Dumping the script of NDX

[ZeForte]

I've already written a somewhat functional extractor, but I'd like input on my approach.

Firstly, inspired by this thread, I'm trying to organize the script as xls spreadsheets, here's a random extracted script file (of course, the whole script could be put into a single file):
http://forte.spacequadrat.de/upload/script122.xls

Most control characters are also represented by normal, single characters (a line break in a cell translates to a line break, # translates to a page break, etc (if you wanted the # in the text, you'd use "\#"))

The first sheet contains the dialog while the second contains mostly debug messages (it seems) and things like "Do you want to skip the event? y/n"

I'm noticing that the voice files names at the start of each cell are quite annoying, but that can be fixed by giving them their own cell and referencing them.
Apart from that, how's it look? Anything I should change? Should I just stick to normal txt files?

[Carnivol]

Accompanying voice file data should indeed be moved to a column of its own. You should also enable the auto-formating/breaking option for the column with the dialog script (So it doesn't just print all the way to the right. Since I assume you'll be putting English assets in the E column at the moment, evt. with a comments row following that one for any weirdo translation/editing notes.)

Also, as far as translating the game goes, I've been considering tinkering with it myself, but I'm (as usual) willing to give Namco the benefit of the doubt for a few more months before I'd seriously  greenlight such a thing on my end (no harm in getting a little kickstart by getting all the technicalities out of the way early, of course, along with laying down the foundation.)

Anyway, the initial look of your spreadsheet is a good start. If you want to add some visual fluff to it, free up a couple of rows on the top and lock those to always display at the top of the window (despite scrolling down), evt. add a few drop downs for sorting options (empty cells, duplicate cells, specific speakers, etc.) and consider having a couple of extra pages for any data that might not really be needed in the main sheet (or just hide them in columns on the main page - by default).

Destiny is in the process of migrating to a spreadsheed format (but it wont really kick into full action until ToP's done).


Dunno if you're planning to team up with anyone on this, doing it on your own, or just fiddling around just for fun (I tend to do that, to then throw things away), but as I've said before; I'd love to make sure that any promising/quality translation project cooperates and shares various text assets (such as terminology) between projects. Something which I think is especially important on titles with shared terminology. This to ensuring a genuine feeling of continuity between titles, and also between official and unofficial translations. As you might have noticed, various people involved in the following projects are more or less sharing beds: ToP, ToDrDC, ToD2, ToI, ToH, ND2-3 and ToG (+maybe some stuff people aren't really talking about, since it's not really time to talk about it yet).


Also, pardon the late reply on this. I kinda want to be out early on these things, but I'm currently one display short of a laptop, so I'm relying on some rather uncomfortable and ghetto solutions to get my display fix these days.

[ZeForte]

Thanks for the response.

Accompanying voice file data should indeed be moved to a column of its own. You should also enable the auto-formating/breaking option for the column with the dialog script (So it doesn't just print all the way to the right. Since I assume you'll be putting English assets in the E column at the moment, evt. with a comments row following that one for any weirdo translation/editing notes.)

Yeah, having word wrap definitely sounds useful and I'll see if I can get the other things done with the spreadsheet API I'm using.
I'm also moving away from the single-character control codes idea, it's far more difficult to add new control codes to my interpreter than with stuff like <> tags

Although I won't be able to work on this for some time, the idea is to create the tools to extract and reinsert the script, so that anyone willing to translate it can simply go ahead. I'm also not planning to work on stuff like a VWF, or in other words, to do a fan translation of high quality. If people like Cyllya are willing to translate the script while going through the game (or make a translation wiki or whatever), it might as well be put into the game, even if it's not the best one.