LSL7 the "Other" verbs pool list

[miracle.flame]

Maybe not so surprisingly we're working on LSL7 localization to Czech.

The manually typed "Other" verbs pose a challenge here, mostly because the words contain special accented characters which can't be typed naturally while playing. There is an idea to have each verb substituted with the same word unaccented and maybe also leave one untranslated for those following existing walkthroughs with English words. Even this cheesy solution is not so easily implemented because for example verbs Milk or Unzip don't have any substitutes in the pool while command for verb Masturbate has another four substitutes.

Is there a way.. maybe through modified script patch to extend pool for each command to have for example 5 slots for verb substitutes? That way 13.msg would not have 159 verbs but way more, that is five times each command. Would someone be willing to provide such a patch if possible?

[doomlazer]

The German version of lsl7 seems to contain extended characters in 13.msg. Perhaps that is a good starting point? Though, AFAIK we can't recompile SCI32 scripts, so it's probably going to be difficult to make changes.

[miracle.flame]

The German version of lsl7 actually is a great starting point. They got 299 verbs in 13.msg instead of the original 159 so it means this can be done. If only I had an idea which file is responsible for extending the word list script-wise. The are three 1.pat, 3.pat and 4.pat which are patches I suppose but the same are part of the vanilla release. There are no scr files like it was with previous Larry games. They also managed to somehow get all the files in Ressci.000 and Resmap.000 to distribute the localization patch that way. I thought that's not entirely possible with the publicly available tools. Any hints?

[doomlazer]

Those .pat files should be audio instruments, not SCI "Patch" files.

I did a quick test with the English version, and in ScummVM extended characters are already supported (didn't test dosbox). You can try this by using SCIViewer to export 13.msg. Then open just the patch file in SCICompanion for editing.

I was able to add a 2nd word that matches for milk as m?lk. Just set the same Verb and Talker number and use the next available seq number.

[doomlazer]

Looks like this method works fine in DOSBox too. They likely made it so easy to modify for translation's sake.

[miracle.flame]

Oh wow. I didn't know opening a single msg patch file in SCIC brings the editing interface to a whole new level. This solves everything! The most natural way to address this whole issue.

[doomlazer]

One question, if I open the file without loading a game in SC, it wants to export the file as message.013 instead of 13.msg. Renaming it on export worked in my test, but are there any significant differences in the message format or did they just change the naming convention?

[Kawa]

The naming convention is bound to the fact that SCI 0.x could only handle up to 1000 resources of each type (000-999). I'm pretty sure messages came around after the switch to wider resource numbers.

The bigger issue is that there's at least three message format revisions in SCI 1.x alone. As far as I can tell, SCI 2 and 3 use the latest one from SCI 1.1, and that's the one that has the full verb noun case sequence talker thing seen in your screenshot. So you should be safe just renaming the file to 13.msg.

[doomlazer]

I'm pretty sure messages came around after the switch to wider resource numbers.

So should SC not suggest exporting them as .013? Completely trivial, of course

[Kawa]

SCI 0 formats and naming patterns are just SCI Companion's default state. No game's been loaded to tell it otherwise.

[miracle.flame]

Well I sorta knew it would be too easy. The modified file works well but only verbs with known positions are taken into consideration. Whichever newly added entry is not recognized in game. I'll test the German version if those extra positions can be used with translated verbs.

It would be most helpful to know what exactly controls the usage of 13.msg here.

[Kawa]

Doomlazer's screenshot shows the extra item appear in the Other menu, and looking at this part of oPopupMenuHandler.sc seems to imply the game tries to count how many entries there are.

Or something like that.

[miracle.flame]

  So it is this easy after all! Clumsy me had the older 13.msg in Patches dir taking priority.

You two realize that Czech localizations of these games wouldn't be what they are without you, don't you?

[Kawa]

Well I certainly freakin' didn't until you had to say it!

(I jest, I jest...)

[miracle.flame]

One question though, Doomlazer. How did you manage to type accented e (even these forums struggle with the encoding when trying to type it) in the game? It reacts to switching keyboard layout with alt+shift but the accented characters are not really typed in. There is some space inserted when typing them in but even if I write the word not minding that it doesn't look as expected the word is not recognized even though it is in the list.