to keep the Mod in your personal repository up to date with We the People. You'll see this message: "This branch is 8 commits behind We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod:develop". Click Sync Fork, then Update Branch and, voila, you have the most recent version of We the People which you can clone, compile and play.

 

[Kendon]

Many players use "We The People"to keep up with the latest discoveries from colonial history. I just added this to the quotes that pop up while the game is loading.


To secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and yet provide for the interest and safety for all -- individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.

1787 letter from George Washington asking that the Constitution be ratified


The letter was discovered in 2022 along with an original Constitution from 1787 in a house once owned by Samuel Johnson, Governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789. Each of the original 13 colonies was given two signed constitutions to study before ratification. Eight survive. This one has been authenticated and is being auctioned at Sothebys. George Washington's letter was found folded inside.