Croustibat - English translation

[Fred_PJ]

I'd love to translate Coktel Vision's Croustibat from Portuguese to English and see it finally officially supported in ScummVM. However I don't know where to start, could somebody please help me and point me in the right direction?

I tried extracting the game's files, editing and repackaging them without success. Instead of directly hacking the game's files is it possible to have some kind of on-the-fly translation in ScummVM?

Since the game is quite short and has very few text strings in my opinion it would be a very feasible project. The interface's text would be based on the English version of Gobliins 2 to make it standard.

By the way, yesterday I did some proper scans of the cover artwork (floppy in CD style jewel case), here they are:
https://imgur.com/a/y9Nif

And here's the game's manual (Portuguese) in PDF:
https://www.docdroid.net/OwJxcXy/croust ... uguese.pdf
Since this was a promotional game the manual is pretty generic and has no mentions of Coktel Vision or the year of release.

Also, can anyone confirm if the text on these two screens (and the ending screen) is part of the background images or editable text strings?




Thanks.

[Fred_PJ]

I guess that the zero replies means that this isn't as simple as I first thought. I have the free time and will to translate it (it would take about a week) but unfortunately I don't have enough technical knowledge to do it. It's a shame, i'd really like to see this game in English for everyone to enjoy.

[Collector]

There are tools available for translating SCI games, but I have never heard of any for Gob games.

[Fred_PJ]

Is there any interest in this? I've been playing this short game since I was a little kid, I know all the dialogs, items, actions and could provide a proper english translation, however I do not have enough skills on the technical side of things.
I don't know how ScummVM works, but maybe a patch could be created?

[Uka]

Fred_PJ, thank you for preserving and sharing this rare game with everyone in the first place
There is certainly interest in making an English translation!
I think I had Gob tools somewhere, as all the three 'Gobliiins' have been translated into Russian by fans. I will try to look for it...

[Uka]

OK - I have checked that it is quite possible to make an English translation!

Although I am not a programmer, and I have not yet checked if the graphics could be replaced.
As far as I know MAN-biker was already going to translate it into English or Russian several years ago - I do not know if anything has been accomplished.

[Collector]

I would be interested in the Gob tools if they can be found.

[rzil]

Thank you Fred_PJ for working on this rare game.

Attaching extracted texts from TOT files (you can copy & paste this to spreadsheet to ease translation).

Also, can anyone confirm if the text on these two screens (and the ending screen) is part of the background images or editable text strings?

I don't see the text on screen there so I think it probably an image, although I am not 100% sure texts exist only in TOT files.

STK files can be extracted using scummvm-tools (extract_gob)
TOT files extracted using (very WIP) tool for editing gob engine resource files (currently, it has support only for extracting text from TOT)

EDIT:
it seems CAT files include texts in several languages, including english.

OK - I have checked that it is quite possible to make an English translation!

Amazing, thank you too!
Can you please explain how have you managed doing that?

[Uka]

I would be interested in the Gob tools if they can be found.

As already noted by rzil, some Gob tools are already available in the set of the general ScummVM Tools.
You can get the others (the ones I used) on the Old-Games.ru forum: https://www.old-games.ru/forum/threads/ ... oft.51384/

I don't see the text on screen there so I think it probably an image, although I am not 100% sure texts exist only in TOT files.

I also think that's an image. The font for 'Croustibat' symbols is too fancy.

Amazing, thank you too!
Can you please explain how have you managed doing that?

That's very simply - I have just HEX-edited the text in TOT file I.e., the English letters had to match the strings in Portuguese. So it would be easier if some programmer would make a text export/import tool instead.

[Collector]

Thanks

[Fred_PJ]

Hey guys, I've only have seen these replies now. My question is, after extracting the files, is there any way to rebuild the .STK file again including the modified .TOT files?

[Uka]

Of course you can rebuild the STK!
With the Russian tool, the command is 'gobcrack /c map.txt'.

[rzil]

Hi, I have recently managed to update the custom tools so they are able to inject texts into Woodruff, I assume the same method might allow to inject the translated text into this game as well.
is there any progress on the translation?

[alasker]

Sorry for reviving such an old post, but did anyone finally managed to translate this game? I just completed it on ScummVM 2.6.0; probably someone should update wiki entry, as this game is playable and completable. Not considering language barrier.

I was looking into a way to use machine translation, without patching game files, but it ended up very quirky. Game provides split strings, so multi-line sentences quickly loose their meaning (and sometimes even become very funny). And I was not able to correctly hook into menu/verbs/inventory text rendering routine to replace it during runtime, so whole play-though was half English, half Portuguese. Without proper text caching mechanism there are a lot of requests going to translation server, also lag. Tried using locally installed instance of LibreTranslate, but it has some issues with translations, where in worst case scenario instead of character name you can get underscore. Some items get musical note. Fun.

As the middle ground of both ideas (translation of game files and universal machine translation) maybe we could try implementing "soft patching" translation, where user provides a translated list of strings (e.g. PO format) and ScummVM replaces them dynamically during game runtime? This would allow having quality translations without hacking game files (and later adding new game id to ScummVM), and new translations could be made by anyone without technical hacking knowledge. Sadly, game images cannot be translated this way, but that's quite a small downside.

[rzil]

Hi, that's great.
also, please see above message
it is possible to edit translated text into the game resources