Goblins 3 speech problems

[Roarke]

Today I was doing a little cleanup in the storeroom, and among the dust has appeared a copy of the CD version of Goblins 3 that I got form a gaming magazine from 1999!

I run to check compatibility with ScummVM, and it is perfect, but I have a little issue... Is it possible to play with Spanish subtitles and English audio? If I active Spanish subtitles, audio is configured in French.

[DrMcCoy]

I run to check compatibility with ScummVM, and it is perfect, but I have a little issue... Is it possible to play with Spanish subtitles and English audio? If I active Spanish subtitles, audio is configured in French.

Not really, since the scripts select which audio files are used.
I would have to add a (hacky )workaround, but even then, ScummVM lacks a way to specify text and speech language separately.

[suloku]

I've come to the same problem, any advance in it?

Could it be possible to replace english text with spanish's?

Renaming english audio file to french's works, but it's not sync and gets cut.

BTW, trough dosbox I ran the setup file, and it lets you select which language you want to use for subtititles and for audio, so there must be a way to configure it outside of scummvm, right?

[DrMcCoy]

Could it be possible to replace english text with spanish's?

That's not that easy.

Renaming english audio file to french's works, but it's not sync and gets cut.

That was to be expected. It doesn't work that way.

BTW, trough dosbox I ran the setup file, and it lets you select which language you want to use for subtititles and for audio, so there must be a way to configure it outside of scummvm, right?

You still can only select one language in the end, which is then written into MDO.DEF. The Gob engine has only knowledge of one global language, which is written into a script variable. Which data files are then openend end used is handled by the scripts.

[Morden]

Wouldn't it be possible by unpacking the INTRO.STK and renaming the extensions of all the ANG resources to ESP and vice versa?

DrMcCoy - Remember when I said the MULTI3 version localized to Polish, Czech and Hungarian actually used the already existing extensions instead of new ones? This meant that Polish text would be found in ANG resources.

So, by unpacking the INTRO.STK and doing a manual extension swap you could have the Spanish text in any version you wanted. Or is the engine THAT picky and it would just know something is off?

[DrMcCoy]

Wouldn't it be possible by unpacking the INTRO.STK and renaming the extensions of all the ANG resources to ESP and vice versa?

That would work, yes.

This would change the MD5 checksum of INTRO.STK though and ScummVM will complain that an unknown version was found (the file name based fallback should still correctly identify the game though, I hope). We won't ever add such modified versions to our detector, of course.

There is one problem though: There's apparently still a bug in compress_gob (although Strangerke told me he fixed it, but I just verified that it still exists ), so you'd have to muck about with the config file extract_gob_stk creates (intro.gob).
Basically, for lines like "GOB31.LET 1" change the 1 at the end to 0, so the file won't be LZ-compressed. This does produce larger files, but since the intro.stk isn't that big, it won't matter here.

[ezekiel000]

If the original installer allows you to select the language for speech and subtitles wouldn't it be possible to implement the same thing in ScummVM?

I'm not a programmer and I don't have the game this point was just confusing me.

[DrMcCoy]

The original installer might have let you select different languages for both, but it still generated only one language ID in the end too.

The engine, in the original executable too, is only capable of tracking one language at a time. If you see a different language from what you hear, that's because the scripts "trick" the engine there.

[BeleG]

I got a problem when trying to repack the intro.stk file with compress_gob. I modified the intro.gob config file the way you said (DrMcCoy), changing all 1s into 0s, but it keeps saying "ERROR: Unable to read GOB31.LET!".

Am I doing something wrong or is it still that bug in the compressor?

[Morden]

DrMcCoy - I just thought of a possible flaw of the "unpack and rename" method. I just remembered our talk from the other Goblins thread and from what you said about how the Goblins engine handles the resources, if you were to rename the ANG files to ESP and vice versa inside INTRO.STK, wouldn't that mean the renamed ESP files now known as ANG would still call Spanish audio data?

[BeleG]

That was a fear I had too... the way I was going to try was to use the original unmodified intro.stk to add the game, choosing English when I add the game (to later use the Spanish files instead) and then, when it's added, change the intro.stk with the one previously modified with the renamed files. This way, I guessed ScummVM would think it's playing the English text files (now in Spanish) and it would equally call the English audio files. But it was only a guess, it could also call whatever audio files the language files call, and those would be, again, the French ones .

[Morden]

This way, I guessed ScummVM would think it's playing the English text files (now in Spanish) and it would equally call the English audio files.

It doesn't work like that. ScummVM can't remember this, because there's no telling which resources will be called, as this is controlled by the game. So when the script calls a given resource, this will be done at that time and the information on this operation is not stored anywhere.

Goblins engine is really messy and specific about the resources it uses.

[DrMcCoy]

"ERROR: Unable to read GOB31.LET!"

Are you using the correct compress_gob, the one from a tools daily build (or recent SVN checkout)?
Are you calling compress_gob with GOB31.LET in the current directory?

DrMcCoy - I just thought of a possible flaw of the "unpack and rename" method. I just remembered our talk from the other Goblins thread and from what you said about how the Goblins engine handles the resources, if you were to rename the ANG files to ESP and vice versa inside INTRO.STK, wouldn't that mean the renamed ESP files now known as ANG would still call Spanish audio data?

What I was thinking about was calling ScummVM so that it plays the audio data you want to hear, and then exchange the text it then displays with the ones you want to see.

The text data files do really only contain text and formating information. Loading the correct sound and text data, by their filenames, is handling by the "higher" instance, the game scripts.


And yes, BeleG, you can use the unmodified for detection and then later (while the game's not running, of course), put in the intro.stk with the switch file names.

[BeleG]

"ERROR: Unable to read GOB31.LET!"

Are you using the correct compress_gob, the one from a tools daily build (or recent SVN checkout)?
Are you calling compress_gob with GOB31.LET in the current directory?

Got it to repack the file, I was storing the unpacked files into a different folder, my mistake.

Now I have a modified intro.stk which works relatively fine. It all worked, I used the original from the CD when I added it to ScummVM and then replaced it with the modified one. ScummVM reacted well and it's playing the English audio files with no sync issues (apparently).

Now the problem is that subtitles are not shown anymore. All texts are in Spanish (objects, buttons, Goblins News, etc), but the subtitles that used to be displayed when Blount speaks are not displayed. I tried to force the "Speech and subtitles" option at "Edit Game", but it keeps that way.

[DrMcCoy]

but the subtitles that used to be displayed when Blount speaks are not displayed.

Ah, damn, I forgot that scripts don't display text when English is chosen.

But a different thing:
I just checked, I was mistaken, the scripts don't call playImd() with specific end frame number, at least not in the first screen and in the multi-language version I have. So just renaming USGOB3.ITK to FRGOB3.ITK and then setting the language in ScummVM to Spanish should work.
I tried that here too, and it works. Does it really cut the videos off for you? Please recheck that by running the game with normal English settings and comparing that to how it's played when doing the rename trick.