Gabriel Knight 2 - possible to create subtitles?

[laffer]

I was posting a bit about this in a different thread, but I think it deserves a thread on its own.

Gabriel Knight 2 is an awesome game but it has one big flaw that will prevent anyone hard of hearing from enjoying it - no subtitles. This is also annoying for many non-native English speakers who don't understand spoken English very well.

I was wondering if when this game is supported in ScummVM, if there is any way to add subtitles.
I did get a reply that it would be very, very difficult if the game had no subtitles already.

However, the game does have subtitles already - for everything other than the movies. These subtitles aren't possible to enable without some hack, but they're all it here.

So the only subtitles missing are for the movies. If there was some way to edit the movies, then it should be possible to add subtitles to the full game.
But is it possible to edit these movie files (Sierra VMD format) and keeping them in the same format so the game will play them?

If there was any way, I'd gladly write and sync all the subtitles for the game.. but I have no programming skills so I could not do anything else.

This would correct one of the few flaws I can think of in an absolute classic game.

[md5]

I was posting a bit about this in a different thread, but I think it deserves a thread on its own.

Gabriel Knight 2 is an awesome game but it has one big flaw that will prevent anyone hard of hearing from enjoying it - no subtitles. This is also annoying for many non-native English speakers who don't understand spoken English very well.

I was wondering if when this game is supported in ScummVM, if there is any way to add subtitles.
I did get a reply that it would be very, very difficult if the game had no subtitles already.

However, the game does have subtitles already - for everything other than the movies. These subtitles aren't possible to enable without some hack, but they're all it here.

So the only subtitles missing are for the movies. If there was some way to edit the movies, then it should be possible to add subtitles to the full game.
But is it possible to edit these movie files (Sierra VMD format) and keeping them in the same format so the game will play them?

If there was any way, I'd gladly write and sync all the subtitles for the game.. but I have no programming skills so I could not do anything else.

This would correct one of the few flaws I can think of in an absolute classic game.

OK, before we start jumping to anything else, bear in mind that adding support for a game in ScummVM means that someone needs to REWRITE the engine of the game, which is a VERY hard and time-consuming task. Currently, there is no engine that can handle Sierra SCI games, and SCI32 games like GK2 are even more complex. The fact that there is work being done on some later Coktel Vision games (like Urban Runner) does NOT mean that support for Sierra games is easier - Coktel Vision used its own engine for its games, even when it was bought by Sierra (which is completely different to SCI - the only common thing is the video format, VMD).

Now that we've got this out of the way, concerning your question:
Since the game already has "hidden" subtitles, that makes things much easier. If someone would write the subtitles for the game's movies, I guess they could be shown above the videos, as an overlay. But that's IF and WHEN the game is supported by ScummVM, so that could well be several years into the future (or never)

[kelmer]

Technically, there is another way using the original engine: There is a Brazilian version out there with subtitles troughout the entire game, including movies. I used that version in order to create a Spanish translation a few years ago:




Using that version, it would be possible to create English subtitles, but a transcription of the text spoken in the videos would be necessary.

[laffer]

Kelmer - if I write down all the lines spoken in the English version of the game and send them to you.. could you put them in the game?

That would be really awesome!

[laffer]

Sorry to bump this thread but I was wondering - does anyone know how to extract the MSG files from the English version of GK2? Most of the text is in the game but in resource files.

I need them as MSG files.

Otherwise I could translate every line in this Spanish version kelmer helped me with (thanks!).. but if there is some way to extract the English text from the English game, it would be a huge waste of time translating all these messages.

EDIT - it's easy translating your patch to English now that I have access to the original English text in the game.

[The Spoony Hou]

Technically, there is another way using the original engine: There is a Brazilian version out there with subtitles troughout the entire game, including movies.

What?! There is a Brazilian with subtitles? But MY version doesn't have those . Damn you, Brasoft!